Remembering the heyday of Ôthe comicsÕ Ð episode two

From the reactions of one or two who hailed me in the streets following the recent column on the reproduction of old issues of The Beano by the Irish Independent, it would appear that there are more ‘old codgers’ than myself who remember the heyday of the comics.Those were the days when The Beano, Dandy and Hotspur for boys, or Bunty and Girls’ Crystal for the girls, were the weekly Thursday purchases in many households which could afford such luxuries.

In our house, we depended on the street corner market in ‘swops’ . . . the market would be established by the Friday, while there was also the possibility of cadging ‘a read’ of a comic a few days later.Everything was recycled in those days. You might ‘inherit’ your brother’s clothes as ‘hand me downs’ going back to school. I remember my father bought a daily paper, but he very often got ‘a read’ of both The Evening Press and Evening Herald from a neighbour on the following day.

He always claimed he was among the best informed people in the town . . . but a day late with the news; while backing horses might be a bit of a difficulty, given that he was often reading yesterday’s cards for the various meetings.Fact was that, back then, new

spapers were main source of information for the lives of the vast majority of people. I remember the results of the early races from England on Tuesdays appearing in the Connacht Sentinel. It was printed at about five in the afternoon and was on the streets at six, with people picking up the early results from it.

Meanwhile, bookies’ shops very often put up the late results from the Evening Press and Evening Herald – which carried two columns on page one which were printed in Galway in the Corrib Printers and in Porters. These special columns carried all the latest racing results, as well as a number of paragraphs of local news from Galway.

However, back to the comics. I have one other memory of the era and the comics and wonder how many more enjoyed this aspect of the publications – that was the page, or half page, of advertisements for all sorts of toys, games, tricks, magic decks of cards, and what have you. They could be bought by mail order.

The page was an Aladdin’s Cave that promised an amazing range of toys and goodies, endless hours of fun with magic and tricks, and all you had to do was fill up the coupon at the bottom of the page and mail it to have your dreams come true.

I don’t know how many times I duly filled-up the coupon . . . but it couldn’t be mailed, because I didn’t have the price of the postal order which was the admission charge to this distant Aladdin’s Cave.However, like countless thousands of others, I was one of those who spent endless hours happily reading, and re-reading, the advertisements – in full colour – and could see myself as the proud owner of so many of the special attractions like ‘black face soap’ and ‘itching powder’.

Our homemade version of ‘itching powder’ was made up of ‘itchybacks’ – the centre of a rose hip extracted and broken up and dropped down inside the collar of someone’s shirt. They scratched alright . . . but I’m not so sure it was itchy they were. In retrospect, it was much more likely that they had a skin irritation caused by the rosehip mush.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.