Out of factories, into workshops

VIEW FROM THE SHED:DENIS DULLAGHAN has come to the Dundalk Community Men's Shed this morning for a photography class. For years he has had a small engineering workshop at his house. His son, 21, has now taken over the workshop: "I made gates and railings; what he's doing now is more adventurous. He refuses to go on the dole. If it doesn't work out for him he's talking about Australia. I wouldn't mind. Our daughter's in England."

The “men’s shed” is an adaptable idea. The motto of the Irish Men’s Sheds Association is “Men don’t talk face to face; they talk shoulder to shoulder.” The idea is that men are task-oriented, and like to socialise over a project, no matter how small. There are some 40 men’s sheds in Ireland, and participation is free.

The Dundalk Community Men’s Shed caters primarily for older men. This is men who are at or past retirement age for the most part, although retirement age has recently become a fluid concept. The men themselves would like the shed to be more mixed in its make up.

“I’d like to see the shed getting bigger, and more younger people here,” says Denis Dullaghan, who is 57. The shed has a cheery air about it, with a large workshop, a functioning kitchen and central heating. “It starts at 10 [am],” says Eamon O’Reilly, “But you find people down here at 9.30. It’s supposed to close at one, but you find people here still at 1.30, if there’s nothing on at home, drinking tea and having the craic.”

The workshop here is well appointed and men such as Tommy McCourt, an expert woodturner who is recovering from a stroke, are already at the machines. The small computer room is towards the kitchen. In front of the machines, where decorative wheelbarrows and window boxes were made for Christmas, is the art section.

The benches and easels for the art classes were all made in the shed. The lessons are given by local retired toolmaker Peter Lennon, who learned to paint when he went to work in Birmingham. “We never done it here,” he says.

The art lessons have proved surprisingly popular, particularly with the older men. “It’s the old people that’s taking up the art,” says Chris Griffin, 62.

According to Griffin, and to Owen Hanratty (see below), Dundalk has yet to recover socially from the departure of its factories and, above all, of Great Northern Railway. “They did social work for the workers. There was a library up there. There were 60 trades up there. In the railway times, there were 1,300 bicycles going up Park Street. Now we have bicycle lanes and no bicycles,” says Griffin.

At the back of the workshop sits a red Renault 5 donated by Brian Crombie, a retired teacher, as the next project for the shed. The Dundalk shed is mixed in this way; quite a few of the men here are quietly prosperous, with good pensions; it is occupation they lack.

Their worries are about their children, and the country; their solutions are commonsense. “The young shouldn’t be given money for absolutely nothing,” says Griffin. “There should be more volunteer projects, just to keep them interested and involved in something. They should have to contribute to society. And they’d feel better. They’re far better educated than their parents, and at the end of the education, what is there? Nothing.”

The Dundalk shed at Seatown is part of a community of men’s sheds in Co Louth. A shed at Drogheda is already open, and premises are being sought in Ardee, and in the Cooley region. The project is backed by the International Fund for Ireland, and that money has provided a project coordinator, local woman Eva Beirne. This morning, Beirne is waiting for a new sander to arrive, and observing some strange phenomena. “We have eight men called Peter attending this shed,” she says.

Matt Keating is 78, and dapper in a jacket, collar and tie – it is remarkable how startling these clothes are against the jumpers and fleeces of the other men. “I’m a retired sales rep,” he says. “I worked for 51 years. I’m involved with Eva in the fundraising quizzes.”

In fact, Keating is involved, as a volunteer, with several projects in Dundalk: “The Young at Heart Club, the Lions Club . . . I found the shed to be a haven for me. I can harness some of my energy, it slows me down. I love socialising with the men, I’m an extrovert, as you can see.”

When Keating sits in an office, it’s as if he’s taking a meeting. He tells me about his grandfather, Sam Keating, and granduncle, M Keating, who played in the first All Ireland senior football final, in 1887, in which Dundalk Young Irelands played Limerick Commercials.

