Broadbent Street
By Albert Haslett

I was reared around the hammer
A district that was tough,
I married and moved to the Old Lodge Road
It was just as rough.

I went to live in Broadbent Street
There were characters galore
Kids always playing in the street
Women standing at every door.

I’ll try to tell you some of them
As I juggle them in my head
The habits, and names of neighbours
Some living, some are dead.

Of families living in that street
Names now spring to mind
Millar, Brown, McNeilly,
Hannah Arnott who was blind.

Kavanagh, Kilpatrick, Bennett,
Thompson, Irvine, Bell,
“The gasman’s coming up the street”
I can still hear someone yell.

Officer, Green, Scarborough,
Wright, Wilson, Mitchell, Toan
Chapman, West, Drummond,
Danny Cinnamond lived alone.

Hill, Walker, Graham, Gettis
Mearns, Verner, Hall, McComb,
McDowell, Donnelly, Julia Porter,
Wee Bessie Ruddy on her own.

McFarlane, Hunter, Loney, White,
Haslett, Dunn, Cahoon, McCrea,
Dunseith, Spiers, Dan McNeill,
I could sit and write all day.

Wee Annie Stewart could read your cup,
Dick price would mend your shoes,
Then a figure staggers up the street,
Billy Elwood on the booze.

The greatest character of them all
Brought us smiles and tears
The horizontal champion
The immortal “big” Ned Spiers.

The boys stood at the corner,
You’d see them every day,
Albert Hunter, Sam McFarlane, Geordie Kavanagh,
Jim and Rab Dunseith, Bobby and Joe McCrea.

Stanley Mahon, Sam McQuiston,
Sam Kavanagh, Eddie Bell,
Ernie Willis, Alex Mitchell,
They were there as well.

I’ll always remember the 11th night,
With our little make up band,
Joe Chapman played the accordion,
Children followed him hand in hand.

We led them up the hammer
My mother watched us come,
With Joe’s empty accordion box,
I used it as a drum.

Then the street was vested,
The developers knocked it down,
The neighbours they were scattered,
All around the town.

Many a night I sit and think,
Of the happy years I spent,
Living on the Old Lodge Road,
In a street they called Broadbent.

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