Vial Writings

I live with Crazy Ladies

2011-11-19T10:10:00.001-06:00

sourced from HERE

I wake up to the sound of the Faye, our crazy old lady dog, yelling for me to get up, which is not too unusual. But what is unusual is that there is a kettle of water boiling away on the stove and not a sign of my wife. I call out her name in case she is upstairs, nope, in the bedroom, nope. I check the back porch and call her name from the front door, not a trace. Only one thing for it; she was abducted by aliens.

So, I take advantage of the boiling kettle and make myself a cup of tea, turn on NPR and check Facebook, see if I can track her last known movements. Her trail is nine hours cold, she too complaining about old lady Faye's incessant talking.

Just as I start contemplating my new bachelor life, she bursts into the kitchen talking a mile-a-minute announcing that she ran out to Sun Fresh to grab a few things for breakfast and food for her and the girls heading off to the lake.

"Rosalie said to not bring any food, but she doesn't eat and I'm not partying down there without something proper to eat." Minutes later she's ripping open bags of instant noodles and dumping them into a huge saucepan, now I know whys she boiled all that water, small broken bits of crispy noodles flying every where.

She rips open a packet of bacon and starts lining some backing sheets with thick slabs it, tosses them all into the oven and then gets down on her hands and knees to try and light our vintage, ah that's a glamorous word, old as fuck is a better choice of words, oven. "Hate this oven, but shit me if I'll defend it to the last." I hate the thing.

Next she's got a chef's knife and she's chopping hot peppers, cilantro, tomatoes, slicing limes and throwing them all into our huge mortar and pestle and starts mashing the crap out of it all. There is now cilantro and peppers all over the counter, the cabinets and the floor.

She takes the big pot of noodles and dumps them into a colander in the sink, still with last night's dishes in it, then she tosses the strained noodles back into the pot and starts adding the dry mix packets from the instant noodles. "Ah shit" she says "think I've burned the noodles." She does that every time she makes this dish, I always tell her to turn down the heat and she does, only after she's burned the shit out of the bottom of the pan.

She dumps her creation into a giant Tupperware container and announces that she's got to take a shower and be out of here by 9:30am. It's now 9:12am. That's not gonna happen. "Don't worry, I'll clean up the mess." That too, is not gonna happen.

So, while listening to Car Talk I start running water, squeezing soap, slopping up pepper seeds and bits of cilantro, spray down the stove top and generally clean the shit out of the place: I have become the Anti-Linh.

She's forgotten about the bacon, so I take over that too. The girls start arriving, it's like having four miniature tornadoes rolling through the house making tea, splashing breakfast pours of Jameson into their mugs, popping out the back to smoke, talking shit on their other girlfriends currently not present and dishing out shit on their husbands. I just keep on munching my bacon breakfast, which I've turn into a fried sandwich.

Linh's not oblivious to my plight, but delights in it "How do you like your audience? THought you were going to have a nice quiet Saturday morning, huh?" Such a devil in that one.

Five minutes later all the crazy women are gone, like they never existed and I am left for the weekend with just myself, a big plate of bacon and old lady Faye.

The Badger Den

2011-11-13T21:41:00.006-06:00

Found this lovely little picture of the Estuary at THIS LINK

The smell of the morning fry, the sound of BBC Radio 2 coming in from the living room and Aunty Francis' soft, yet deep, voice saying "rise and shine" as she hands you a freshly-made mug of tea with two sugars and a splash of milk. If there is a greater way known to man to awaken, it has yet to be discovered.

Depending on the day, you might get up right away, vitalized by the tea or get served breakfast in bed. A feast of fried bread, rashers, sausages, Mallon's thick, fat sausages, black and white pudding, sometimes mushrooms and beans, but always a fried egg. Francis worked at Chappie's MACE shop and always had a well-stocked pantry of delights. A well-stocked pantry would never last in our house due to the shear volume of hungry mouths. No matter how big of a shopping Mum would get in Dunnes or Tescos we'd consume it exponentially, "pack of savages" Dad would say.

If the feast was served in bed then we would put on the radio and listen to the 2FM morning shows, Top 40 chart hits on The Larry Gogan show with the Just a Minute Quiz. People calling in from all over the country, Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork and all sorts of places, every once in a while there be someone from our part of the country and we'd cheer for them.

Larry would run through his list of questions (these are actual Larry Gogan quotes):

Larry Gogan: "With What town in Britain is Shakespeare associated?"
Contestant: "Hamlet."

Larry Gogan: Name the BBC's Grand Prix commentator?...I'll give you a hint. It's something you suck...
Contestant: Oh, Dickie Davies (Murray Walker is the correct answer.)

Larry Gogan: What was Jeeve's Occupation?
Contestant: He was a Carpenter.

Larry Gogan: Complete this well known phrases, "As happy as..., hint think of me."
Contestant: Flies on shite.

Then he would announce the results in his usual drole fashion "Mary from Letterkenny...you got four correct answers...sure the questions didn't suit you, did they? What have we got for Mary? A 2FM t-shirt, that's great."

If the radio was boring, we'd turn on the small portable black and white TV and watch morning cartoons; if it was summer time we'd watch the Welsh children's program Why Don't You, a show that actually encouraged you not to watch it. Genius.

Uncle Aidan would already be in his comfy-chair by the range, rolling his Old Holborn tobacco with red Rizla papers. Licking the papers delicately, a lover's kiss, rolling the pinched tobacco between forefinger and thumb, a perfect roll popped into his mouth and instantly lit. A plume of blue-grey smoke rising above his head and drifting through the morning sunbeams bursting through the window of Kit's Cottage. His eyes would be bright and full of energy behind his glasses and beard, like he was in disguise hiding from someone. Aidan loved to engage us in conversation, probe our growing intellect with all kinds of questions about music, current events, literature and science.

Aidan would talk about history, about World War I and World War II. As he talked we would all look up at Uncle Tommy's medal on the wall. It made those wars very real to us, having a connection to them right there in the room. Our own flesh and blood shot in an orchard, scouting a German artillery position. The medal was huge, like the world's largest penny, a penny for some seriously deep thoughts.

Then Aidan would turn to us and inquire, "So what are you boys up ta today?"

"Might go down the woods or walk into Carrick" Paddy would say, 'cause lads our age didn't really plan ahead. Usually waited to see what the day's weather was like and planned accordingly.

With these words my ears and Derek's would prick-up. Going down the woods was the best thing about staying with Paddy, well that and going up the mountain. Either destination was an adventure in itself, places of beauty, where your imagination could run loose. A fantastic escape for young boys like us who spent their day-to-day life in the little concrete and pebble dashed town of Killybegs with its fish factories and stinky fish lorries sloshing mackerel slurry all over the streets, giving the town a permanent stain and odor of filth.

We would put on our adventure gear, purchased at the Army Surplus store in Carrick. Infantry issued belts and RAF replica officer caps and corduroy trousers we pretended were army combat pants. Decked out like "Little Officers" as Francis would call us, invisible guns and bayonets at our side we'd march off down the woods, along the winding muddy path, part grass, part rock, all mud.

Ferns, wild flowers, brambles and whin bushes brushed up against our legs and arms, which we slashed at with our sticks, but Paddy had a real machete like you'd see explorers wielding in the movies in the jungles of Africa or the Amazon. Depending on the time of year, the ferns would be either be brown and dead to the ground, or bright green and towering above our heads, forming a canopy that heightened the illusion of a worldly adventure.

Paddy leading the way, then Derek, me and the dogs; Kit, Lucky, Badger, Doogle, Snoopy, the names changing as we grew older and they passed on to the big farm in the sky. Branches would snap back and you'd have to be on the ready or you'd get a smack in the face. The first thorns of the day would already be finding homes in your legs and hands and you'd spend the rest of the day squeezing them and fiddling with a needle later when you got back to the house. Thorns were nothing too serious, but we were always in fear of getting one from a Hawthorne tree. Uncle Aidan warned us about them and we knew that one in the wrong place was guaranteed gangrene and certain amputation of the forsaken limb.

Walking through the woods in early summer you could smell wild roses, fox glove and wet hazel, the moist dirt beginning to dry in the sun would leave a mineral tinge to the air, augmented by the proximity of sea, a hint of salt that you could almost taste on your tongue. The summer flora having just replaced spring's bounty of bluebells, daffodils and crocuses. The bouquet of which mingled with the iodine of seaweed drying on the shore as the morning sun grew stronger, as we continued our march towards the the estuary and the sea receding for its next cycle of tides.

Aidan mentioned that we should check out the badger set. Said there had been recent activity down at the main den. We loved and feared badgers in equal measure. Loved them because they were beautiful, rare, strong and Ireland's only carnivore of note, hedgehogs don't hold much weight. The character in Wind and The Willows called Badger was the only one who could save old Toad, Ratty and Mole from the evil Weasels. Feared them because we knew that their bite was stronger than any dogs, and if they took hold of your arm then it would have to be amputated too, worse than hawthorns or rusty corrugated iron.

