To the editor:
Re: “Lamenting vanishing jobs,” Nov. 20.
As a child growing up in Northern Ireland we not only had daily milk and paper deliveries but twice a week visits by the breadman, the vegetable man (yes, they were all men), the rag and bone man collecting old clothes and the brockman.
What is the brockman, you ask? He collected vegetable and table scraps, which he then delivered to local farms where they were cooked up and fed to pigs. We had the doctor and the midwife come on regular visits and of course, the priest or the nuns who were entertained in the rarely used front room.
We also had regular visits from travelling women, usually carrying a young baby, and the etiquette here was to invite the women in for tea and whatever baking was at hand and then send them on their way with a bag of tea or sugar.
Travellers are Irish people who generations ago were displaced during the famine and who, to this day, travel around the country in caravans or mobile homes. They used to be into horse trading and were then also known as tinkers because they travelled around to farms and houses fixing tin pots.
I must admit, happy as my childhood was, I do like being able to book things on my computer from home!
Moira Corrigan,
Vancouver
