After the disaster with the boiled chicken, I learned quick and there were lots of good feeds in my house. Like I said, the younger fellows had to bring something to the house …..
………..that we could eat or cook, in order to get in! Mind you, it wasn’t aisy for them, stealing out of their own houses like that!
There was a while when I didn’t work. I was a ‘hippie’, I suppose, standing, long-haired at the corner. I didn’t want to work. It was just a phase I was going through. All kids go through phases like that.
Now at this time in the village there were lots of women good to me: there was Mrs Eddie Magill, and Mrs Rafferty, Mrs John McComb and Sarah Conlon, Phil Monaghan’s aunt in
I could have gone into any of their houses and got something to eat! Mrs Magill would have come to the entry for me! I can see her yit, about the entry and she’d give me the nod! As soon as I would walk down and round the entry, she would have a big wheaten farl with butter and a mug of tea for me. Mrs McComb did the same: Rose and Sarah Conlon, Mrs Rafferty, they all did the same – and a thousand times over.
Another great woman – who had very little – was Mrs Mary Gribben, a lovely beautiful woman. But, as I said, those women would give me nothing if their menfolk were around. You see, I was caught a couple of times eating in their homes when the husbands came home. They all had the one attitude:
‘Lazy son of a bitch should be out working. A big, strong fellow like that!’
And they were right. I was big, and strong and ugly enough to be out at work. But I was rebelling against work. I was rebelling against society. I didn’t care about religion, or nothing else.
I was just ‘doing my own thing’.
….. more ……….