A near miss for customer, boys

Still delving into the Nicky Myers scrapbook collections, this account from May 1960 records the narrow escape of two young boys outside, and a customer inside Patrick Berney's Bar, when a trailer crashed into it, writes Brian Byrne.

According to the report, the children were Joseph O'Kelly (3) who was sitting on a window outside the bar (now Fallons), and Brendan O'Connell (7) who was playing in the street. A customer inside also had a lucky escape.

Apparently the trailer had detached from a CIE lorry as it took the turn at the bottom of the hill, knocking a telegraph pole and part of the wall of the bar. It also levelled a water-fountain on the footpath.

An annotation reveals the picture was taken by the late Jim Collins, and we have in the Kilcullen Gathering Heritage Collection another one from the same incident given to us by Jim some years ago. In both, Patrick and Tom Berney are surveying the damage.

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