Cabra History.Com

Now I have to tell you, I’m droolin’ at the mouth just looking at this picture. Do you remember the Ma’ sending you to Bolands bread shop for one of these? Talk about Manna from Heaven…and the girl behind the counter would wrap it up in two layers of that soft brown colour paper. Do you remember the heat from it because it was just out of the oven? Oh and the smell, is it any wonder that we couldn’t resist picking the middle out of it as we walked all the way home with it under our arm? There’d I’d be, dawdling down the road in a world of my own and chewing away on the bread, picking at it like a little half starved sparrow. I remember one time when my self and my pal from next door were sent to the shops for one for his Ma’. Of course there we were picking away at it and yapping to our hearts content with not a care in the world when his hand met mine after they had tunneled from one side to the other. Well such a roar as he let out. ‘Jaysus the Ma’ is after going to kill me, look at the bread’. I gaped in wonder at the great big hole in the loaf. There stood me little pal with a look of horror on his face. I said ‘We’ll bring it back to the shop and tell the woman there was a hole in it when she gave it to us’. Well you should have seen the look of relief  on his face when I came up with that great idea.

So off we ran back to Boland’s shop on Fassaugh Avenue as happy and smart as any  two buckos you’d ever meet. We walked into the bread shop with big grins on our faces. The girl behind the counter first looked at us and then at the hole in the bread. ‘Well…’ she said ‘…what are you two back her for’. The pal looked at me and I looked at him and then we both looked up at her. ‘There’s a big hole in the bread Miss‘ says my pal with the grin gone off his face and a look of the Vincent De Paul in his big sheep’s eyes. She leaned over the counter and grabbed the bread off him. ‘You pair of gobshites...’ she says ‘…if you’se do that again I’ll give the two of you a good clatter in the face’. And then I ups and says ‘We won’t Miss, I promise‘. So then she wraps up a new loaf for us and tells us to get out. But just as we’re reaching the door of the shop she shouts at us ‘Here, and take that with you’se’. She threw the half eaten loaf at us. God we couldn’t believe out luck as I grabbed it and we ran out. So there we are walking down the road with him eating the top half of the loaf and me eating the bottom half. We were on top of the world walking along and laughing with bits if the black crust stuck in between our front teeth. ‘Heaven, I’m in Heaven…’