Carry on up the pole

During this year’s snowy spells, the misery of being without electricity was – for many people – an unwelcome reminder of how uncomfortable life can be when you can’t make a cuppa, or put on the washing machine, or even cuddle up to a hot water bottle whenever you feel like it.

It’s sobering to think that as recently as the mid-1940s many Irish homes, especially in the countryside, had no electricity at all. Even the simplest tasks around the house – never mind a farm – demanded energy of the human kind. And it took almost superhuman commitment and organisation for the ESB to achieve the mammoth task of bringing power to the people of Ireland.

Half a century after the first electricity pole was erected in a field at Kilsallaghan, Co Dublin in 1946, three of the original crew got together for a celebratory re-enactment. Our photo shows PJ Dowling (92) taking notes as Tom Cowley (75) and Paddy O’Reilly (72) struggle against the combined forces of gravity and a recalcitrant-looking pole.

You might think that for a mere re-enactment, a fake pole would be used – this was, after all, long before the advent of fake news – but there’s clearly a bit of weight in that mighty chunk of wood.

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Also, somebody has been digging a very real hole in the field just behind Mr Dowling. The perky angle at which the shovel is perched in the topsoil, as opposed to the narrower angle at which the men are holding the pole, serves to emphasise that raising a utility pole is no easy task.

It’s a very Irish picture, this: ludicrous at first glance, as if these men might be robbing the pole, or trying out their own version of toss the caber. But their dignity is as striking as the sight of that lone pole, capped by its trio of insulators: an electric shamrock which would transform the lives of Irish people as profoundly as St Patrick ever had.

These and other 'Irish Times' images can be purchased from: irishtimes.com/photosales. A book, 'The Times We Lived In', with more than 100 photographs and commentary by Arminta Wallace, published by Irish Times Books, is available from irishtimes.com and from bookshops, priced at €19.99