Mick Moriarty: Barbershops, Fashion, Childhood

Mick Moriarty: Barbershops, Fashion, Childhood

Life History;

Mick has spent his life in the hairdressing trade. He talks about changes in the trade and recounts some stories from his working life.
Mick is known as ‘The Baldy Barber’. He was born in Ballincollig in 1948. His father was a hairdresser and had opened his first shop in 1937. He comments on the population explosion in Ballincollig between the time he left and the present day.
As a child, he swam in a pool called Hell Hole, and played marbles (known as Glassy Alleys). There were also two gangs who fought each other, the Broad Lane Gang and the Hatton’s Alley Gang.
He talks about the emergence of long hairstyles in the 1960s and says that a number of barbershops in Waterford closed down as a result.
He describes the cost of a haircut and of running his business over the years. He used to work early in the morning to serve night workers coming off their shifts.
He tells some funny stories about awkward or amusing situations with customers.

15 July 1999

CFP_SR00298_moriarty_1999

Ireland; Cork

Published Material:

Hunter, Stephen (1999), Life Journeys: Living Folklore in Ireland Today, Cork: The Northside Folklore Project.

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Cork Folklore Project

English

Sound

.wav

60min 13sec

Great William O'Brien St., Blackpool, Cork

Cassette

SH:      Can you remember any things done on big festivals like Halloween or Midsummer’s Eve, stuff like that, people lighting bonfires or playing games?

 

MM:    Well, of course, the longest day of the year now is next Monday, the 21^st of June. I remember up here on Broad Lane, we’ll always have Bonfire night and we’ll have our cakes and we’ll have Chester cake and we’ll have razza. A small drop of razza with loads of water inside in it, but of course we’ll be carrying trees and sticks and tyres for weeks and weeks and weeks, and no one could touch the place. Nobody would even dream of lighting the fire until bonfire night. But then again our parents were there and they were observing the whole situation as regards bonfire night.

 

SH:      Was this out in Ballincollig?

 

MM:    This was here.

 

SH:      Can you remember anything about that in Ballincollig?

 

MM:    No. No, I wouldn’t remember that much of it now, it was - - there was a bit of it in Ballincollig alright but I suppose there was a lot more of it than I would’ve realised.

SH:      Around here, where did they have the fires?

 

MM:    Up in Broad Lane. We used have it in Broad Lane at the time, but of course, there was different gangs. We had the Broad Lane gang and we had the Hattons Alley gang

 

SH:      I’ve heard about them.

 

MM:    Yeah, so we had some great times, you know. Actually, the very funny thing about the Broad Lane gang Steven, and the Hattons Alley gang was this; we’d walk all the ways out to the Gouldings Glen, which is now built up as a corporation estate, and there could be about eighteen of us walk out, nine aside, you know? Or you might have ten and nine or maybe - - there might be an odd one you know, on one side, one too many. And we’d go out there and we’d fight away, and then we’d come back again because we couldn’t have a fight in our own area because our parents would come out and give us a hiding, you know. We’d go out and we’d have a good fight and we’d walk back the road again together, which was great, you know, it was all over. That’s it.

 

SH:      Liam Foley, he told me - - he came from up that way - -

 

MM:    That’s right Liam was from Broad Lane.

 

SH:      Slightly older generation - - back then, the Broad Lane and the Hatton’s Alley, and he was involved in that himself as a teenager. Or not even as such a teenager, I think around eleven, twelve, that sort of age.

 

MM:    Oh, we went a bit older than that. We did yeah, oh we did, we went out to Goulding’s Glen and I tell you something - - I remember then we had the Lido cinema here at the back, you know and we used to have Batman and Robin. I remember a guy called John Hennessy, and he dressed up as Batman, and he made me dress up as Robin. And where the parish priest houses are over, didn’t he jump out the window. It was an old derelict building. Jeez, there was a poor woman going down the road, she nearly lost her life over it. Course we got hauled in over it.

 

SH:      Who was going down the road?

 

MM:  One of the old ladies around the corner. Around the street, and he shouting ‘here comes Batman’, you know. I tell you something, we got Batman and Robin for about two weeks, we weren’t left outside the door. We went up to school and that was it, end of story. But they were great days.