Life As A Breadman, Dublin City, Ireland 1981
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- čas přidán 20. 02. 2024
- Leo Mahon shares tales from his 56 years delivering bread for Johnston Mooney & O’Brien.
When Leo Mahon started work on 24 June 1924 at the age of 14 bread was delivered by a horse drawn van.
Work was tough on the horses during the winter months especially along the Merrion Road to Booterstown with the east wind in their faces. However, the summer months made up for it.
Leo Mahon started out as an assistant to the van driver by the name of Mr Pat Owens, who had previously been a horse tram driver. At that time the pay was 14 shillings a week working from 6.00 am until 3.00 pm. As time went on, Leo got a promotion with a job in the bakery in various positions. He then became a spareman, now called a salesman. Everyone who worked in Johnston Mooney & O’Brien had a number by which they were known to their co-workers.
Back on deliveries Leo Mahon starts in Ballsbridge at 4.45 am every morning. He gets ready for the day ahead loading up the van before starting deliveries.
He shares stories about the encounters and antics he got up to on his rounds over the years. He feels very lucky to have found a job with prospects at Johnston Mooney & O’Brien as there were very few opportunities in those days. There are no plans to retire until he is thrown out of his job.
I’m stopping there until they say now man, you’re time is up. Out you go.
Leo Mahon is satisfied with how he has lived his life and does not know what he would do if he were a younger man today.
I worked hard all my life and now I’m taking it easy.
This episode of ‘Ireland’s Eye’ was broadcast on 13 February 1981. The presenter is Frank Hall. - Zábava
Started working at 14 for 70p a week. Spent a lifetime in a low skilled job. Married had a family and a stay at home wife.
Yet owned his own home.
God help a 14 year old today starting out in Dublin with no education or family connections.
We seem to have lost so much.
Inflation is mindboggling. Do you remember what that got you back then ?
That is decades ago, no comparison to modern society.
@@blenderocean Do you really think today is better?
God these videos make 1981 look ancient. When did I get so old
Tell me about it! 😭
Recorded on film, that might be part of it, adds a melancholic feel to it. The colour tone etc.
Although some of those drivers we’re blowing around in those trucks,always hard to scut on I was holding on for dear life once and the drivers wasn’t stopping😮 I rolled off it safely the Brennans Van Hiaces all the knackers also had them. Crazy mad times fun times wild times growing up in Dublin
Boy o boy I miss the batch and Turn over
Happens to us all, time and tide wait for no man......
Because it is modern Ireland 1981 and not modern America 1981. The bread truck must be nearly 40 years old. I was surprised he still was not delivering it with horse and cart.
This is a very important video for our times. Listen to his answer to the question about having a 'better' life. He had it all!
Well apart from teeth, or a coat when he had to wear a sack with a nail in it, or shoes with no holes in them, or hope of a better job, or retirement before the age of 70.
@@ConnbineHarvester and yet he was happy.. didn't have to worry about hurting people's feelings with words or have his home invaded by the dregs of Europe and the Middle East
Yeah, I don't worry about that either to be fair, to me, stupid racists are the dregs of Europe. It's funny to me if that keeps you up at night!@@TheKailoon1
My beautiful uncle, Paddy Gorman, delivered Johnson Mooney bread along the Sth Circular Road, what a lovely man, always had a smile for you ❤ eileen x
My da was raised by a lovely fella named Douglas McKenna. Owned Mckenna's bakery. Taught him to drive and bake. He was a good man
So long Dublin. Thanks for the memories!
Old Dub😂and it's characteristic lifestyle and ways are now extinct and never to be seen again. Well done, bankers, politicians and government
Even the bread is gone to shit
@@klausasswab6580 Yep. Bake my own these days.
Brennans have gone woke as well.
Not Dublin but what was then the Dún Laoghaire Borough
In the dublin mountains in the 70s and early eightis, i remember johnson mooney and o brien coming to our house. Mothers pride also came by if my mind serves me right. The rich farmers next door always got their bread plus cakes and jam tarts. We couldnt afford the cakes but we always pulled a piece out of the loaf and ate it walking back to the house. Just loved it cause it was so fresh
Honest hard working man, no pretentious. 3 r 4 deliveries in the Liberties through 1970’s. Community at its best, sorely lacking today.
Beautiful smell of bread & cakes of those Van's 😋
we had electric bread vans in my town in the late sixties on into the early 70s
I had heard about this in an interview with Colm Meaney.
From the Johnston Mooney O'Brien website:
Paddy Meaney, father of Irish actor Colm Meaney, delivered the bread of Johnston Mooney and O’Brien for over 30 years. Colm himself was a part of the Johnston Mooney and O’Brien history as he would often be seen out in the van with his father before he found fame in the world of acting.
