Mullingar man discusses the lost art of conversation

Charlie Nolan is out for a walk when I bump into him in a woodland within our mutual 5k.

“It’s a great place for fraughans,” he tells me. “They’re a sweet berry, and when I was young I was living in Tullaghan, near Lough Owel, and we’d go down to Tullaghan bog and collect buckets of them and my mother would make jam.”

Charlie worked in the Department of Fisheries, joining first as a general operative and graduating to inspector before he retired 13 years ago.

Assured that Charlie has many a tale to tell, I call him up later to have a chat about his time in the fisheries, only to discover that it was his five-year stint working in a shop that proved to the most formative years of his life

“I spent five years behind the counter in a grocery in Mullingar, way back in 1961. It was on the main street of Mullingar, on Oliver Plunkett Street, P&D Mullally, and it was always known as Mullally’s.

“When I finished with the Christian Brothers, I did my last exam on a Friday, and I started working behind the counter on a Monday.

“The money was very small, but nevertheless I was delighted with the opportunity.

“I liked meeting people, having a chat with the customers. The important thing I was taught was that if they [customers[ told you something this week and you remembered to ask them how things were progressing the following week – such as how was Jimmy’s leg or whatever it was – they learned to trust you.

“There was an art to it and the more they talked, the more they bought off you.

“The Mullallys were nice people but tough taskmasters. It was a learning process and I learned more in that five years than from any book.

“They had a fair turnover. It wasn’t a big shop, but they had two counters – the bossman was on one counter and I manned the other.

“Sometimes I’d get the job of messenger boy and I’d deliver groceries around Mullingar and the outskirts.

“Mullingar was a thriving town. People did their shopping once a week, and Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays were the busy days.

“On Thursday you had the market down on the street beside Keelan’s, a drapery store.

“The people from the country came in to sell eggs, I’d go to purchase some for the shop, maybe 20, 30 dozen. You’d have to haggle with them a bit about price because the shop used to have to get their cut out of it, but you’d meet lovely people.

“Some of the old gentry from Mullingar and the surrounding areas would come in as well.

“Mullally’s was not only a grocery shop but a greengrocers as well. They sold cabbage, parsnips, carrots, bunches of flowers, rhubarb, Brussels sprouts – it was an assortment. And if the cabbage or rhubarb didn’t go well that day, you’d wrap it up in damp newspaper so that it would be fresh the next morning.”

Charlie remembers a time when he paid dearly for losing a delivery of flowers.

“People liked flowers, and this time I was designated to take some flowers up to a lady on the Dublin Road.

“I fixed them on the carrier of the pushbike and I put the blooms in next to the footpath so that a passing car wouldn’t damage them.

“I headed off down the town and near the Market Square there was a car parked outside Hutchen’s and didn’t they open the car door and took every bloom off the flowers and they blew up in the sky like confetti!

“I had to do a U-turn and come back to the shop with two bunches of stalks in my hand, and told the boss what had happened.

“He told me to go and get another two bunches as ‘time was of the essence’, so I headed off on the bicycle again and this time I put them where the flashlamp was, delivered the flowers and everything was grand.

“That Saturday night though, I discovered that there was 1 and eightpence taken out of my wages, but I tell you, I never lost a bloom after that!”

Lost art of conversation

Charlie remembers how many people in the countryside around the town had their own gardens, “You’d never see a country fella coming in and buying a head of cabbage!”

“People were self-sufficient out the country, even for bacon or ham, butter and milk.

“The other thing I liked was dealing with was commercial travellers. I suppose it’s all online now, but commercial travellers would come in and you’d place your order with them.

“Tommy Roche from Mullingar was a commercial traveller for Ranks Flour, and Mary O’Rourke’s husband was one for Jacob’s Biscuits – you met all of these different people.

“I think the art of conversation is lacking now in grocery stores. Someone told me recently that the customer is getting such great value that it’s not necessary to strike up a conversation.

“The other thing is, that time we had no cash registers, we had the drawer, with the notes in one section and coins in the other.

“I always had this art of totting up in my head as the chat would be going on with the customer. I was fairly good with figures.

“Nowadays it’s all worked out for you.

“The receipt tells you your change and it even says ‘thank you’. There’s no such thing now as conversation – you go and pay for your goods and get out.

“We hadn’t so much of that in our little shop. You had the time to talk and people liked to have a conversation. We lost that, and remember, it cost us nothing, just like a smile – it costs us nothing.

“People would come to trust you with what they were going to tell you, sometimes they’d want to talk to get something off their minds. I’d always make sure to ask how they were doing the following week and make sure they were getting on alright.”

Something else that’s disappeared is the credit book. “We always give out a certain amount of credit. People would get things on tick, and eventually people would pay you.

“The other thing now is sugar – sugar now comes pre-packed but we always got in 112lb weight, and we’d have to take in the huge bag of sugar, and measure it out in 2lbs, 1lb, and 4lbs in strong brown paper bags and that would take up the best part of the day.