Approaching very stealthily up to the badger den for fear we might come face to face with one of the black and white wee buggers, imaginary guns at the ready. Evidence of freshly churned up earth and badger poop confirmed Aidan's intel. Paddy found a badger skull half buried in the dirt. I'd only every found one in y whole life, but Paddy found them all the time, it wasn't fair. Aidan would clean them and then varnish them and display them on the book shelf in the cottage. I wanted one of mine up there on display, but it would be Paddy's again.

Derek and I were dead jealous of Paddy. He was an only child, which meant he didn't have to compete all the time for thinks like Derek and I had to. He could watch his own TV shows, get his own clothes, not hand-me-downs from his older brother. He got all his parent's love, our mum and dad had to portion theirs out between the five of us and there was never enough to go around.

Looking at Paddy standing there in the woods, in the middle of the badger den, with the skull in his hands, a sharpened hazelwood spear in his hands and a bow slung across his shoulder, he looked regal: a prince of the woods, the last of the high kings of Ireland. Me a weekend visitor, a pretender at best, a serf to the king.

Paddy or Paddy Joe as my mother called him, had three scars on his face. Two from a dog bite when he was just a child and another from falling on some rocks over at Derrylahan beach when we was just a little older. The scars were his medals, his royal insginia, what made him king of the woods. I wish I had scars too, but I didn't want to go through the pain of acquiring them.

After a while, we'd march on down to the estuary, in single-file like the good little soldiers we were. There was a rope tied to a tree to help us scale down the rocks, salvaged from an old fishing boat's castaways. Landing ourselves onto the small, seaweed and trash covered beach. We would comb around for half an hour or so, turning up all kinds of ocean deposited treasures. Scampering over and back to each other, showing-off to each other what we found: a burst football, an oil slicked buoy, a monofilament net lost by a couple of poachers. Bottles and bottles and bottles, every color, shape and size and the occasional light bulb that would shatter in a puff of smoke when thrown against a rock. We would line all the bottles up on a natural shelf of rock and make targets out of them. Bladder rack squeaking under our feet, we grabbed stones, found leverage in the slippery surface, took aim and fired. We took no prisoners. Within five minutes nothing would be left but dust and glass and the sound of our own laughter.

Thirsty work all that destruction, so we would lap water from fresh water pools just above the tide line, the first few sups taken from our cupped hands and then bending over and putting my head almost directly into the water, I'd drink like a camel getting ready for a months walk in the desert. After calming our thirst we'd walk over the estuary, kicking limpits and mussels off the rocks as we went. At the low tide on the estuary a whole other world is exposed to our adolescent destructive nature. Turning over rocks and pulling back blankets of seaweed searching for crabs and the promise of a big crayfish. We'd dive our hands into the soft sand hoping to catch a razorfish before it sucked itself deep into the earth safe from our wrath, at least until we could come back with a spade. The abandoned oyster bed still producing a fair crop every year, Aidan told us not to "fuck with it" so we left it alone, but in later years we'd feast on its bounty with glee.

Salt water drying and deposits of salt caking on our faces as we splashed through the tidal pools. Sand and mud thrown at each other until Derek would say "Cop on," if a stray shot hit him in the face, but my noggin was fair game to him and Paddy. Our walk across the estuary would take us to the point where the sea stopped it retreat and gradually went deep again. From there we could easily walk around the coast to Derrylahan beach, but not today. Instead racing back towards the Salmon Leap River, to the confluence of seawater and fresh, connecting two aquatic worlds and like certain species of fish and wildlife, us boys could survive in both. Aidan told us Congers liked to inhabit this in-between world, so we stabbed deep pools of water to swiftly knockout any unsuspecting boy-eating conger eels.

The junction pool, where the Yellow River flowed into the Salmon Leap, was a pool of unfathomable depth, so we were told and terrified into never finding out. After sending a few choice stones skimming over its surface, we'd hop back over the barbed wire fence of Mick O'Donnel's field and make our way back home, famished. We try to stay out of the way of the young bullocks grazing in the rush filled field, as they'd be likely to demonstrate their manhood, or lack-there-of, and chase us young soldiers back over enemy lines.

Marching up the soggy hill, avoiding the tell-tale bog cotton warning of dangerous bog swamps that would swallow you whole, Hollywood quicksand style, we'd pop over another barbed wire fence and onto the lane with the grassy mane leading us back down to Kit's Cottage. But of course, before that, even though we know we shouldn't, like helpless moths to a flame, we wander over to the edge of the bog swamp.

King Paddy plunges his hazelwood spear into the soft earth, making squidging noises as it seeks the depths of the swamp, all the way up to the hilt, almost five feet deep. As he tries to extract it, his face reddens with effort, Derek pushes through to have a go, even I lend a hand, like young King Arthurs pulling excalibur from the stone, but the hazel stick in the bog stays where it is. The lady of the lake can keep that one. And it's off home for lunch for King Paddy and his soldiers.

Friend for a Day

2010-06-08T15:19:00.003-05:00

By whatever twist of providence, science or the supernatural, you end up sitting beside yourself in a small coffee shop 5,000 miles from home.

You know it's you right away from the clothes, the computer bag, the broken glasses and the lame scar on your left eyebrow. Some people get cool scars, you get what looks like a botched nipple piercing.

You watch yourself for a while, absorbing the madness of the situation, waiting for the small adrenaline rush to dissipate. A rational mind would say "he's just some fella that looks like you." But you never had one of those. The other you is typing furiously on his laptop, working on the novel you know he hasn't finished.

After enough coffee and caffeine confidence you approach the doppelganger, even though you hate to use that word, juvenile, very X-Men comic book vocabulary.

You slouch into the chair at his table, toss your bag beside his and break-off the corner of his chocolate chunk cookie. He looks up from the laptop, fingers paused over the keys and says "Hey, I though that was you over there. Figured you'd come over when you were finished your coffee."

"Well you figured right. So, what do you think is going on?"

In near unison you make similar quotes about "inverse tachyon beams" and laugh at your own predictability.

"Seriously, though, there are a million ways to explain this, none which will prove satisfactory to the big "Why." And we've no idea whether this is temporary or permanent and which of us is the original to this point in the "space time continuum."

"So you're saying "let's get a pint"?

"Sure, aigh, yes."

"It's eleven now, we could hit O'Dowds or re:Verse?"

"Let's do O'Dowd's, better pint and you're buying since I'm sure that the cards in our wallets are connected to the same bank account."

As you both stroll over the street, past Three Dog Bakery and the Better Cheddar, to the bar, you let him walk a few feet in front to see what you look like in the world, as a member, not an observer.

You notice that you have a funny gait, almost a cocky swagger, but a little too fast, like you've got something stuck to your butt and can't quite keep the cool walk.

Identical twins could not be dressed more alike than the two of you, right down to the brown Tommy Hilfiger socks you bought on sale at Marshall's last Christmas, the ones that feel good with your Clark's, that have seen better days, but you like to wear shoes till they literally drop off your feet.

The bartender greats you both with a bewildered face and you answer "Ah, the brother over visiting. Two pints of Guinness Ken. Thanks."

You wait patiently, making faces and raising eyebrows at each other and then take your pints and grab a small nook, closed off from the main flow of the early lunch crowd.

"Want something to eat?"

"In a while, see how the pints go down first. So, don't you think it's weird that we've jacked-off ourselves?"

"What?" you literally spit your Guinness out all over the mahogany table.

"Like I mean, I've spanked that monkey so many times, and I know that is way out of left field, but think about it. Totally gay."

"That's some question to ask yourself. No 'Who's the president of the United States in your World?' or 'Are you married?' or 'What's the name of the girl who sucked your dick at the back of the Tech when you were fourteen?'

"Which time?"

"First time."

"Catherine Turner."

"Correct."

"Still single and O'Bama is President."

"Huh, totally the same then. But now that I think of it, you're right, I know we're not gay or nothing, unless you are gay in your time-line, which I would be cool with."

"Nope. Sorry fag."

"Didn't think so, but yeah we've stroked this meat monster a million times. Fucking weird."

You banter on all through the lunch hour, pint after pint, orders of Shepard's Pie, fish and chips and more pints. You suggest to yourself, your other self at the table, that you take a walk down Brush Creek while you're both not too drunk and having a good buzz. A bit of fresh air to make the day last longer.

There is goose poop on the walk-way, you absentmindedly kick it into the brown liquid that passes as water in Brush Creek. Some mutant fish breaks the surface of the water to sample the treat you kicked in. Cyclists and joggers squeeze between as you meander along, almost pushing you into the creek.

