Summer-time, long ago.

By John Joe Welby

A story of my summer holidays long ago and memories of working on the farm.

 

When I was a young boy going to school the summer weather was lovely, with plenty of sunshine. But now a days the summers are very wet, cold not much sunshine. In the summer time when I was going to school, I would walk barefoot and wear a short pants as that was the way that people dressed them times.

The teacher would tell everyone in the big classes, that the school tour was being arranged for the Dublin Zoo on the 20th of June. Everyone was delighted in the school we would be travelling on the train to the Zoo.

Everyone had to be at school at seven o’clock to get the bus to the train station for eight o’clock. When we were on our way on the train it was very exciting as most of us were never on a train before. When we arrived at the Dublin train station the bus took everyone to the Zoo Park. It was an enjoyable day watching the wild animals play and sit around to their heart’s content.

Everyone in the school knew the summer holidays was next, as a few days went by the teacher told us that we would be getting our holidays on Friday. Everyone would have two months of from school which was very nice.

The school holiday’s was a working one as we had a farm, the hay was cut with a tractor machine then we would have to turn hay with a hand rake and hay fork. It took a lot of hard work to get all the hay saved, we would get the tea and sandwich in the hay field which was nice them times. Whenever we got time we would dig worms for to go fishing we would spend plenty of evenings fishing, but all I ever got was small fish which I put back in the river again.

In the Sunday afternoon everyone would go for swim and a splash about in the near buy river. It was great fun to see so many people gather for a swim in the river. When all the farm work was done our parents would take us to the seaside for a day. All of us would have plenty of fun building castles in the sand and jumping into the water. We all got ice cream chips burger that our treat for the holidays.

Next I would hear my parents say you will have to get new clothes for school. I did not like to hear that as the school holidays were coming to the end. As it was a matter of days before I was back at school again.