Mam says, I don’t know, he’s only eleven and he had that typhoid and the coal dust wouldn’t be good for his eyes. Bridey says, He’d be out in the air and there’s nothing like fresh air for someone with bad eyes or getting over the typhoid, isn’t that right, Frankie? ’Tis, Bridey. I’m dying to go around with Mr. Hannon on the great float like a real workingman. If I’m good at it they might let me stay at home from school forever but Mam says, He can do it as long as it doesn’t interfere with school and he can start on a Saturday morning. I’m a man now so I light the fire early on Saturday morning and make my own tea and fried bread. I wait next door for Mr. Hannon to come out with his bicycle and there’s a lovely smell of rashers and eggs coming through the window. Mam says Mr. Hannon gets the best of food because Mrs. Hannon is as mad about him as she was the day she married him.They’re like two lovers out of an American film the way they go on. Here he is pushing the bicycle and puffing away on the pipe in his mouth. He tells me climb up on the bar of his bike and off we go to my first job as a man. His head is over mine on the bike and the smell of the pipe is lovely.There’s a coal smell on his clothes and that makes me sneeze. Men are walking or cycling toward the coal yards and Rank’s Flour Mills and the Limerick Steamship Company on the Dock Road. Mr. Hannon  takes  his  pipe  from  his  mouth  and  tells  me  this  is  the  best morning of all, Saturday, half day.We’ll start at eight and be finished by the time the Angelus rings at twelve. First we get the horse ready, give him a bit of a rub, fill the wooden tub with oats and the bucket with water. Mr. Hannon shows me how to put on the harness and lets me back the horse into the shafts of the float. He says, Jaysus, Frankie, you have the knack of it. That makes me so happy I want to jump up and down and drive a float the rest of my life. There are two men filling bags with coal and turf and weighing them on the great iron scale, a hundredweight in each bag. It’s their job to stack the bags on the float while Mr. Hannon goes to the office for the  delivery  dockets. The  bag  men  are  fast  and  we’re  ready  for  our rounds. Mr. Hannon sits up on the left side of the float and flicks the whip to show where I’m to sit on the right side. It’s hard to climb up the way the float is so high and packed with bags and I try to get up by 258