"Obviously other people see both of us, so we know we aren't mental, no Sixth Sense trick ending here. Any ideas then?"

"Oh, I've been thinking it's the Universe showing us a big fat metaphor, that selfish bastards like us would rather hangout with ourselves and drink a pint than solve the world's problems, when confronted with a miracle of space, time travel, whatever have ya."

"Yeah, 'cause if this could physically happen, then any miracle could become a reality. No more poverty, no more hunger, just like that, gone. No more praying for rain in Africa like we did as children while pissing into the toilet, sword fighting with our piss streams."

"Let's walk as far as the Nelson."

The new wing at The Nelson-Atkins museum has been critically acclaimed by every major architecture magazine in the country, but you think it looks like Terminal 5 at Chicago, O'Hare, nothing special. And sure enough, yourself agrees.

The beer is leaving your systems now, feeling hot flashes and needing a bathroom break. You stand beside yourself at a urinal and peak over at his dick, he sees you and says "Fucking queer."

"I was just checking on size mate."

"Piss that, you were checking to see if I was circumcised or not. I've got me wee hat, ain't no wee Jewish boy standing outside a Synagogue looking for my pullover."

You both laugh so hard at your Dad's old joke that you piss on your own hands.

You grab some bottle water and sit down on the front steps of the original Nelson, looking down over the lawns at the great shuttlecocks, you see families picnicking and some kids throwing a Frisbee.

"You remember walking around here with Granny a few years back?"

"Yeah, she loved it."

"It's too fucking nice for this city. Hardly anyone knows they have this fucking place in their city."

"You're right there. But on a more serious note, you ready to do some serious drinking?"

"J.J's?"

"Yeah. Fuck the Guinness though at that price."

"Let's head."

From the novel that posses as a wine book you select a 2004 Ojai Syrah from Santa Barbara. Fuckin delish. Smoke and spice filling your senses, drunk on the memory of sipping this wine in a Los Olivos tasting room with some random girl you met in wine country.

Then a round of Jameson and water to cleanse the palate. You slap your pockets in unison looking for Rolaids to quiet the acid reflux kicking up in your chest.

The late Spring day is winding down, the brightness and heat of the day giving way to gray coolness.

"Let's go walk again."

"I could stay here for another."

"Exactly why we're leaving now and not after another."

No longer buzzed but drunk, a twenty-minute walk up to Harry's in Westport is just what the doctor would have prescribed if he gave a fuck about drunks on a binge.

Going past Unity Temple, you make a smart remark to yourself about meetings there. But you don't take it the right way and a small scuffle ensues. You catch him over the eye and he takes you down to the ground and gives your face a nice road rash. It's all over before it began and the two of you are panting and bleeding and your matching green shirts are ripped and you know you could both go again so you break the moment.

"Well, that was fucking stupid."

"I guess so. Let's get the fuck out of here."

At Harry's you both go into the bathroom and freshen up before hitting the bar. The doorman nearly didn't let you in, but he recognized you from enough drunken nights that a bloody cheek is nothing.

You can't help but notice how old your face looks as you wash off the caking blood. The youth and vigor of the morning's creativity in the coffee shop now looks gaunt and puffy at the same time, like a bloated corpse.

Dave the bartender hands you both a shot "...and one for your brother too. Fuck, you two could be twins."

You each order a pint of Boddingtions, 'cause that what you drink at Harry's, and hook your bags under the bar. It's too early yet for the after work restaurant crowd, so you can still hear each other talking, without having to shout and spit into each other's ear.

"Hey. In the morning, if we, I, you, me are totally hungover and the other is gone. I want you to know that whatever magic happened here today for this to become, I loved it, I really got to know myself and I hope it happens again.

"Me too." You slur.

Just then some asshole bumps into you from behind and laughs causing your beer to spill down your front as you go to take a sip. He looks like a proper fucking douche, a strayed Plaza Rat, trying to be cool in Westport. You stand up and so does yourself and you've knocked the frat-fuck out-cold before his friends swing is blocked by your number 2 and his headbutt is lighting fast and the two douchebags are slumped on the ground beside each other.

Dave the bartender says "I know you didn't start it, but you better leave." So you do.

Stepping out to catch a cab you stop at the gyro truck and get lamb kebabs, they remind you of Abrakebabra in Galway, when you were young and dumb.

"Like the fucking American Abrakebabra" you say.

There is tiziki sauce all over your face and you're choking with laughter and the cab driver won't let you in till you finish your food.

As you both slump down on to the sofa with a glass of some super expensive bottle of wine that you'd been saving for a special night, you play some Halo and then find Point Break on Spike and toast each other "To Johnny-Fucking-Utah."

"Well man" you say "that was some fucking day."

You both pass out without finishing the bottle.

You awake late the next mooring, late for nothing. Still in your blood stained clothes from the night before, the skin on the knuckles of your right hand is busted open and you see the 2003 Quilceda Creek, Washington State, Cab opened and small flies coming out of the neck of the bottle. Two glasses barely touched on the coffee table. You realize yourself is gone and you've left your computer bag in Harry's and you have to deal with that mess by yourself.

Granny Nessie

2010-05-27T16:45:00.000-05:00

Granny "Nessie," never just Granny. I was six or seven-years-old the first time I met her when she and my aunt Jane came over from New Zealand to visit us when we still lived at St. Cummin's Hill . Up until then all we knew about her was from pictures and occasional packages at Christmas and birthdays.

We'd call her Granny from New Zealand when talking about her in family circles. It was strange having a granny that lived 13,000 miles away when most of the people around us had all their grandparents within a fifty-mile radius. Other kids in school said we were just showing-off when we said we had a granny in New Zealand, but it was a fact.

Her packages would contain sweet treats from New Zealand, books about The Maori people and sometimes clothes that she sewed herself, like a nice pair of pajamas. And sometimes a small check for ten or fifteen dollars inside a small card with a New Zealand black robin or fern on the cover. She once sent over these store-bought Kiwi bird pillow cases and Derek and I thought we were the bee's knees with them on our beds.

Needless to say, we were very excited about meeting our mysterious Granny from New Zealand for the first time. Derek and I got home one morning, from staying at cousin Paddy's, and there she was. She had kites for us as gifts that looked like silk octopuses and we were shy and didn't know what to call her, that's when we started calling her "Granny Nessie."

She was a little woman, even back then when we were little, with silver hair, tanned skin and a polished colonial accent. She said things like "Sambrosa" when she liked some kind of food and sang little jingles from her younger life back in New Zealand. We found her ways very amusing and she would whisper when she knew she was talking about something just a little off color like when she first met my wife she whispered to my cousin Charlotte "My goodness, what are the grandchildren going to look like." She never meant any harm by these asides, it was just her way of thinking out loud with no filter.

She was a great woman for the morning constitution. Tea and toast with peanut butter on it. Wheat germ on her cereal and semolina in the evenings. She ate things we'd never heard off and exposed us to interesting and delicious foods and taught us not to rush our food "take time to digest" she would say. My favorite thing she made were piplettes, small pancakes that you ate cold with butter or jam slathered on them.

Granny was an all or nothing person. You were either immediate family to her, or someone to be set adrift on an iceberg and never heard from again. Like when Mum's sister Pat, who was working for Dad at the time, opened the fridge at our house out The Five Points and Granny slammed the door shut on her and reprimanded her with the phrase "that is for immediate family only." Never one for tact.

Mum and Granny didn't hit it off instantly either. I remember how Mum would fret that she was constantly under the disapproval of Granny Nessie. But in the end they found the goodness in each other and were very close towards the end of Mum's life.

When Granny came to live permanently again in Ireland in the mid-90s she shipped all her belonging over from New Zealand in a giant container at a considerable cost. Dad would never let it go and always talked about how it was a container "full of shite" but to her those were her possessions and our heritage. Furniture from New Zealand and when she lived in Coradina House in Dublin years ago when she and Granda were still married.

Heritage and the knowledge of one's roots were very important to Granny and she instilled in us a sense of pride in who we were and were we came from. Even though I've never been to New Zealand I feel very connected to the country and feel like an honorary citizen because of Granny. Stories of our great Uncles fighting in the Commonwealth boxing championships against each other, another Uncle who played for the All-Blacks, Joseph Lister who invented medical equipment sterilization back in Edinburgh where her family came from. Family heroes and legends that are ingrained into my memory no matter how true or false.

I was working at Dad's fish factory when I was in my late teens she'd have us out to her little rented house in Bavin for dinner every few weeks. You could see the resistance in Dad's eyes, but you knew he loved it at the same time. Granny's food was to a certain taste and sometimes it was the best thing you ever tasted, other times it was something Dad would poke with a fork and Bruce or Alan, having adopted Granny's lack of tact, would say "What is this Granny? Sure we can eat it?"

