Jerretspass: baking soda balloon

You heard the expression, ‘grand weather for snedding turnips’. And it’s been that way for a while.

Anyway, another time we were snedding turnips for Loughlin’s.

There was Kevin Loughlin, Tommy Loy, Tommy John McSherry, Tom Burns and me.

At dinner time in those days it used to be for who could eat the most potatoes. They threw up a big pot of potatoes and butter and you ate till you could eat no more. Ten or twelve potatoes would have been common enough.

After a feed like that you weren’t fit to move, never mind thin turnips.  

 Now Tommy Loy was an awful man for the baking soda. He swore by it for the heartburn. So after this big feed of potatoes he wanted some baking soda. So Kevin said to me,

‘Go and get him some baking soda! Put a couple of spoonfuls into a glass of water.’

So I put four or five spoonfuls into the glass of water and I brought the spoon and the baking soda out into the field.

Jemity but didn’t Tommy put another couple of spoonfuls of baking soda into the glass before he drank it?

Do you know, it nearly killed him?

He blew up like a balloon!

It was no joke.

We can look back on it now and laugh.
 

But it wasn’t funny at the time!