Cabra History.Com

Do you remember the Capitol Stores on Fassaugh Avenue? Well I remember going in there for some of the Ma’s messages and especially the half pound of Margarine. When you walked into the shop the margarine and butter counter was on your left. You also got the bread on this side. I remember seeing a great big chunk of loose butter and the girl using Butter Patters like the ones in the photograph above to cut it with. You’d think she was baking a cake with the style of her. Then she’d turn around and look at you, ‘Well, what do you want’?. ‘A half pound of Stork Margarine’. The margarine was already packed in a type of grease proof paper with a Stork on it standing on one leg. Then she’d say ‘Put it up your jumper so the neighbours don’t see it’.

The Margarine was great stuff altogether. It went on our bread, into the baking for the Ma’ and into the brother’s hair before he went out on a date on Saturday night. The only one in our house who had butter was the Da’. It was kept in a butter dish with a lid on it and stored up high on the top shelf of our blue and white kitchen dresser. I remember Mister Barrett used to run the Capitol Stores and he had girls working there from the country. I think some of them used to live in the flat over the shop one time. Then the flat was turned into a hairdressers were the Young Ones got their ‘Beehives’ done and the oul one down the road got her ‘Blue Rinse’.

You could also but Granby Sausages that were made in Granby Lane and a three penny Duck Egg. Do you remember all the Mammys used to do their shopping every morning after the kids were gone off to school? Into Beechinors for the Post Office and into Hunts for the meat and all the ould ones going in to see Mister Hunt because they all thought he looked like the Hollywood actor Jeff Chandler. In some of the shops you could get a Woodbine and a Match or a box of five Woodbines. Mister Pelly had the chemist and was a great man for making up a good old Cough Bottle. We got our chips out of Mister Caffola’s chip shop and a threepenny wafer at the window outside the chipper. The Ma’s used to love Denny’s Steak and Kidney pies out of the tin that you’d buy in Prendervilles. Then there was the Batch Loaf out of Boland’s Bakey were they still took the ould Farthing up to the late 1960s.  And what about their Cream Buns? We’d try and nick them out of the back of the Breadman’s van on our way to school. Be the Jakers but that was great food altogether. Ah well, they don’t make them like that anymore.