As the years passed on and I moved away I once again had a long distance relationship with Granny Nessie. We'd write and make short long-distance phone calls at random times. Her letters, sometimes indecipherable hand written letters, covering both sides of an airmail envelope, would ramble on about her veg garden and some news about a relative back home in New Zealand that I'd never hear of before: Uncle Tommy's cesna or Aunt June's daughter Bridget was in Oxford and we should try to meet her there. But it was the contact and the connection of getting a letter from Gran that was important, just like when we were children.

Eventually she came to visit Linh and I in Kansas City. Linh was terribly worried what she was going to do with Granny while I was working my management job all the time she was here. Linh must have felt a little like the way Mum did on her first meeting. But Linh took the bull by the horns, so to say, and took Granny all over the city. They'd come home at the end of a day and regale me with stories of wine tastings at The La Fou Frog and art showing at The Nelson and Happy Hour at some restaurant or other. They got along like a house on fire and to boot, we all got hang out tending the garden, raking the leaves and picking up walnuts and trimming tree limbs. Granny was very popular in Kansas City and for weeks after her visit people would ask me "How's Granny getting on?" "When is she coming back?"

Granny loved to make her own jams and chutneys and she and Linh made a big trip to the city market and canned a whole big batch of chutney that we used to make delicious curries with for months after her visit.

On her second visit to Kansas City, we took an all day road trip to Hannibal to visit the famous Mark Twain caves and Granny was a little scared of the dark and twisting tour through the caves and on hindsight it was probably not the best thing to do. But back in the town of Hannibal we took a horse drawn trailer ride through the town and that was much more the pace we should have been tending. Granny was always singing the first few lines to "Meet me in St. Louis" so on the way home we went via St. Louis and visited the Arch and had dinner on Laclede's Landing and returned home late that night to Kansas City. Granny wasn't in the best of energy on that visit and on her return to Ireland she had a bad bout of jaundice.

We hoped to have Granny back to Kansas City again, but her health wasn't the best and she even had to postpone her annual trip back to New Zealand to stay with Jane and the gang in Marlborough.

By the time Granny passed she was just as polarizing as always. There were people she cut out of her life, because of one silly thing or another, but people knew that that was just her way and to know her was to deal with these eccentricities. I am sad she is gone, but she lived a long, great life and if any of us can make it near 86 years of age, that'll be something. So, here's to you Granny Nessie, from a young girl growing up in Ashburton and Christchurch, to the midwife at St. James's in Dublin, to our Granny Nessie that we loved, we raise a small glass of Chardonnay in your honor.

Seamus Higgins

2010-03-24T17:53:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows a crazy person. They make you smile when you see them. They talk to themselves or have conversations with telephone poles, you’d swear they are doing it for your entertainment and you laugh. Then you feel bad ‘cause you know they can’t help it, you feel sorry for them ‘cause it’s just the way they are.

I saw one of these special people the other day at SunFresh (yeah, where you get the fresh stuff) and it made think of one of my favorite crazy people of all time: Seamus Higgins. Say it aloud to yourself…Seamus Higgins.

He lived in an orange bungalow at the bottom of the Glashey. The Glashey was a great big, flat stretch of road, with a decent rise on The Five Points end and the Ardara crossroads at the other. It was a significant section of road because in southwest Dongeal there are not many flat, straight roads. When God made Donegal he said “You’ll get what you’re given.” The Glashey was tree lined back then and gave the impression of a green tunnel when the trees and wild flowers were in full bloom.

We passed Seamus Higgins’ house walking to national school, making him a permanent fixture in our lives for a good four years. We didn’t know whether to be amused or afraid of him, so we laughed at him and his antics, mindful to keep our distance, somewhat afraid for our lives.

There were rumors that he served in Vietnam and that’s what made him crazy. Michael Conaghan said that, we didn’t know where he heard it, so we took it to be the truth. I could imagine Higgins in an American army green hard hat, M-16 across his chest as he hid in the jungle, that half smile across his face. His American buddies would have called him Irish or Paddy or Mick and would have assumed that he could drink any of them under the table.

He had a motorbike, with a rusty orange petrol tank, that he pushed as much as he rode. He would push it all the way up the Glashey and then run her back down to get her going. Sometimes you’d see him miles away, half way to Donegal Town, out in Inver or Mountcharles, pushing the bike and we’d look at each other and laugh, as if to say “that’s our crazy person.” To everyone else he was just some fella pushing a motorbike on a rainy day.

When he wasn’t out on the motorbike he had a classic old farmers black Raleigh bicycle. Rather than pedal the bike, he would stand up on one pedal and push off the ground with the other foot and when he got up to speed he’d sit across the bar rather than on the saddle. We often imitated this style of motion. To me, it reminded me of an Indian in a western movie, riding his horse on one stirrup, avoiding the cowboy’s bullets, preparing to fire his bow.

He’d either have an orange motorbike helmet or a plastic bag on his head, depending on the mode of transportation. I wonder if all the orange was a way of brightening up his life? Never thought about that till just now.

On the Ardara crossroads where Higgins’ house sat there were three respectable looking houses and then his. He had about an acre of land around the pretty common looking rectangular bungalow, the kind that sprung-up all over Ireland like concrete mushrooms in the 70s and 80s. There was one small shed on the land, but he had tons of animals on the property: goats, sheep, cows, donkeys, there might have been some fowl and the odd horse or pony over the years too.

It was a known fact that when the weather was stormy or very cold, he’d take the animals into the house. We could only imagine what it must have looked like inside. A few older boys at the Commons NS said they’d been in there and described piss and shit and straw all over the place.

On good days Higgins would lean over his fence and talk to us lads as we walked passed his house. On bad days he’d stare at you with mad eyes, looking like he just did something that no one should know about. On those days he wouldn’t even nod hello.

He wore slacks, never jeans, the fly bust open and bailing twine as a belt. A jacket that looked like it had been abandoned by its suit, a sweater underneath with a few holes poking through. Then to finish it all off, a pair of wellies, rolled down to the ankles. He’d roam about his rush and mud filled acre in this costume of craziness, playing the part of a farmer, a role you could tell he aspired to.

It’s been nearly twenty-years since those days of walking to school and I haven’t a clue if he’s alive or dead. If he still lives in that house or sold in the property boom. I could call one of the brothers back home and quickly find out, but I like the enigma of Higgins. When you know too much about a person like that, they lose their wonder and become real, and then sad. I imagine there are some young lads living out the Five Points today and their lives are enriched by walking to school and seeing a man like Seamus Higgins going about his day.

Karma, the old bitch

2010-02-15T20:38:00.003-06:00

Like a wounded old she-dog that you kicked weeks before, she sneaks up from behind when you least expect and bites you right in the ass.

The Death of a Restaurant

2009-08-14T00:31:00.004-05:00

When I took my first restaurant management position, my boss explained to me that each restaurant has a soul, a metaphorical one, and to be a successful manager, you have to listen to that soul, tap into its secrets. From the first moment you enter a building you can feel the soul, know if it’s happy and successful or depressed and dying. Sometimes the soul could be fixed, healed, other times it is best to provide the restaurant equivalent of restaurant hospice care and gently let the soul pass away as painless as possible. With this in mind, anyone who had been in the door of UNO’s on the Plaza during the past three years, know it had a dead soul. Killed by a climate of fuck-you-get-it-yourself-doldrums and a poisonous air of I-don’t-care-itus.

A few people from my place of employment would go over after work out of sympathy to see Jess our favorite UNO’s employee. We’d make sure to keep our tab with her; even if we were in the back playing free pool in the area we affectionately called Sam’s Club. Our big buddy Sam before he was fired, would go over there on Friday and Saturday nights and hold court and he’d duck under the pool table, put his finger up into the bowels of the machine and 15 balls of fun would plop out. But our minor contributions weren’t enough to keep the place alive.

The lights were always too bright and the music was too low and besides Jess, no one gave a shit. The service was AWFUL. Every once in a while they’d get a good server and we’d warm to them and then they’d be gone the following week, breaking our collective hearts. The food was below sub-par, beer prices and sizes were inconsistent and they were always out of something that you wanted: “Sorry, no Granma…sorry no Miller Highlife, sorry we just ran out of Guinness.”

For a brief moment, last year, a glimmer of light sparked in the place when they installed a Konami bowling video game (don’t get this confused with the inferior Silver Strike). The game was so much fun, you could choose everything from a basketball or soccer ball to a disco ball or 8 ball styled bowling ball. Four players could join in and the sound effects were hilarious, especially in instant replay. Our staff loved it and we went over all the time, not just on Friday and Saturdays. But the extra business was getting in the way of the staff at UNO’s hanging out with their friends and bitching. They got rid of the machine and I swear to god it was to spite us. They replaced it with some other shit game and it mysteriously broke a week later (TR know anything about that?).

