Days Gone By – 1965 – Bomb shelter proposal for new school

Days Gone By – Stories from our archives 100, 75, 50 and 25 years ago

1965 – Females needed to ‘decorate the mahogany’

Dear Sir,

It must be a source of consolation to the ratepayers of Galway that the are offered the privilege to ensure the survival of their top executives in the event of a nuclear bomb attack by subsidising a shelter incorporated in the plan for a new vocational school in the city.

They can assuredly also take pride in being allowed to carry a bigger burden for similar protection inconsistently for the brass hats in Renmore Barracks who might otherwise be expected to become similarly involved in their own preserves on a lunatic ‘white elephant’ effort of this nature.

I suggest that somewhere along the line there must have been loose thinking by the egg heads responsible for conceiving such a fantastic brainwave without sufficient concentration on details overlooked in the planning stage.

I’m fully convinced that the accommodation of the shelter should at least cater for a small group of substantial ratepayers and similar facilities should also be available for a few members of the female sex in a certain category.

This is necessary as an essential guarantee that the “mahogany can be decorated” to keep the machinery functioning if the emergency should arise and it might also be as well to try and preserve a few taxpayers for good measure for the benefit of the army personnel.

Naturally I’m not suggesting that these inferior second-class citizens should be allowed to associate with their superiors in such a dire calamity as envisaged, but with a proper layout it is easy enough to guard against such danger and at the same time provide for the future development of the human race.

Nevertheless, as far as I’m concerned and, as I see it, all categories of citizens in this country are being protected from nuclear bomb attack by United States military power in South Vietnam and elsewhere without any thanks or appreciation from ingrates in high places in this country who have lost trace of our friends by fostering an Afro-Asian axis that is a positive menace to the welfare of this ancient nation.

Yours,

Peter O’Farrell.

For more from the archives: See this week’s Tribune

1915 – Bombardment in Kilnadeema

1940 – Fracas in Bohermore laneway

1990 – Great Southern takeover and European flights for Galway?