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Between The Three Bridges
by PJ Taylor
Format: Hardback
Publication date: 18th November, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-907179-30-3
Price: €25
Over several decades PJ Taylor, a self employed carpenter in Limerick City has told stories to his children, friends and customers of his childhood growing up in Limerick. After years of burning the midnight oil PJ has finally completed his first fourteen.
Join PJ from the confessional box at the Franciscan church in 1947 to his grandmother’s house in Cappamore County Limerick as she tells him how his well known father Harry met his mother Bid. The early years in Bedford Row to a run down house in Upper Carey’s Road where he spent the best six years of his life. His time with St Joseph’s Boys Scouts to the hard times in the Christian brothers school in Sexton Street, when he left at the age of fourteen.
Be prepared for a good laugh at his innocence and the manner in which he tells the stories.
From the Introduction
When PJ Taylor asked my advice about writing a book on his childhood memories of Limerick’s Carey’s Road, I hesitated.
Since the success of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, ‘memory lane’ has become an over-subscribed market, PJ’s limited literary knowledge was a factor that demanded consideration and I was not convinced that genuine enthusiasm would be sufficient to overcome the obstacles.
I have been proven wrong.
The book gives an insight into Limerick life of the 1950s through the eyes of a child that is a mixture of innocent sincerity, humour and often brutal honesty.
Similar to many other areas of the city in the early post Word War II era, living in Carey’s Road had its disadvantages. Those who resided in the tiny bungalows at the upper end of a road that stretched from Edward Street to the Roxboro Road, endured limited facilities but in a strange way it bonded families and neighbours together through a similar desire to maximize the positives.
In this book, PJ takes us back in time and into his home. We meet his mother and sympathise with her as she tries to find a balance between the unquestionable love that her husband has for her and the similar love that he shares with Arthur Guinness.
Christmas time is a mixture of childhood excitement and fear of imminent disappointment and sorrow. It’s Christmas Eve and PJ and his three siblings peer through the half door, hearts in their mouths, in anticipation of what condition their dad, Harry Taylor, will be in when he arrives home.
PJ shares memories of his years in the lower classes of Sexton Street primary school, the brutal corporal punishment and almost constant fear. He tells of the happy days: camping with the boys scouts, visits to his granny in County Limericand a miscellany of childhood incidents that he recalls with almost uncanny accuracy.
The book is written in a manner that demands the interest of the reader. It is a story that has been seeking release from the writer’s inner memory for over five decades and, particularly, for those of us who can relate to that era, it strikes a familiar chord.
Aidan Corr,
Journalist.
Seán Curtin’s Picture of Upper Carey’s Road circa 1950’s features on the front cover of this book.
