Courthouse Road in November 2024
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The Only Upside of a Funeral
Meeting relatives whom you rarely meet is one of the lighter sides of the very sad occasion that is a family funeral.
The four older people in this photo have all descended from Benjamin Brosnan of Ballybahallow, Freemount.
L to R. Sheila (O’Callaghan) Healy, her grandmother was a daughter of Benjamin’s, Mary (Ahern) Cogan, her grandfather a son of Ben’s and Norah (Ahern) ORahilly and Morgan Ahern, their grandmother was a daughter of Ben the weaver.
This is an excerpt from the school folklore collection of 1937…
“Weaving was carried on by Ben Brosnahan and his son Johnny. They lived in the townland of Ballybahallow at the eastern side of Tim Mullane’s haybarn. They worked at two looms and made “bundle-cloth” from linen thread, and blanket and frieze from woolen thread. When the woolen stuffs were woven they were taken to the “tucking mill in Coolbane owned by O’Shaughnessy’s in order to be properly shrunken before wear. “
Isn’t family history fascinating?
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Last stop on the Food Trail 2024
Jumbo’s family restaurant has been feeding North Kerry people since 1983. Jumbo’s snack box, curried chips and more are the stuff of legend.
For Listowel Food Fair, Jumbos offers a specially curated and assembled burger.
All the ingredients are local and even the serving board is from Ríocht.
One of the ingredients in this special burger is John Relihan’s prizewinning Proper Meat Sauce.
Damien is the very genial proprietor and always treats his customers to an excellent dining in or take away experience.
The place was packed on Saturday as well.
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A Christmas Treasure
This little booklet was once given away free. Mary Sobieralski of the Vincent de Paul shop gave it to me free as well with my haul last week.
It is actually priceless.
This is the back cover of the booklet and the language suggests to me that it was printed and distributed sometime close to rural electrification when electric cookers were only just making an impact. Rural electrification began in 1946.
The writer of the booklet was Maura Laverty. Maura died in 1966. She was a prolific writer, journalist, food writer and script writer. She is famous for writing the script for Ireland’s first soap opera, Tolka Row.
I’ll share more from this little treasure tomorrow.
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Listowel Tidy Towns Local Awards
The local committee of the Tidy Towns organised a great award event on Friday November 15 2024 in the Family Resource Centre. John Kelliher took the photos.
These are some of the Tidy Town team who were there on the night.
I was honoured to be invited to be the guest speaker.
All the category winners are on Listowel Tidy Town Facebook page
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A Fact
Bears have an excellent sense of smell, better even than dogs.
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Mary hanlon
It was our pleasure having you as our guest speaker at our Award Ceremony Mary. Thank you for all the complementary things you said also. It is always a great night thanks to our wonderful sponsors we can make so many people hapy a this occasion