Shoe salesman Hugh steps down
12.07.07
When you've been a shoe
salesman all your life, you're probably the life and
'sole' of the party.
And Buncrana man Hugh Henderson is just that. As he
prepares to retire after 42 years in the trade, he could
still be found this week laughing and joking with
customers in his trademark way.
But behind the smiles were the tears, as the 62-year old
reflected on his four decades on the Main Street.
"To be honest with you, I'm trying not to think about it
too much because it's going to be hard closing the door
for the last time. I've been 42 years here in the shop
and 49 years in total working on the Main Street," he
said. He chuckles when he tells how he left school at
the tender age of 13 to become a telegram boy, only to
be hauled back to the desk by the Guards. "I was too
young to quit school," he laughs. He stuck it out for
another few months but left again before he was 14 to
work in McGinley's newsagents. |
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From there he went to
another newsagents in the town, McMenamin's, where he
worked until 1964. However, it was one day, when Hugh's
beloved mother Mary Ellen told him that a local lad was
not now following through on a plan to move back from
England to open a shoe shop, that he saw an opening for
himself. With £50 of his own savings and £300 loaned to
him by his mother, 'Hugh Henderson's', as the shop would
thereafter be known, came into being. He fondly
remembers that the first person to buy a pair of men's
shoes was the late Paddy Barber while the first lady's
pair were sold to well known local singer, Maisie Grant,
now also sadly deceased. In the following 42 years,
Hugh, who is married to Rosaleen with five children,
would see the ups and downs of |
business in a small rural
town. He misses the simplicity of the old days when
people had little to give but their loyalty.
"The 60s and 70s were simple in many ways. People didn't
have money. Men would sign on the dole on a Thursday and
come into me with a stick cut to the size of their
child's foot and say 'I want a pair of shoes that
size'," he remembers.
In those days too, you could always go 'up to Hugh's',
get a couple of pair of shoes to take home and try on.
In those cash-strapped days of recession, Hugh would let
the townspeople 'pay in' for their shoes over a period
of time. "You got enough local trade to do you. People
knew that a family-run business would give you a good
service," he explained, adding that each of his five
children had worked, at one stage or another, in the
shop.
He boasts that he has "never had a sick day off in (his)
life" and loved every minute of his time in the shoe
shop chatting every day to the local characters and
having 'the craic'.
This week he is busy with his retirement sale and things
are hectic in the shop. With his wife at his side, the
affable shopkeeper, is looking forward to taking life
easy and celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary next
year. A keen golfer, he also plans to spend some of his
new-found spare time on the local fairways trying to
reduce his 15 handicap. "I played off 10 when I started
out first because I got really hooked on the game and
played all the time." He is now preparing to lease the
shop to Christy Doherty, who also runs a shoe shop in
Carndonagh.
"The people of Buncrana meant a wile lot to me. I will
miss everybody," he says, choking back tears. Meanwhile,
his retirement at his home at Cockhill Road will be
simple and will include a fair share of gardening. "A
bit of luck and a bit of health is all you need," he
said. |
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