Paddy Mitchell
Paddy Mitchell was 69 years of age at his death this week, and during his life he worked variously in the army, with horses, and for 45 years as an employee of Kildare County Council with responsibility for keeping Kilcullen's streets swept. 
"He was delighted to be out of school, and he'd wave to us in the school yard when he was going by on his delivery bicycle," his brother George recalled this week, as he retold two incidents from that particular time in Paddy's early life.
"He was pedalling the delivery bike down the hill from Byrne's Corner towards Moloney's shop and he was going too fast. The bike had no brakes and so he decided to go on over the bridge and swing into the market square to slow down.
"But local builder Jim Maloney was doing up a house in the square, with wooden scaffolding up to the roof, and Paddy tore right through it, bringing down the scaffolding and the two men on the top, and wrecking the bike. Amazingly, nobody got a scratch, but Paddy Moloney was a bit upset about the bike."
On another occasion Paddy was despatched to sell newspapers outside the church on a Sunday morning. A gust of wind whipped the top paper off a pile and it wafted away towards the 'valley'. As in the parable of the shepherd going after his single lost sheep, Paddy decided to chase after the windswept copy.
"But by the time he came back with the paper, all the others he'd left behind were scattered all over the church grounds," George remembers. "He'd forgotten to weigh them down before he left them."
Paddy next did a four-year stint in the army, and in addition to his military duties he was found to be a good boxer and was also a winning cross-country runner. His army time included a tour of duty in the Congo in Africa, which by all accounts was a harrowing experience.
His sports interests weren't just in the army, because Paddy also played in goal for the Kilcullen Junior team.
In the late fifties, after a spell in England, Paddy joined Kildare County Council's local workforce, where he would remain for the next 45 years. During much of that time he and his dustcart were 'moving fixtures' on the footpaths of Kilcullen.
Nessa Dunlea recalls how that same dustcart was an important element in her late husband Pat's efforts to have a 'northern link' road to the Kilcullen Bypass when it was under construction.
"Paddy had his cart covered with the 'Link or Sink' posters which we were using to highlight the matter, and for the full length of the campaign he was an important part of the local publicity effort."
When Paddy retired three years ago, the Council decided that he was irreplacable and the position was discontinued.
Paddy loved animals, and worked for a time with John Hayden, helping out around the horses. He would also be regularly seen walking through kilcullen with several dogs at his heels.
"His Kilcullen always remained the Kilcullen of fifty years ago," George Mitchell says. "It didn't matter when businesses changed their names or got different owners, he referred to them by the ones which he'd grown up with. So the crossroads was always 'Byrne's Corner', and the Spout pub was always 'Orfords' and the other side of the road was always 'Dowling's Corner'."
And he expected that the world knew the same landmarks. George tells of the day that a big limousine pulled up beside him to ask for directions to Kennycourt, where a big movie was being made.
"Paddy just said: 'Go down there to Byrne's Corner and turn right and keep going straight on'. The guy in the back, I think he was one of the film stars, maybe Richard Widmark, chuckled and asked how were they supposed to know where Byrne's Corner was. Paddy just believed everybody knew."
Paddy's favourite drink was Guinness, but he showed an equality of favour for the town's pubs, being a patron of all of them.
He also treated everyone the same, even when they were famous, and there are pictures of him with a few of the latter, including the late actor Joe Lynch who came to officially open the first refurbishment of the Town Hall.
Like all of us, Paddy had his own particular ways of doing things, and of working his passage through life. These were sufficiently different to have him awarded the epithet of 'character'.
Kilcullen has missed his travelling of our footpaths with his dustcart since his retirement, though many of us still met him now and again as he walked with the dogs or sipped from his stout in one hostelry or another.
The Diary salutes him on his passing, and the turnout of what was described as the 'real' Kilcullen people at his funeral today was testament to the affection in which he was held by the community.
Brian Byrne.