Then rumors starting to circle like sharks about their impending closure. First, among Plaza employees, then in the business section of the KC Star…they were thousands behind in rent…their holding company was going into foreclosure…whatever the real story, the reality was “It’s over for UNO’s.” The chalkboard where they put their specials had a countdown going and someone had written a nice little rhyming poem about all the fun, drinks and people they’d enjoyed on the Plaza over the past decade. However, the reality was: nobody really cared. Sunday was their last day and they were going to extinguish without much fanfare.

After work on Saturday night a bunch of us decided to visit Jess one last time, and leave her a little extra to say “thank you, even though the place you worked in sucked, you still kept a good attitude and took care of us.” We rolled over there about eleven-thirtyish, close to midnight and surprisingly the place was packed, it looked like New Year’s Eve. Management had lost control, guests were going behind the bar serving themselves, Jess was in the weeds, people were smoking in defiance of the KC smoking ban and everyone was super drunk.

We managed to snag a table outside on the patio. But ordering a round of drinks was an ordeal in itself and getting close to the bar without getting burned by one of the many waving cigarettes was a major challenge. My friend JD paid for the first round…but then I was charged again for it later in all the confusion and pure cluster fuckage. Not a single manager was even bothered to lift a hand to help out, probably how the company got into such bother in the first place. (And I later learned that one of those useless managers was the owner of the franchise! Totally useless).

So we’re all sitting down with our hard earned beers and we hear the sound of a Harley Davidson growling and we all look around in unison and sure enough a big-fat-drunk-dude is attempting to wheel his Harley down the side walk and onto the patio. After lots of heaving back and forth and almost falling over, the biker squeezed into the bar area and commenced to burn rubber. People were scattering like flies in the cloud of burnt rubber smoke and the sensible moms among our group lifted their beers and walked away saying things like “this is how it starts, next thing you know someone gets killed.”

Two things came to mind watching the meltdown of UNO’s. Firstly, UNO’s had become a speakeasy for smokers (a smokeasy?) and secondly, how dangerous and fun UNO’s was in its last moments, like it was granted one last wish to be fun before it died. Also, where the hell have all these people been the last few years? UNO’s turned all these people away, turned them off the idea of UNO’s over the years, they had catered to the lowest common denominator, gambled and lost.

People were walking out with souvenirs, like the clocks from the walls that said “your pizza ordered at this time will be ready at this time”, photos of Marlon Brando , Babe Ruth and George Brett and tons of other fake sports memorabilia. I might have taken a few pieces of choice glass wear to match a certain rug and a certain door, but I’m not saying that I did. It had become a complete free for all, like a Russian bread line in the 1990’s.

Saturday night closing time came for us and for UNO’s for the last time, and in more ways than one it was time to go. In this not too tragic closing you could see that they forgot about the guest and in this industry the guest is your lifeblood; they are what feed the soul. RIP UNO’s on the Plaza, you won’t be missed or mourned.

A Horse of Course

2009-07-21T15:49:00.004-05:00

I met a Midwesterner the other day that lives in Perth, Scotland. He met a Scottish girl, fell in love and moved there to be with her (sounds familiar) and he works in the thoroughbred horse business. During our brief conversation he made a very telling remark about the Irish people when he posed this question:

“The Irish are the only people I know that when they get into money, the first thing they do is get into horses. Why do you think that is?”

I rolled this around in the noggin for a moment and the first thing that came to mind went back to our English-Overlordship. I don’t usually blame the English for Irish problems, if anything, I think they’ve shaped us into the amazing people we are today.

So off I went with my answer “I’d say that land and horses are still deeply rooted in the Irish psyche as symbols of power and wealth, just as it used to be viewed as ‘being English’ if you planted a lot of trees on your property and we always aspire to be what oppressed us.” He took my reply with a grain or two of salt and went back to his dinner.

However, this conversation got me thinking about my own family, ‘cause these days my Dad and new Mom are mad into horses. They’ve built stables, an outdoor arena and have something like seven or eight horses running around the place. That in turn made me think about my sister's horse Bob she had when she was a teenager, then that nugget of a memory pushed the old mind back to when we were kids and we had a donkey called Eh-aw.

I’m not sure where we got Eh-aw from, but I know I couldn’t have been much more than three or four years old when we got her and she lived on Mick O’Donnell’s land with an old horse called Dusty. Mick O’Donnell’s land backed up to my aunt and uncle's, but his was all fenced in and was about 30 acres of some of the most amazing land you could imagine. We called it ‘the mountain’ but it was more than that, it had a view of the other mountain Slieve League, a hypnotic monolith of vast geologic proportions, you could literally stare at that giant rock for hours on end, clouds wisping over the peak and squinting at little dots as people climbed over the horizon of it’s peak.

Eh-aw and Dusty’s paradise also came right up to the edge of the estuary of the Salmon Leap river. When the tide was out we’d walk down there in our wellies, digging for razor fish, picking mussels off the rocks, checking the old abandoned oyster bed for a small harvest and turning over a kelp covered rock to tackle a scuttling crab. All the time keeping a weary eye out for the returning tide and often a stray goat or sheep wouldn’t be so lucky and get trapped out on one of the tiny islands of grass and they could only pray to the farm gods that it wasn’t a spring tide and they’d be safe till the tide receded.

When we went up to see Eh-aw and Dusty we’d walk on our side of the fence and call out to them and it usually didn’t take long for one of them to pop their big head up over a hilltop. They knew we’d have some apples or potato peels for them. Eh-aw would could come right up to the fence and sometimes she’d let us feed her from a flattened palm, but Dusty would always hold back and wait for us to leave before he came up to the fence to nibble the peel off the barbed wire.

Eh-aw and Dusty had become the most unusual odd couple. She was a little grey jenny, not much to look at, but friendly and welcoming with her braying speech. Dusty on the other hand was beautiful, the color of deep rust with a long flowing mane, standing about 15 hands high he towered over his partner. But he had become feral like a mustang or more appropriately a wild Connemara pony, and you only approached him at your own risk. We entered their field with trepidation and as we did the two animals paired up together and kept us within eye contact, but always thirty or forty feet away. You could tell that Eh-aw wanted to come closer to us and have us stroke her, but she played the role of a good wife and attended her husband’s will.

Within their realm there was a Celtic ring fort and us young boys would go over there and pretend to be Cuchullin and the Red Branch knights or Finn McCool and the Fianna, defending the fort against invaders coming up from the estuary, usually Vikings, Germans or English, our enemies of choice when we were the same age as our shoe size. Air raids were a bitch to defend, but the sequoia-like ferns provided plenty of cover.

Eh-aw and Dusty would look down on us shooting invisible bullets and throwing invisible spears, and we would incorporate them into our imaginary games by assigning them the role of Indians coming to attack our fort held by brave cowboys. Bang, bang.

So, all this gets me thinking back to the original question of wealth and horses. As children a donkey worth five bucks and a Celtic ring fort made us feel like the last of the high kings of Ireland, a priceless sense of completeness. You can throw money at houses, cars, stocks, women, even drugs and alcohol, but there is something primal, innate in the sense of ownership one has in possessing and just knowing that that semi-wild donkey was mine, was enough.

When the Celtic Tiger economy made Ireland a rich wee Island, people rushed out to buy their Five Dollar Donkey no matter the cost, so they could feel the tangibility of wealth that no amount of zeros on a bank stub can reproduce. And the ironic part is that the poorest sub-class/culture in Ireland: The Travelers have always kept horses and donkeys. So by my thinking we all aspire to be rich English landlords, but really we’re just a bunch of Knackers!

Swim, Bike, Run: Fun?

2009-06-15T12:53:00.004-05:00

Swim, bike, run, in that order, 1500 meters, 42 kilometers and 10 kilometers respectively and it sounds even less when you put it in miles: 0.9, 24.6, 6.2. Sam and I figured we were up for the challenge. We’d already done Hospital Hill, Brew to Brew, and I trained for and he completed the KC marathon, therefore an Olympic distance triathlon was within our realm of possibility.

The swim was going to be the biggest challenge, so as soon as we made the decision to train for the Triathlon, we hit the pool. We rode our bikes down to the Tony Aguire Community Center just off South West Boulevard, paid our $15 monthly membership and jumped in.

Christ, we nearly died after the first ten laps, neither of us had swum in a long time. I had the advantage in that I used to swim for my boarding school, but that was fourteen or so years ago, but I think Sam had only maybe done a cannonball once or twice at a pool party in Idaho. But that first day we huffed and puffed and stopped and snotted and timed ourselves all the way to 30 lengths of the pool: half the distance we needed to cover.

It was a little discouraging that first day, realizing the gravity of the commitment required to complete the task in hand. After dragging our arses out of the pool we got on the bikes with wobbly legs, Sam actually bailed off his bike in front of the community center as he was mounting. The staff looked at us like we were half-cocked.