Interesting,does this Company still exist?
@@jerryoshea3116yes,
@@jerryoshea3116Yes
Yes
when ireland was truly magnificent , we had nothing but ourselves
What rubbish. Economy was shite then. No jobs, church ruling the country and sexually abusing its children. No gay rights, no divorce, no contraception or abortion rights. Also no dentists either by looking at this video.
We had nothing alright, but emmigration. Anything ordinary people had came from the strength of their unions and struggle.
I remember the old electric bread floats bringing bread to the shops as a kid in the early 80s in Cabra west in Dublin and also the milk man bringing milk to the house ,,He to had an electric float ,He delivered the milk Monday to Friday and collected the money on a Friday,,,We had the glass bottles at the time,,The cream would be thick at the top of the bottle and the cap was just aluminium foil,,The crows would peck the foil off and drink the milk,,,It was real milk ,Not the watered down crap today,,,,we would scut on the back of the floats when the driver wasn't looking,,,,,,great memories,,,
Brilliant story. Shows the difference in the quality of milk now compared
I remember the Dublin Millennium edition glass milk bottles, my Nan used to always curse the crows when they went at the foil top.
My mams from cabra west used to love going over there in early 90s, great times
The year I was born! So sad to think whats its now become in Dublin.
There is so much more to the History of Johnston Mooney & O' Brien. To think it is all gone now. Mrs Armstrong in the bakery shop at JMOB was so kind and she would wrap fresh bread and cakes in an peach colour tissue paper. The smell of the cakes and bread in the shop was heavenly. Ballsbridge is an awful kip now full of awful fake people. Show off yuppies worthless in character or respect and violently selfish. Nothing like it once was. All the real people that were there are gone. 😢. This is valuable local history for those who remember.
I remember the bread truck in Bettystown at Pat’s shop. I miss these auld ones! 😢
Ah good old Pat
Lovely old Ireland. I miss it. 😢
I worked for Johnson Mooney and O' Brien in the 70s. Did a country run , as they called it then, Nass, Newbridge, Athy, Stradbally. In Stradbally I got to try on a pair of boxing gloves that belonged to Muhammed Ali . J.M and O'B. Let me go when I turned 18 , so they wouldn't have to pay me a man's wage.
Was the depo in ballsbridge in the 70s ?
@@markc3258 yea , 18 bus .
Would you mind me asking or can you remember the shops in Stradbally you delivered bread too. Thanks I knew some of the auld characters back in that time .
@@tombyrne6559Can't recall the name of the shop's, we had two drops on the left as we came from Ballylinan , a big shop near a square I think and a small shop up the hill. ( It was actually in Ballylinan that I tried on Muhammed Ali's gloves. Lovely people looked after us after our truck turned over.)
@@tombyrne6559 Can't recall the name of the shop's but they were on the left as we approached from Ballylinan. One big shop near a square, I think ? And one small shop up the hill. ( It was actually in Ballylinan that I tried on Muhammed Ali's gloves, lovely people looked after us , after our truck turned over).
The late Frank Hall asking the questions. Great piece.
Brilliant watch, Common worker that built Ireland, would be rolling in there graves today looking at Irelands immigration
I'd give me left ball to go back to that Dublin.
And I,d give me right one to make a pair, Dublin it,s heartbreaking what's happened to her.
@@petermcgivney2556 & now gen o cide
And I'd give me right tit.
You'd be a right bollox then..
@@Marlondurran Sure it,s not the first time I've been told that,lol.
We used to help our JM O’B deliver the bread to the houses and flats in the estate it was easy to keep up with the battery powered van and the smell of the bread and cakes ….
great video, What a great man and great worker .
this is exactly the type of content for which i LOVE this channel!!!!
My late father from the Liberties Tommy - had a bread round in Dalkey circa 1950 they tended to give you a round well outside your local area - so you wouldn't give the bread away to people you knew. There was the bread man/driver and the runner, they had a horse drawn carriage. He was made to get out and carry the breads on a bread board up and around Dalkey while the driver sat on his arse (my dad's words) reading the paper.
Dalkey is full of hills and every door he knocked at he would pray one of the oul wans would take a loaf or a sliced pan to make the bread board lighter and he said they were all stuck up snobs. One day he was fed up it was raining he walked for hours and only sold two sliced pans. The last house the oul wan started giving out he was late so he said ah feck this. Checked his pocket to see if he had enough fare to get back to the depo. Dumped all the bread on her driveway and walked off to get the bus back to town.