“The same with potatoes, in a half stone, quarter stone or a stone.”

Fleadh 1963

Charlie was working in the grocers when the first all-Ireland fleadh came to town in 1963.

“It was usually a three-day event but they were a week coming to it and it took the crowd another week to leave, so you’re talking about the best part of a fortnight. It was the best thing economically for the town of Mullingar. As far as prices were concerned, nobody asked the price of anything, if they wanted it, they bought it and that was that.

“The fleadh was something else. I lived six and half miles out of the country, riding in my bike at 6 o’clock in the morning, and as I’d pass the Fairgreen in Mullingar, the people would be mad alive – you’d wonder did they go to bed at all.

“Lots of strangers came into the shop, all nationalities, all different accents, and even the way they dressed. They were all in good form and there was a great atmosphere about it.

“I wasn’t there at night time of course. I’d finish work at 9 o’clock after being there since seven, so a 14-hour day, and by the time I’d get back home it was late enough. It was a great asset to Mullingar, so I’m disappointed to see the way things are going at the moment that we didn’t have it last year or this year, but maybe next year – it would great.

“We’re less than an hour from Dublin on the path to the west of Ireland, so people will find it handy enough to get to us here, and hopefully it will take place because I’m looking forward to. I was at a few fleadh cheol in my time, I spent three days down in Sligo because I’ve brother down there and it was absolutely brilliant.

“Mullingar needs it. It’s going to boost the town and drive the economy and it would be the perfect antidote to the virus.”

Fisheries

“I got by first job in Cullion Fish Farm beside St Brigid’s Well. I went in as a general operative, and was transferred then to the mobile unit, to monitor a group of people going Ireland who were electrical fishing and removing pike from rivers. I spent three summers at that but each autumn I’d come back to Mullingar.

“Then I was transferred from Mullingar to Roscrea, down in Tipperary, to the big fish farm down there, and learned a good bit about it. I was in charge for a bit, but then a vacancy came up back here in Mullingar. I applied for it and was lucky to get it because my children were at school at the time. Otherwise I would have had to move house or something if I stayed down in Roscrea.

“The fisheries were great but I missed meeting the public in the shop. I missed the chat with the people, I’m an aul chatterbox as you can tell. When I fist started, Mullally’s kept me on at weekends, until I went to Roscrea, and I used to live for the weekends,

“Yes, the fisheries was different. I was 30 years in charge of Cullion Fish Farm and I had four men working for me. We had a great turnover of fish and sold fish to angling clubs and that left me in contact with angling clubs across the country.

“Some people thought Cullion Fish Farm only supplied fish to the local lakes, but no. Fish from Cullion was going to Cork, Wexford, Donegal and everywhere in between.

“That was nice but it was done in a business manner so it was different to the shop. With the fisheries, I was in a managerial position, whereas in the shop I could always seek advice from the bossman, he’d designate duties to me. When I went to fisheries I was designating duties to my staff under me, so there was a certain amount of seriousness about it. And it was I who had to answer the questions, I wasn’t been paid to give the answer ‘I don’t know’.

“There was meetings and conferences and that was all new to me. In latter years, there was health and safety meetings all over the place. It’s even more different now, the whole thing is computerised. That time everything I did was with my pen and my hand, there were no calculators.

“I handled a lot of fish in my day. In Cullion we could have a turnover of 1.5 million fish, and you’d account for them in a year. Like ourselves, fish had to be looked after, they had to be given medicines because, like ourselves, fish health can be poor at certain times.

“My greatest aspect of fishing was stripping the fish, I loved that. In November or December, stripping – you’d be taking the eggs from both the male and female, and transferring them then and it would take 60 days for them to hatch out. When they’d hatch out first, you’d feed them with a type of fish meal, and like a baby we’d feed them 10 times a day.

“Each female fish would produce 800 eggs per pound weight, in other words, each 3lb fish would give you 3,400 eggs. We stripped them in the fish farm and in the three spawning streams in Lough Owel and you’d get a good quantity of fish from those three streams.

“The fish that we’d produce would stock Lough Owel to rehabilitate the fish stock and to keep the angler happy. That time, fishing was more or less free, but nowadays they pay a permit to fish in Lough Owel.

“Cullion Fish Farm was always described as the jewel in the crown for only a small piece of land. It’s the best, productive acre and a half in the midlands. The water supply comes from Lough Owel so you’ve a very high quality drinking water there. The lake is spring fed and other fish farms simply wouldn’t have that quality of water. If you’ve good quality of water, you’ll get good quality fish.”

Charlie is retired from the fisheries for more than a decade now but says he’s still “happy”.

“I’m always busy. I’m involved in card playing, in politics, pitch and putt, and angling. I go for long walks, well 5km now, and I’d have lots to do around the house – mowing lawns and clipping hedges. I keep myself busy. I think the day you get up and you haven’t something to do the following day... I would go mad.”