By Brendan Loonam
The first time I heard music from an electronic source, it was at The Pictures; great, swirling curls of orchestral drama accompanying one of His or Her Majesty’s ships as it was being tossed about by the temperamental waters of the Spanish Main. Or, possibly, it was the deep, heaving strings complementing Audie Murphy as he crept stealthily up the hill that hid Cochise and his warriors from view. One grew to expect music that stirred the satisfied soul, craned the neck and at the very least, left one sitting up upon one’s foot.
The only thing we had beyond that, in that it supplied music from a spring that wasn’t human, was the gramophone in the corner of Maloney’s kitchen, a heavy, ponderous-looking machine, that appeared likely to be anything but a producer of music. The playing arm, when it was swung out over the record, looked like it might be a winch, being used to unload a cargo ship, rather than a needle, freeing the sweet sounds of Mendelsohn from that hybrid, metallic disk that weighed a good pound and one half. And how was this musical marvel powered? Sticking out of the side of the gramophone was a suitably heavy handle which was used to crank up enough friction to play a disk at least half-way through, at which point, the person closest to it would quickly crank it up again and get it through to the finish. I marveled at the music whenever I happened to be there to enjoy it and one thing it was truly responsible for was to make me truly grateful and properly filled with awe when we were finally lucky enough to get a machine in our house that could produce its own music and more.
But, before we could even think about the kind of technology that could furnish us with music in our repose, we would have to provide that great precursor of such a tool, which most of the western hemisphere had been enjoying for half a century, but we on the Birr Road held onto the nineteenth century until it absolutely had to be released.
Everyone on our road was treated to the joys of the Electric Light within a three-week period and when ours was finalized, it was hung from the ceiling over the kitchen table, near the back door. The work was done by a pair of men from the CIE and finished off by the one man, who screwed a ceramic fixture into the ceiling and ran a tightly twisted set of wires from it across the ceiling and down the wall, where they were affixed to a switch which was also screwed onto the wall.
As I reflect upon it now, I don’t think any of us ever referred to it as anything other than the “electric light switch” and the bulb which it ignited was always called “the electric light.” It was all so new, then.
My sister, Anne, three years my senior, and I sat at the kitchen table that evening while my mother prepared a treat of potato cakes which she cooked on the griddle that had been placed atop the fire in our fireplace. We were positively basking in the light that illuminated the room around us and we couldn’t wait until our two older brothers arrived home from work and stacked their bicycles against the wall outside the back door. When they rode through the back gate, we could hear them braking on the gravel-covered backyard and we looked at each other excitedly, anticipating how they would feel when they walked into our wonderfully modern kitchen. Mammy was caught up in the excitement, also, and she hurried to get the plate of potato cakes onto the table before the boys entered.
Tommy was the first to come in, and he smiled, nodding his head and turning to wait for Peter, preferring to let him express the wonder they were being confronted with. Peter was also momentarily at a loss for words, finally uttering a joke:
“Be the holy sayman1,” which had the effect of letting us know they were impressed, while saving them from becoming mawkish. They walked to the opposite end of the kitchen, only a few steps, and drank in how the light had permeated the entire room. To emphasize how the electric light had taken over, Tommy lifted the paraffin lamp, sitting idle on the window sill, showed it to us and, shrugging, replaced it on the window.
They joined us at the table and we slathered the potato cakes with butter. We looked at each other as we ate them under our brilliant new electric light and we agreed that no potentate was as well off as we were.
Peter and Tommy were given the money that evening for the final payment for the new wireless, and when the tea was drunk and savored, they went off downtown to pick it up. We learned, later, that anyone who was around the shop stopped to take a look at what we were getting, as nearly everyone in the town would be going through the same process. Liam Hertnan put the radio into its delivery carton and taped the lid and the boys were off on their way to Paradise.
The radio, which was universally referred to as “The Wireless,” was plugged into the outlet that held our electric light and set upon a cupboard that was about five feet high and positioned against the back wall. This turned out to be an ideal height for manipulating the radio dials while looking directly at the wireless. We felt we had more than enough choices for our entertainment; in fact, we thought there weren’t enough hours in the day to explore them all: B.B.C., R.T.E. Radio Luxemburg, Armed Forces Network; there was no end to it!
Every evening, during supper, we listened to The Archers, an English family who were landed gentry and always had to deal with intrigues involving stablemen, vicars and Protestant ministers; it was all very other-worldly. Before the Archers came on, I was able to explore other worlds guided by Dan Dare, his assistant, Miss Peabody and his overweight, but loyal, slightly goofy underling, Digby. Dan Dare was an officer in service to The Planetary Federation and was in constant conflict with a green, saucer-flying, absolutely untrustworthy creature named Mekon, who spoke with a buzzing resonance that served only to make him more distasteful.
On Saturday evenings, Peter and Tommy’s friends would gather at our house before going to dances, or whatever else was going on, to make their “Windsor” knots on their ties and comb their “quiffs” using our mother’s pomade. While all this was going on, those “in the know” would be mining A.F.N.or Radio Luxemburg for the latest songs by Johnny Ray, Frankie Laine, Ruby Murray or whoever was topping the charts at the time.
At other times, during “family hours,” Radio Telefis Eireann would be the goal, and the entertainment would be provided by shows such as “Take The Floor With Dinjo,” which had a tag-line that became part of our everyday language:
“Oh, def’ny, Dinjo, def’ny,” as in: “Did you say your prayers today, Paddy?” “Oh, def’ny, Dinjo, def’ny.”
In the early afternoon on Sundays, particularly if there was an important hurling or football match scheduled, we would be joined by close friends who did not have their own wireless, but had to hear the athletic feats of such as Christy Ring and the rest of the Cork hurlers as described by the magnificently eloquent Miceal O’Hehir. After hearing a match called by O’Hehir, you were left with the distinct impression that you had watched it rather than simply heard it, so vivid was his play-by-play announcing.
