Last orders for well known Kildare barman
Billy Dowling with family, friends, customers and the proprietors of The Spout marking his retirement after 58 years working behind bars.
WHEN the late Billy Dowling of Kilcullen retired from The Hideout in 1992, he had worked for the Byrne family owners for some 54 years, almost all those as a barman.
Last week his son, also Billy, beat that record when he retired in The Spout Bar across the road, after 58 years of serving people from behind a bar counter, in a variety of pubs, a rugby club and a hotel.
The younger Billy’s retirement was marked in The Spout last week in a quiet celebration with family, friends, customers and Spout colleagues.
After leaving school at the age of 14, Billy began working for Joe McTernan in Kilcullen.
When he had completed serving his time, he took a job at the Ambassador Hotel in Kill.
In the later 1970s he came back to Kilcullen, working part-time in both O'Connell's and Berney's bars before taking on a long stint at Newbridge Rugby Club.
It's the nature of the bar business that staff move around, and over his career Billy has also worked in Ballymore.
He made his first connection with The Spout in 1999 with the late Fergal Sloan, when they ran it for a decade.
After another break in Ballymore, he rejoined the bar in 2018, two years after it had been taken over by Tommy Dignam and Marian Courtney — both of whom were there last night to wish him well in his retirement.
"He'll be a huge loss to the pub," Tommy told the . "But at 72, you can understand."
Billy says he has no plans for what he might do in his retirement.
"They're making a book on me going back to work in a bar within four weeks," he said with a grin.
But after spending nearly six decades behind many bars — and he says he has been thinking about finishing for some time — that might not be the safest bet in town.
When the news broke last week that he had finished on the working side of the counter, he was inundated on social media with good wishes for his retirement years, and thanks for what, by unanimous consensus, had been his service to his customers as a true gentleman.