I had my mountain bike, Old Blue my trusty steed, with street tires and Sam found that his wife’s bike was actually faster than his own so he brought hers along, girl cross bar and all. We went from the Boulevard down to the city market, out to the isle of Capri, then back and up Grand all the way through Power and Light, past Crown Center and up that monster hill. We turned into Union Hill and came back down to Gillham via that red brick road that shook our bodies to pieces. Near the end of Gillham Sam cut off at the park to head home and I finished up by heading down to the Plaza and home via Roanoke and Westport to State Line. First day of training over and we were fecked.

We had just under four weeks to complete all our training before the event, so we went to the pool every other day. Rode around the city, hit the downtown airport and even went out to Longview Lake to get a lay of the land and discovered the mother of all head winds coming off the lake by the dam. At about two weeks in we were both comfortable doing 60 laps of the pool and on one really good day I got my time down to about 37 minutes, but open water was going to be a totally different story.

Then Sam found a road bike on Craig’s list for $125 bucks and we went to the downtown airport. The bollocks was taking two minutes off me every four miles with the new bike. I though seriously about buying or renting a road bike to stay competitive with him. I had him on the swim and he had me on the run and we had been pretty even on the bike, but now Old Blue was just not cutting the government cheese of Triathlon training.

The cost of doing the Triathlon was mounting, between the equipment, clothing, fees, and licenses. And I tried raising some money from friends and family, but “in this economy” who the hell has money to spare for charity. I brought in about 25 bucks, it went a small way to about 250 that the event was costing me. Then Sam had a hiccup at work and had to pull out a week before the event. He was devastated and so was I, ‘cause doing this event was one thing, but doing it alone was another. We were going to keep each other going. At least he still trained with me right up to the last day and that made a big difference. Especially since I had a football tournament in Little Rock the weekend before the Triathlon and my body was still aching from the four-game pounding it received.

Saturday night before the event, I’ve got the night off from work to get myself mentally and physically prepared. I went over my inventory: Triathlon shorts, goggles, swim hat, anti fog spray, bike all tuned up, helmet, bike shoes, t-shirt, sunglasses, running shoes, extra socks, race number, towels, footbath bucket, Gatorade, goo gel packs, energy bars and running cap and on top of all that, change of clothes, camera, ipod and bike tool box.

My alarm goes off at 4am, GNR’s Sweet Child O’Mine, then my back up alarm clock goes off, I drag my ass out of bed and try not to wake the wife and turn all the alarms off. I spend the next hour hydrating and loading the truck. There is a light rain outside, so I add rain gear to my ever-expanding list of equipment.

It’s a beautiful drive out to Longview Lake that early in the morning and it’s about 5:20 am as I am being ushered into a field by event volunteers. It takes me a few trips to and fro the truck to the transition area to get everything set up. The first few racks in the transition area have a small hand drawn poster taped to them that reads “Reserved for Extreme Athletes,” I don’t fit that category, so I find a rack about half way back with a good marker that will be easy to recognize later when the place is filled up with people.

As more experienced triathletes hustle in an take up positions I watch how they lay their gear out and imitate them best I can to try and blend in, but amongst these “extreme athletes” I am being to feel like a pretender, a total fake, especially with my mountain bike. Some of the bikes hanging of the stainless steel cross bar look like they probably cost the better part of the price of a new car. Carbon fiber is everywhere and makes my 24lb aluminum bike look like a lump of rock.

The sun is peeking it’s head above the lake and the air temperature is slowly rising and I snap off a few pictures to capture the morning and I think that it sure would be nice to have someone here right now like Sam or my wife. The guy on the PA system announces that body marking is now open and all athletes should make their way over there. It’s like a cattle call over there as we line up and get our age marked on the back of our right calf muscle and then our race number on our arms, it’s a little Germany Circa 1940s and I get a chill-giggle as I get marked and pass on through the gate and back to the transition area.

People are starting to pull on wetsuits and spray their goggles and make their way to the beach. I don’t have a wetsuit, so I pull off my shirt, stroll down to the beach in my fur-suit, I’m one of the only non waxed males in the area, makes me feel very manly like Magnum PI. Dad mailed me a wetsuit, but it’s stuck in limbo somewhere between Ireland and Kansas City, if it ever arrives I’ll use it for my next triathlon.

The seven thirty gun time is fast approaching, some people are taking some warm up strokes in the water, I walk out up to my waist and am surprised how warm the water is and not having a wetsuit isn’t the problem I thought it would be. We are all standing around in our swim hats and look like hundreds of sperm getting ready to penetrate the egg. A brief mandatory meeting is held, which I can’t hear a word of, but it must be very important and seconds later we are back at the waters edge. I stand at the back of the pack as I don’t want to get trampled and hold my breath for the gun. A couple of old guys that look like veterans of many Triathlons look at me and can see I’m new to this and remind me to have fun. I slip my goggles over my eyes and as I leave the beach a photographer asks me to turn my head around over my should and snaps a picture of me and I’m thinking that could be the last photo of me alive!

The gun goes and the sperm are away like a flash, water splashing everywhere and I gently glide in and get into my breast stroke rhythm and realize it’s on, I’m in a triathlon and there is no turning back. The main pack is pulling away from the stragglers and five minutes later the gun goes again and the female athletes are released and they swallow me up very quickly. Not caring that I am in their way, I get dunked several time and I swallow water as I try to curse at them “Fer Fuck, guck guck, sakes!”

The fifteen giant buoys in the water look much further apart in the water now, from the beach they looked like they were tightly spaced. It’s an eternity between each marker and I keep a good eye on the life guards on body boards and speed boasts and jet skis incase I should need their support. The small waves in the lake start to get a little choppy and there is a current that noticeable tows me off course, lots of zigzagging going from A to B to C. I can see the leaders way off in the distance across the lake, white foam splashing up the air as the “extreme athletes” cut their way effortlessly across the water. I just keep my rhythm and motor on at my own pace.

As I made the final turn and started my progression towards the beach again I really needed to pee, I tried peeing while swimming, but my little swimmer wasn’t performing, so I treaded water for a moment to relieve myself. A lifeguard started towards me “Are you OK? Are you cramping?” I was embarrassed and honest and said “just taking a wiz, thanks.” After that I set my sights on finish and slowly, stroked my way in.

I was surprised to Sam and Matt Furjanic standing on the beach cheering me on, both wearing their matching Trolley Run shirts and kaki pants, like my own personal support team. My legs felt like jelly as I took my first few steps in shallow water, my feet slightly sinking into the sandy bottom. I raised my arm in victory; I had survived the swim. The boys kept on cheering me and I sauntered up the beach to the transition area.

There weren’t many people in the area and I took my sweet time cleaning off my feet, getting them nice and dry and putting on my bike shoes. Talking to the boys shoved a few power bars in my shorts and walked the bike over to the exit and mounted my steed. I was powering up the hill, going through the gears when I noticed a hot, little Asian girl in a deck chair and realized “Hey Linh” it was my wife, book in hand, big smile and she says “Go George.”

I get up to the road and bicycles are zooming past at unbelievable speeds, already on their second lap of the lake. I join the fast flow and peddle my heart out. Those many thousands of dollar bikes go past me like I’m sitting still, I can hear the solid disc wheel coming from behind, a deep bass woop-woop sound and then they are past me. I see one unfortunate fella walking his bike along the hard shoulder, flat tire and no repair kit, I feel bad for him, but I have to keep peddling. As I pass the golf course there is a giant dead turtle still on the side of the road. Sam and I had seen it when we trained out here a few weeks ago, but now his shell is half broken and looks a little mummified from the hot weather.

Going past Long View Community College I keep pace with a road bike for a few minutes, but that is killing me on the mountain bike, so I back off and keep to my own pace. The course takes us through some neighborhoods and people are out in their front gardens yelling like crazy and shaking cowbells. It’s a great feeling and I take my hands off the handle bars and yell “Tour de France” it made sense to me at the time, even though I had wanted to shout “Lance Armstrong” but it got a good cheer from them all the same.

As I pass the start/stop area a volunteer tries to wave me in, while Matt and Sam are shouting at me and I get a little disorientated and go in and then nearly wreck as I rejoin the main road again, totally killing my momentum and I’m stuck in too high a gear and I think “Oh, bollocks I’ve got to go around this lake one more time.”