For 12 years, Keating was a carer for his late wife. They have four grown children. Keating was a sales rep for drinks to pubs, and retired in 1999. “The chap who took over my round is selling one third of what I sold. It’s terrible to see young men in their 50s without work.” Keating’s daughter was recently laid off. “It is grim. I stopped looking at Prime Time and that other fella. If you went down that road it’d depress you.”

In the kitchen and sitting area, there is the buzz of quiet chat, and a general consensus that the shed closed for too long over the Christmas.

“It’s nice here, it’s relaxed. I don’t have to do anything,” says David Lowndes, who is a retired vet and, like Mark Keating, immaculately dressed. He does a bit of painting here: “But I’ve suddenly found I’ve shake in my hand.”

Most of Lowndes’s children live abroad, although he has a daughter in Ardee. Golf is no longer an option. “I’m over 81. The people I played with are all gone. I can’t find anyone to play with.”

Like most of the men here, Lowndes has his own routine, and his own pleasures. “I go up to [local bar] the Jockeys and I have a gin and tonic with my lunch and read the paper.” But the shed is still a welcome development. “I’m very happy here. There are quite a few things that they’re talking about that I might like, like gardening.”

The visitor leaves this shed with a light heart. It quietly contains so much good humour and balance – the virtues of old age – that you feel it will be lucky young men who eventually join Jonathan, who is 28 and on a community work placement there, within it. And I’m not just saying that because Tommy McCourt gave me one of his beautiful wood-turned bowls.

[ Menssheds.ie ]

‘A clicker was almost like an astronaut. He was a made man’

Owen Hanratty will be 66 in April : “I know what you’re thinking, Cliff Richard is s****ing himself.” He read about the men’s shed in the local newspaper. “I plucked up my courage and came down. There were seven or eight guys here already.

“I said I’d give it a go. It’s open four days a week so far. In the winter it’s great to come down here. The fact is, to get out of the house. I have a wife at home.”

Hanratty has a friend in the glass business. “The glass arrives in wooden frames and we took the nails out of the frames and made work benches and shelves for the tools and so on from the best of the timber.” At the art tables, Hanratty shows the easels that he made for the shed’s painters – each easel is stamped in red with “Louth Men’s Sheds” – and the canvasses that were stretched for the painters. “And you know what they got me for Christmas? F*** all.”

Hanratty has his own theories about what is required. “Women are better organised than we are. They’ve no problem organising to meet in some group. Men are more solitary creatures.”

Hanratty and Chris Griffin have worked in Dundalk all their lives and they have their theories about what has changed. “No matter what you did in those days you had to operate machines and know machines,” says Hanratty. “The can of oil was never far away. In somewhere like the Ecco [electronic components] factory where I worked there was running maintenance, people knew about things like a belted brake.”

Griffin nods. “Machines weren’t automatic like they are now. Even in Ecco, towards the end of my time there, you just had to push a button. Now there’s no industry left and no skilled work left.”

Hanratty’s working life began in 1960, when he was 14, and a messenger boy for Flood’s Chemist on Francis Street. Then he was a messenger boy for Melbers’ pork butchers. “You got a parcel of meat to take home on a Saturday. And what was in the parcel depended on where you were in the pecking order.” Eventually, he ended up working for Ecco. “They were great employers. GE [General Electric] owned them.

“Dundalk was a big shoe town. There were five or six shoe factories, although I never worked in one. The big men in the shoe places were the clickers. A clicker was almost like an astronaut. He was a clicker, he was a made man.” After some discussion, it is agreed that a clicker was the man who punched the decorative holes in shoes.

Hanratty left the factories in order to open his own pub – “That went” – and then to work as a delivery van driver for Eason. He stopped doing that about three years ago.

Now he’s worried about the young people. “They don’t integrate like they used to. When we were young we used to gather after Mass, or up in the Square. Younger people now sit at home and have 600 virtual friends on Facebook who they never see or meet or shake hands with.”