When he walked into the depo the foreman goes WTF are you doing back so early your round hasn't finished my dad goes yeah it has you can shove your job up your arse! He grabbed his bike and cycled home. Another 20 years later he was working fitting windows/glass repairs and he get's called to the depo to fix a window and the foreman goes you look familiar and my dad goes remember me I was the one who dumped all the bread on the oul wans driveway in Dalkey and came back for my bike. He roared laughing and he said how could I forget you were the only kid who ever did that in my 50 years working here.
At that time most of if not a lot of the Dalkey houses were Dún Laoghaire Corporation houses
@@stevenc0470 i don't understand your comment?
@@OscarOSullivan ah right gotcha that's interesting to know he would never bring us out to Dalkey. I realised as I got older took some guts for him to do that at 12/13 with no father around, he was born in 1937 and was the only boy and the only one bringing in the few bob. His mother was really tough born in Francis Street in the tenements. Raised 3 kids on her own - the dad died of TB when they were all young. My dad told her he hated it and how he was treated and I'd say she told him to quit probably not expecting him to do it while he was in the middle of selling/delivering bread!
@@OscarOSullivan Whites Villas are the only Corpo houses I know of in Dalkey and I know the area well. Where are the others you're talking about?
@@rachelmoran2205The villas I know of unless he did not deliver to them
Wonderful story’s
When Dublin was an Irish city built on villages. Not the dystopian kip it is now
Great video.
I remember getting VHS tapes from the bread van in mid 90's.
He just answered me question lol The Swastica laundry company had electric vans early 1900s in Dublin. amazing.
It's funny now , to see old clips of the van's with the Swastika on the side 😂😂😂.
@@staffy4389 apparently, not sure of the full details though, hitlers half brother was in Dublin around that time and got going and maybe married an Irish girl. You couldn't make it up!!!
Brilliantj👍
Wonderful decent people....
This channel is fantastic. Great social history and nostalgia. Thanks a million for the uploads, more please!
that looks like O'Rourke's shop in Glenageary. was in that shop for a bag full of penny sweets as a kid in the early 80s many times !
A Man to be respected,worked hard all of his life,was disciplined and provided a much needed service to his city! ( Doblin)
And maybe the interviewer did'nt intend to be condescending with his line of questioning,but he was!.
Asking him,does he ever look back& think he could have done better ( and be a Journalist or TV interviewer perhaps!) There's only so Many jobs in the Media,Journalism,Law and ' The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts'
So everyone's role is important and relevant in the scheme of things!
Not Dublin but Glenegeary which like the rest of its environs was never part of Dublin proper
@@OscarOSullivan My apologies,i was going by the title,it said 'Doblin City'
@@OscarOSullivan Isn't this area a Suburb near Dun Loarie!
Brendan Behan will never be dead. A safer time. Who remembers the rainy days ? ✊☘️
Good god
I'm glad
I don't miss
The old days.
The best years
Of their lives,
Ànd mine.
Brilliant
Cr,s videos are great
❤
The last of the rare old times. Just before the drugs came.
Well said, it was drugs that destroyed Dublin and by extention, the rest of Ireland.
Drugs turned Dublin into just another lost and lonely town, struggling with fear and casual violence.
It would be interesting, if Ireland, North and South, had adopted in 1980, a Singaporean stance on drug possession.
& greed & selfishness.
Dún Laoghaire Borough not Dublin
This was five years after the drugs came, they just didn't bleed outside of working class Dublin for a good few years.
This fine delivery breadman driver man was Steptoe's younger brother, they first started out working using the finest Irish draft horses, Leo went on to become a daily bread delivery driver, and Steptoe moved to Shepherd's Bush and became a Rage n Bone man
The thumbnail, A shopkeeper at that shop had issues with a condition similar to Tourette's. I didn't understand it as a child and it scared the bejayzus out of me. Rickey Rickey, Rillley... if you know, you know..
Yep, I know what you mean
@@jamesbradshaw3389, the shop was in a small lane called, 'Killiney View', off Albert Road Lower, at the bridge down from Glenageary DART Station. South County Dublin. Closed in the mid 1980s, there was another shop at the corner of that block of buildings. Long gone also.
he just needed an exorcism
Now a Vets if I believe
The great Frank Hall presenting.