The second lap actually feels easier and I get into a good groove and I find my rhythm on this lap a lot quicker as there are not so many other bikers whizzing past me and I actually pass a few other riders. As I come up to Long View Community College there is a very fast section and I can see a rider about 200 yards in front of me on a race bike and I peddle with all I might to keep up with them and use them as my pacer. I tuck down as much as my mountain bike will allow me and I find that I am actually gaining on the rider. A little bit of uphill and I am definitely closing the gap, and on the next down hill I’m on their tail and as I go to pass them, the rider changes gear and their chain slips off. The rider is a lady and my first impulse is to stop and help, but I quickly analyze the situation and figure that any triathlete worth their salt can put a chain on a bike, so I hold chivalry at bay and peddle like blue hell.

Volunteers and local fans are still cheering us on and I bring in my second lap and finish off the 24.6 mile sprint. Linh, Sam and Matt are all at the transition area and I talk to them as I slip out of my bike shoes and lace up my running shoes and put a few energy bars in the back of my shorts, put on my running cap and I’m off.

The weather temperature is really climbing quickly and I settle into a crappy 11 minute pace, cause I don’t know how much reserve is in my tank. And then before the first mile is even over, I feel a painful sensation in my right knee. I get visions of the KC marathon when it seized up and put me out of the race. I stop, adjust my knee brace and start up again, it tinkles a little and then about fifty yards further along it feel great again and I push a little harder.

It’s a 3-mile lap of the event area and the first one is over very quickly, in my mind at least. Linh is in her deck chair as I pass by and she takes a few photos. I suck in my gut and make sure I don’t give the step-mother anything to make fun of, like my pose from the Broadway Bridge run when I looked like an escaped mental patient. The next three miles seem extremely long, and the heat is becoming more of a challenge than my cardio or knee. I dump water over my head at each water station and the few runners I pass look like they are having a real hard time, but I feel really good when I pass a guy with a 29 marked on his leg. It inspires me to pick up the pace and I bring it home best I can. In the last few hundred yards I can hear the music and the MC going full tilt, people are celebrating their day of endurance and the winners are up on the stage as the finish line comes into view. My three biggest fans are they’re cheering and shouting for me to bring it in and I take a huge big jump and leap over the finish line. I’m handed a finishers medal and a towel and Sam confirms it “you’re a triathlete now brother.”

My goal was just to cross the finish line and I figured it would take me about 3hrs and 50 minutes and I beat that goal with a time of wait for it, 3hrs and 49minutes! I placed 301st out of some 600 or so athletes. It was a wonderful sense of self I felt as I gulped down bottle after bottle of Gatorade in the transition area and the main thought in my mind was “when’s the next one.” And you know what? It was fun.

Snow and Salt and a Big Hill

2009-06-02T13:30:00.004-05:00

Snow, it never fecking snows in Ireland. We get sleet, hail, slush, really cold rain, hail stones, we get all the stuff that’s like snow, but we never get the real deal. So when it mother nature finally winks at us and sends us those nice big puffy snow flakes, the kind you can make snowmen and snowballs out of, we are to say the least: very fecking excited.

It was Christmas 1985, around my seventh birthday and the snows came. Jesus Christ, it was like a fecking movie, snow on the ground Christmas morning. Derek and I had been praying like mad for snow, in between prayers for rain in Ethiopia. After opening all our Santy toys, we laced up our Doc Martin boots and went outside and walked all the way up to the McCourt’s house to play with the Zoids they got from Santy.

By the time we got to their house our fingers were so cold we could barely untie our shoes and for a brief moment I wished it wasn’t so cold, then I realized it could be years before we got this quality of snow again and tried not to complain.

The snow was starting to freeze and most roads were impassable, especially St. Cummin’s Hill where we lived. Cars tried in vain to go up or down it without slithering all the way to the bottom. But all the kids on the Hill were having a blast, sliding down on bin liners, fertilizer bags and rubbish bin lids. God, we were all delirious with enjoyment, it was the best Christmas present ever to the kids of Killybegs.

However, after a few days of no-go-traffic, Dad was getting a little annoyed, because his newly emerging company, C-Fish, was run out of our home on the hill and he couldn’t get his fish van to make deliveries. He put the old brain to work and came up with a plan. He had big bags of salt he used for salting fish and loaded his Lite-Ace van up with a few bags. Himself and John-Joe Dowd’s shoveled salt all the way up the hill making a path about the thickness of a car. But when the kids saw the salt melting the snow they began to kick it to stop it melting their snow and for a brief few moments there were cries of joy as the snow stopped melting. Then there were cries of frustration as the snow began melting all over the hill.

All the kids on the Hill looked at us like we were leapers, they said all kinds of nasty words about us and our father. We tried to argue that he was only making a small path and that they were the ones that kicked it all over the hill. They weren’t buying it, we were instant outcasts and the stigma of being the children of the man that melted the snow stayed with us for ages. Even after the holidays were over and we were all back at school, people would say snide remarks to Derek and me “Your father ruined Christmas.”

Dingle Berries

2009-06-01T14:38:00.003-05:00

You’d think that after living in a country for five years or so that you’d pretty much have the language and culture down, especially if the language is English and it’s already your first language…but I continue to be amazed.

So, I was working at Pierpont’s at Union Station, down in the basement, in the private dining rooms and I’ve got this party of ten business men and all is going well, they’re spending an obscene amount of money and I’m doing what I do. Then it’s the dessert course and before I hand out the menus and do the spiel, I call on the intercom to the kitchen upstairs to find out that day’s selection of wild berries. They reply back to me just like any other day “Blackberries, Blueberries, Dingle Berries and Strawberries.” I make a note of that and head back to my party of ten.

I get some strange looks from the table as I list-off the berry selection, and I can sense that something is rotten in Denmark. Then one of them pips up “did somebody put you up to that?” They see the look of complete bewilderment on my face and another says “Dingle Berries, you don’t know what Dingle Berries are?” I tell them no and that I suppose they are something like a Marionberry or Boysenberry, and that we get many different berries with each season. Then they see the joke is on me and they all erupt in laughter, “I think someone’s having you on son.”

I get back to the microphone, completely mortified, and call up “Dingleberries, seriously!” And the kid on the cold line gets back on “Oh George, I was just kidding, I thought you knew what they were.” I tell him nope and that I just spieled a whole table. Word gets around the restaurant fast and the GM is furious with the kid, and I get so much shit from everyone. Oh and I learned what Dingle Berries are and a few days later when the GM cooled down he stuck a small plastic shovel to the wall in the basement with a note attached “Dingle Berry Scooper.” Isn’t language great, just when you think you’ve got it all down, you learn a new word. Bollocks.

A run away memory

2009-05-28T12:14:00.004-05:00

It’s late June 1985 and we’ve still got the green door at 14 st Cummins hill, come in through it and past the cabinet where Dad keeps his watches, you can hear the cockatiels and budgies squawking in the huge cage above the television, Dad’s in there reading the paper and watching the news at the same time and telling the birds to shut up, down the short hallway to the kitchen, there's a new phone on the wall, 31497, we are the four hundredth and ninety-seventh line registered in the Killybegs area, Mum is changing baby Alan on the kitchen table, and there’s a CB radio screwed to the wall above the guinea pig cage, poop droppings are all over the floor, stepping over them and into the back hallway, there are two hamsters in a cage and Jenny is making them eat hazelnuts and they are storing them in their fat little cheeks, you can see black paint marks still on the wall where we painted the walls and ourselves and got into so much trouble, the back door is open and it’s only a small step down into the back garden, sheets are blowing in the soft summer wind from the clothesline, Derek is changing the bedding in the rabbit hutch and he’s still upset that the daddy rabbit eat one of the baby ones, so he’s not being nice to him and big Sandy is cowering in a corner, we think she’s sad that her babies are dead, but our dog Snoopy is sitting at attention at Derek’s feet wondering what he can do to help, Derek doesn’t want my help and I go into the coal shed and there is the distinct smell of kittens in the air, Mammy Cat has just given birth again and now that they are getting bigger we’ve made a bed for them in the smoker, it’s completely rusted and I can never remember it being otherwise, ‘cause in 1985 I am seven years old and can’t remember the smoker being anything other than a place for animals to have their babies, our old Irish setter Sherry had 21 puppies in there and we think that is a Guinness world record, but we never got it verified with Roy Castle, I reach my hand into the mess of blankets and pull out a wee black kitten and it meows in my face and Mammy Cat eyes me to make sure I don’t hurt it, Dad says we’ve got “too many fucking animals” and Mum says we are going to have to purge them especially if we move into her dream home, the actual home doesn’t exist yet, but the picture in her head does and when we drive around on Sundays we see loads of houses and the one we all like the best is Rossbeg House that the Classon's own, and it’s on the beach and there was a dead seal on the beach last time we where there and the bathroom is bigger than our kitchen and we’d have to go to school in Ardara, so I put the kitten back and cluck my cheeks at Snoopy and run out the back gate and go up the mountain to meet up with the boys.

