Mysterious teenage trip into world of electronics and life

Jobs and cash were hard commodities to come by in the mid-1970s apart from occasional seasonal rural pursuits such as ‘the bog’, thinnowing beet or occasional forays into picking stones on fields being prepared for summer hay cutting.

Even with a Leaving Cert of reasonable merit safely under the belt, employment prospects weren’t exactly hitting you in the face, although there was always the chance of ‘the start’ on the buildings if that industry was going well.

A day-trip to Galway on a late Summer’s day based on a tip-off that a ‘new company’ was hiring in the city led me to a short-cut off the Tuam Road close to Castlegar Church and into the front office of the Digital Equipment Corporation.

There was a kind of refreshing naivety about the mission: no curriculum vitae prepared; no letters of reference in the back pocket; and no clue whatsoever about what sort of job I was applying for.

A friendly receptionist handed me an application form which was duly filled out with all my modest qualifications in life, and straight away I noticed one stumbling block – the 18-years minimum age stipulation.

Honesty had to be the sacrifice, as my date-of-birth slipped back by one year in the hope that a birth certificate would not be sought . . . and as things transpired, it wasn’t.

The day-trip to Galway had nearly gone out of my head about a week later when a letter arrived in the post offering me the post of – wait for it – a trainee test technician with a starting-off-weekly pay-packet of £26 which translated into a take-home sum of £19 and seven pence.

It was far too good an offer to be spurned and seemed light years away from the days of weeding beet, pulling out ewes for shearing, or spending long days in the bog for a daily return of £3 or £4 (maximum).

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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