When you think that its now 43 years since this was aired, 2024 is that far from 1981, as 1981 was from 1938 😅
Jone,s road Drumcondra i think was one of the depots. I worked there for 6 months back in 1978. A run out to Finglas in the electric van. I have a memory of one of the electric vans getting its roof ripped off by a digger on the Witworth road.
every weekend myself and my brother use to brake the lock on the bread van around the corner from us to take bread and cakes for our family when we where young kids ,one weekend he stopped putting a lock on the door ,someone told us he new who we were and said if we needed the food that bad it was better we took it than it been put in the bin,true story
we also use to make slings out of the breadbord sticks with rubber bands and two clothes pegs ,the good old days
We used to make Peg Guns from the breadboards too!! I made one there about 3 years ago. At 43 years of age, still making bleedin' peg guns :-)
I remember them peg guns yes 💚
I use to work for Johnston mooney O'brien. Lol I use to drive one of them old Electric vans .
God bless Leo add say he's still up above delivering bread in a old horse drawn wagon.
I worked with Leo on Saturday mornings for a while in the early seventies. He to give me tea at the Barnhill stores. A flask with five spoons of sugar in it,dreadful.But he was a great oul skin.
.
Note the advanced electric bread van 50 years ago. Folk today think they invented everything. See these vans in the Transport museum in Howth. They were used for bread, milk and laundry deliveries in the city.
A half loaf from Mr Mooney. yeah it was to feed his men, that and the government cheese was their feed for the workin day. Jaysus the fact he says it like its normal just shows how we changed. We used to look after our workers, even how small it seems. Back then a half loaf was a bloody breakfast and lunch for a man for the works day.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Electric vehicles...recycling glass...
Ireland 1981 not a penny in your pocket but you knew your neighbours and all the girls were slim.
Ah great vid. Is that an electric van?
Great video, any idea of the song?
O rourkes shop on Albert Road in glastule, better times then.
Don't eat brennans bread, it sticks to your belly like lead, me mother usta wonder why she farted like thunder, don't eat brennans bread. Jmob all d way.
And guess what... the van was electric powered!
‘JM&OB for your favourite family pan ‘ v Rourkes who used diesel vans
The van looks like something out of a Fisher Price brochure.
Now owned by Readybake; Brennans , Butterkrust JMoB Peter Lyons and Ormo and probably a few more
bread man, milkman, pop man, mobile shop, lawnmower blade sharpener, coal man, paper boy. onion seller, the tupperware man, the dishcloth seller, Littlewoods and Vernons pools collection, rent man, the provident wife, the TV man, it was a none stop stream of people coming to the door in the 60s, The postman on Saturday mornings with the giro was the most important of them all . . .
I use to love Saturdays when that little red van would deliver bread, i tried my best to get 20p off my mam for a cream cake they'd sell, it was like my birthday if i got that cake lol.
He dropped a batch loaf at the start. Is it now a bashed loaf?
You drop one
The aul one would have that pan away if the camera wasn't about...
Man , that’s a long time ago. I wonder what year he died.
Back when it was a safe city.
That's when bread was bread and I loved their cakes
He looks like he is driving around in a wardrobe..lol
0:32 "Oh luvly, he dropped a batch loaf. I'm totally feckin' off with that. No, wait... I'll only have to go to confession if I rob it. Better give it back to him or I'll go to Hell"
Is that inchicore?.
Johnson Mooney and OBrien bought a horse for one and nine the horse broke what a joke Johnson Mooney and OBrien.
Battery cars lol
Today we are living in the new Dark Ages!
Don't forget the electric milk floats.
We need to take our country back. Dublin is fast turning into a horror show.
Good owl days, 😊
They weren’t that good. Listen to what he was saying about being a common worker.
@@murpho999They were definitely better than today. Our local bakery had a electric vans. I remember their sound delivering the bread, cakes & buns to the shop. It's closed now. We had brilliant music in the charts. Mods, rockers, punks, New Romantics, Goths all together in the nightclub dancing for hours 😀
Poetry of Austin Clark doesn't sit well with 'rare aoul times Dublin'.
I bet he’s only fifty in this.. 😂
Thank God, nowadays great dentistry and a 56 year old looks so much younger than this guy. Ah when Ireland was full of Irish people 😮
He was older than 56!
he'd been working for 56 years, so he was older than 56
He was 56 years in the job and started when he was 14.
He’s 71
Looks like he is in his forties or fifties
In Ballyfermot when I was a kid, we had a van for everything that came around for your daily or weekly needs, the drivers had a first name, but the second name was what they delivered, hence, tommy the bread man, sonny the vegetable man, , ,tommy the coal man, ,they all had the same thing in common, real Dublin characters, , , or caters , the old Dublin slang, , ,the women would all flock out to get what they needed, , ,and a two hour natter would follow, , , ,, halcion days, , , ,
This man started working 100 years ago on the bread 🥯 jasus it’s mad when u thin bout it 😮😮😮