Nora shares memories of almost 98 years living in a Kilkenny town

However, the town has long attracted in-comers, and one of Callan’s oldest residents is ‘a blow-in’ herself!

Nora O’Mahoney is 98 and a Cork-woman by birth. But she is also hale, hearty and now one of Callan’s oldest residents!

“A lot of people don’t believe I’m nearly 100,” Nora said. And sitting with her, chatting about her youth, work life and pastimes, you would easily estimate an age several decades younger than that!

Having made the trek from the county of the ‘real capital’ in the 50s, Nora decided life in Callan was for her and she’s never looked back.

She will be a familiar name and face to generations of school-goers in the Callan area, having spent many happy years as the secretary in Callan CBS.

The school years are just some of Nora’s warm memories of her decades in her adopted hometown.

Nora’s life began at Cashel House in Leap, Co Cork. A middle daughter in a family of six children, not only is Nora still living an independent life, but she can boast of having two sisters also living well into their 90s.

The family lived in a farmhouse bought by Nora’s grandfather.

There were two boys - Patrick, who passed away in his 40s, and Dan who died from pneumonia when he was just three. Nora was one of four girls - Mary was a nun in Liverpool and passed away five or six years ago, at the age of 92; Nora was next; then Lily, who is now 96 and a regular visitor to Callan with her daughter; and Theresa, who is 95 and also a nun, now living near London.

As a girl, Nora loved school. She loved Irish and was able to ‘tell her life story’ as gaeilge for her Inter Cert.

Her mother’s home place was ‘just across the road’ from the homestead of Michael Collins’ family, in Cork, and Nora was brought up with stories of that time, how her mother had been speaking to him just hours before he was shot, the ‘numbness’ at his death, and how she was in Cumann na mBan.

The twist of fate that first brought Nora to Callan came in the form of a letter from Mrs Phelan, the post mistress in the town.

Having first secured a position in Thomastown, for several months after her schooling, Nora had returned to Cork. Mrs Phelan heard she was available for work and invited Nora to Callan, in about 1959.

It was a busy office - with up to 20 bags of mail going out every day during the run up to Christmas!

“I loved Callan when I came into it,” Nora recalled fondly.

She described the town she arrived to as a thriving and with a wonderful social life for a young woman. The town had a ‘picture house’ and a dance hall, with a reputation so good that people travelled out from Kilkenny City to the dances there.

Located where the SuperValu supermarket is today, the ‘Gaiety Cinema,’ popularly referred to as ‘the picture house,’ pulled in crowds for more than 20 years, until it burned down in the 1960s.

That marked a downturn in the local social life, Nora said.

She also loved the dances in Callan. Nora remembers dances organised for the local GAA club by Seamus Ryan. “They were terrific, a lovely, romantic place to be,” Nora recalled.

Callan was the best place to go dancing, she said. “You’d go into Kilkenny City and there would be nobody in it, so we would come back out to Callan.”

Revellers could get a cup of tea or something to eat in Callan too, she said.

“Things did drift for a good few years after the burning of the cinema, but we’re getting back in the last few years.”

Nora is especially pleased with “the lovely coffee shops” that have opened in Callan, highlighting that her favourite is a toasted, salad sandwich from Fika café.

“When I came first the social life was powerful here because it was the best town in Ireland for dancing, all year around.”

Nora loved Callan, “the ideal spot,” and she didn’t go back to Cork.

For about 20 years Nora worked in the post office in Callan before taking a job at Fieldcrest in Kilkenny City. Although the luxury towel manufacturers arrived with great hope, the facility lasted only two years. The new job allowed Nora to save for a car, giving her a new lease of freedom that lasted right up until a few years ago.

“I used to love a trip to Dublin, spending the day in Arnotts and coming home with patterns in my head,” she said.

With the demise of Fieldcrest, Nora found herself, as she said, ‘idle’ for a few months. Around this time the new CBS secondary school was being built in Callan and it needed a secretary.

Frank McKenna, a teacher at the school, had come to the town around the same time as Nora, and told her about the opening.

Not only was Nora the perfect woman for the job, but she said she loved the next 22 years working there.

“The teachers were lovely. I loved clerical work and I loved working with people, meeting people,” Nora said. “I was happy at anything in Callan, it’s a lovely town.”

Zest for life

Now a healthy and active 96, Nora has no secret to her longevity, but her zest for life and positive attitude must surely be at the core of it.

“Instead of moaning and groaning, it’s best to go with it,” she said of the hurdles in life.

She urged people to be thankful for what they have. “Why people find fault with life I do not know,” Nora said, showing her only ire in the whole chat for the current generation who always want more. “They have nothing to complain about,” Nora said, recalling her own youth, growing up in post ‘Emergency’ Ireland. With a little envy she admired the “beautiful bicycles” children have to get to school on, these days - when she was a child she had to walk five miles to primary school and couldn’t get a bike. “I hear people cribbing, but we were never better off.”

She takes life as she finds it, but Nora does have strong opinions about world affairs. “No country should go to war. Every country has experience of war and what did it bring them?” Referring to the Russia Ukraine conflict she added: “Big countries should have enough in their lives. They shouldn’t interfere with smaller countries. It just brought pure misfortune.

“I’d love to be back in my 20s or 30s with the knowledge I have now. I’d speak out,” Nora said.

Going out to dances is not Nora’s pastime now, but she loves to people-watch. Perched at the big window in her room, overlooking West Street, she can see her neighbours in the local shops and observe the passing traffic. “I like watching life go by,” she said.

Nora may not be driving herself anymore, but her interest in cars remains,

“What more do you want in life only a bit of kindness?” Nora said, referring to her neighbours on West Street who regularly check in on her.

“I’m happy with my lot in life. I like to go across (to the cafe) for a cappuccino and a bun. What keeps me going now is all my work,” Nora said.

That ‘work’ is her crafting. Although ‘crafting’ seems too simple a work for the delicate art Nora has produced using needles and thread.

Knitting, sewing and lacemaking was always Nora’s talent. If she had gone on to the later years of secondary school, Nora said she would have liked to become a ‘domestic economy instructress’.

She never needed a pattern to knit or crochet a design and didn’t realise at the time that she was any different to anyone else in her ability to just see a design and then recreate it.

When Nora said, matter of fact, “I used to win all around me at Piltown,” it’s not undue boasting. Kept carefully, in a box, Nora has the prize cards from knitting and crochet categories at the annual Iverk Show, over many years.

Her skills were not just recognised locally, more than once Nora took a top prize at the RDS show for her stunning lace-work.

These days a touch of arthritis in her hands has limited Nora’s work, but she is still able to knit beautiful hats, scarves and other items, which are on sale at Joe Lyons’s shop on West Street.

Not for sale, however, is a beautiful, white aran wool bag that Nora knitted in the 1970s and took to dances with her. The gorgeous bag has been used and washed, but still looks as good as new!

She would also crochet collars to wear on her dance outfits.

Skills Nora first learned from her mother, more than 90 years ago, are still keeping her busy as she watches over passing life in Callan.