Cabra History.Com

One thing I remember well in the late 50s when television came to Cabra West. Before the inauguration of RTE (I had to write a composition about that at school) we had a telly on Dingle Road but the screen was full of snow so we couldn’t see anything only shadows.The engineers used to come to the house and raise the aerial up to the sky and you had to tell them when the picture was clear.  Down they came, took your money and off they went. The picture would be OK for about half an hour and then the snow would come back again. The whole place was full of aerials high up in the air and no pictures. Two doors up from us lived another McGrath family and the boys names were the same as ours.  Paddy, Michael and Noel. Well, Michael was a great footballer who played for Home Farm with Liam Whelan (RIP) and he was then playing for Blackburn Rovers. The teams in the 1960 Cup Final in Wembley were Blackburn Rovers -v- Wolves and Michael McGrath was playing. In our house everyone was trying to watch the match through the snow.Wolves won 3-0 and their first goal was an own goal scored by none other than Mick McGrath.  Needless to say his mother wasn’t too happy about that, nor for that matter were the rest of us on Dingle Road.  The best thing about it was we couldn’t see it very well. Then came RTE and of course no problem with seeing the telly then.  Do you remember when they were encouraging people to improve the Gaelic and began Buntus Cainte.  They were amazed that so many tuned in (rumour has it the big draw was the nice looking girls in their mini skirts (say no more).