大象传媒

My dad tells us of when my granddad, Jerry Donovan, ran the air raid shelter by their house. My granny, Mary Donovan, was pregnant with my Aunt Josephine. There was Aunt Chrissie, Aunt Alice, Uncle Paul, who was an invalid and my dad, Jerry, who had been born in 1939.

He and my aunts remember blacking out the windows so that no lights could be seen. They used to drag a mattress to the shelter for my uncle Paul to lie on during the raids. They were living at Cranburn Street at the time. The first house was bombed and so Granny managed to get another. Before she could even move in that house was bombed. Her cousin came down from the country to take the family back with her because it was getting so dangerous. The next night their air raid shelter was bombed and all were lost.

One of the funnier stories that I've been told was about the cat.

Everyone was in the shelter and the house was hit. When they went to salvage what they could, they couldn't find the cat. This went on for several days and everyone feared the cat had been killed. Going through the rubble in the kitchen, Granny picked up a large pot that was upside and down and there was a very angry kitty! He must have been in front of the table when the pot was tumbled by the explosion and it landed squarely over him saving him from being killed by the rubble falling.

Another one is when my dad was in the countryside, his aunt and uncle (cousins really) had a lovely farm with prized flowers. Uncle John and Aunt Mattie Magee. Now uncle John had a gas pump for the tractor. Daddy thought he would do Aunt Mattie a big favor and proceeded to "water" the flowers. Another time he "picked her a bouquet" of her own prized flowers.

I'll get more of the stories about the rationing, etc. from my dad and his sisters and post them.
Mary

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