Ready-Mix Landscaping

2009-05-28T12:13:00.001-05:00

When my parents were married they were only kids themselves, Mum was 16 and dad was barely 19. Dad was a fisherman back then and could be away from home for weeks at a time, so he didn’t have the time or the notion to do much gardening and with mum spending most of her time at her parents, the front garden of our house was a bit of a wild patch. A herd of goats would have had a hard time keeping that mix of weeds, grass and rushes down.

I don’t know where Dad got the idea, but it must have seemed amazingly sane to him at the time: concrete the front garden. He completely covered the garden in ready-mix, like a small industrial park. He must have come up with the idea after too many pints of Smithwick’s in the Sail Inn. I can just imagine the look of inspiration on his face when he thought of it and the seconding from his drinking mates. I bet they all couldn’t wait to get out of the pub and get the concrete going.

The concrete dried in a very rough fashion providing an undulated landscape. A perfectly gray lunar landscape where we played marbles in the miniature craters, a natural battleground for our Star Wars and He-Man action figures. It was one of the only dry pieces of land around our house in soggy-wet Donegal and as unlikely as it would seem the concrete garden became a great place for the children on the Hill to play. I don’t know how many times I tripped and fell on that broken surface, scrapping my knees open and getting concrete chips in the palms of my hands, but all of us kids loved it, I think we were too young to be embarrassed. The concrete garden was a great example of the proximity of insanity and genius.

Ready-mix landscaping didn’t catch on with the neighbors and as Dad dried out and stopped drinking he eventually tore up all the concrete and put in a beautiful garden with a cherry blossom in the center and lush green grass. However, for pure shock factor, there’s never been a garden like the concrete one, the Donegal version of the Garden of the Gods.

Kansas City Chief

2008-04-21T12:15:00.005-05:00

When the smoky Kansa blew across this bluff
Carrying with it the smell of the Prairies,
My people knew this place:
We had different words for things, natural names
The ones they told us to call them.
We did not own them, we coexisted.

Now, as I walk along the cracked pavements,
Weeds growing up the sides of walls,
Gum cemented to the cement, dog shit in a corner,
I think of the White-man's progression.

A building crumbles, red bricks lay weathered and eroded,
Unable to glint like the polished glass and steel
of the replacement structures.
Not even bothered to repair, remove, replenish;
Just push aside and continue.
The march of progress towards the fall of empire.

The crosswalk TELLS ME I can cross the street,
Yet a car tries to mow me down as I step.
They have become too busy to respect humanity,
It is an inconvenience they would rather not deal with.

From this height you could once see the river,
Perhaps an errant canoe or meandering raft,
Now the great water, the artery of the land,
is a fixture only in the mind --
People point in the direction of buildings and say
"The river is over there" blindly pointing in the wrong direction.

A river of traffic flows by on the interstate below my feet,
Like millions of fish rushing to spawn,
Except they have no true destination,
No place they'd give their life to find.

They City Market is barley open,
Selling local produce from the "Bread Basket" of the world,
Most boxes are stamped with markings from
California, Mexico and Guatemala:
Habnero peppers and avocados, not a kernel of corn.

A broken red brick road leads
To a forgotten lookout post over the river,
Muddy as the first day I saw her:
Thick brown rust color like god
Crumbled all the red bricks into a roaring bucket of water,
Then let loose all its power.

Tree limbs float swiftly by like twigs,
A sand dredger is heaping sediment of the ages upon itself,
Birthed by the River Boat Casino,
Where they pump the life blood of the river around their foundations
And lie a big lie that everyone is willing to believe.

I feel the wind rushing to caress my face,
A hint of the natural swirls up into my nostrils,
The Sound of a blue jay, a cardinal, a hovering hawk,
something with a beak and feathers speaks to me,
But I can't hear or feel a thing.

My body silently slices the surface, birth in reverse.
The water is loud and alive,
And I no longer want to hear my thoughts-
The last of them is a joke:
"Do you have a reservation?"
"Why? Do I look like an Indian?"
I laugh my last water filled lung moment with this world,
A Reservation, yes that is a good one.

Chapter 6

2007-05-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

Getting a Wee bit Older

By the end of first year at the Tech my friendship ended with Jonathan, nothing really happened, we just grew apart, as boys of that age do so quickly and can’t see beyond their noses. I started hanging out with Gary Rowden and Ronan Connaghan from across the road. Ronan was a year older than me and very tall, he smoked and was very interesting to talk to, I looked up to him more as a brother than just a friend.

Gary and I were maturing a lot faster than Jonathan, we were popular and at the forefront of the small society of St. Catherine’s Vocational School. To use a well worm phrase; we were big fish in a small pool, a very small pool. We were often mean to Jonathan and Desmond and made fun of them in public; it was almost like we had never been friends in the first place. I felt really bad for him, and still do for what we did, but we were growing at different rates. At the time Gary and I had more in common: football, girls and video games and I guess that’s all it took.

Just before the end of May, when school was letting out for the summer, I came home from being outside, mucking about the fields with the lads, to change my shoes when I overheard Mum and Dad talking. They had no idea I was listening, but what I heard completely shocked me. The gist of their conversation was: Mum was going to move out, Jenny and the younger boys would go with her, but Derek and I would stay at the house with Dad. I quietly slipped out the door before they realized I was there. I kept the secret to myself for as long as I could, eventually I had to tell someone. The same day I told Ronan Connaghan, Mum and Dad made the announcement to all of us.

We had no idea why they were splitting up and it was not ‘till years later that the true story ever came out. They said it was only for the summer. That must be the story all parents tell their kids when they’re splitting up. Perhaps it’s because you can comprehend a summer, it’s a tangible word, you know a summer ends and another school year begins, life moves on, but ‘forever’ who can fathom that word? They talked to us about the break-up and made sure we had all our questions answered and understood, they were very civilized about the whole thing, almost too cool, like they had been rehearsing the play for awhile and this was the big show with all lines and actions perfected.

That summer was not the tragic defining time in my life, as it should have been, defining yes, but tragic, far from it. My cousin Paddy moved in with us for the summer and in between doing gardening for Dad and cooking the dinner most nights, I had the best summer ever. Dad was still working a lot and with Mum not at home, we had the place to ourselves. As long as Dad had his dinner on the table when he got home he was happy. Grilled lamb chops, julienne carrots and mashed potatoes. I think I cooked that meal fifty times or more, I wasn’t very creative in the kitchen and I just made what I knew.

Paddy and I used to be best friends when we were younger, but he and Derek were growing their hair long and listening to real heavy metal, so they gravitated together. They wore combats and black t-shirts with bands like Sepulture, Obituary and Morbid Angel on the front and back. All they ever talked about was Death Metal, Speed Metal, Thrash Metal, the harder the better. They even had a contest that summer to see who could go the longest without bathing or washing their hair. I don’t know who won, but they both smelled like Killybegs before the competition was over.

The weather was great all summer, not much rain to complain about and when I wasn’t cooking dinner or weeding the garden, Gary and I went out to Fintra beach as often as we could manage. I would bring my Ghetto Blaster, that Dad bought in Derry for my birthday, to the beach and play AC/DC, Def Lepard, Motley Crue and Gun’s and Roses because they were all the tapes I had. Derek laughed at the music I listened to, making fun of me when I played my tapes; they weren’t hard enough for him.

It was this summer I first met Garry Anderson, a fella that was to become my best friend of all time. He and Rowden became known as the two Gary’s, Anderson was known as the Garry with two “Rs” on account of how he spelt his name! Garry Anderson was friends with Ciaran McGuinness, who Rowden also knew and we all slipped easily into a great sphere of friendship.

After a lot of tears from Mum, she moved back in with Dad at the end of the summer, so I guess they didn’t lie when they said it was only for the summer. After they got back together and were behaving like a pair of teenagers in love, they thought it would be a good idea to head off to Spain for two weeks, a bit of business, a bit of pleasure, a sort of honeymoon for their new commitment. Their plan for us was to have Brendan Connaghan, the eldest of the Connaghan boys, keep an eye on us and we were to go into Granny’s if we needed anything. They left us with a freezer full of food and money for whatever else we needed.

Young as we were at the time it started out harmless, but quickly our time alone evolved into one big party. All Derek’s heavy metal friends who were long-haired, older boys started turning up and making themselves at home. Derek had a girlfriend who was eighteen and she stayed most of the time too. I was still seeing Caroline and I tried to get her to come to the house, but she wouldn’t and I only managed to see her out at the beach a few times, but never without her friend Carmel the bloody chaperon.

Derek took both Mum’s car and the quad bike out on the roads late at night and was lucky not to get caught by the Garda. He kept bragging about how he got the car to nearly a hundred down by the Common’s school and another fella tried to do the same in his mum’s car and stuck it in the ditch! We trashed the house and mastered the art of cleaning vomit out of carpet, an essential skill for any teenager to acquire if they are inclined towards parties and underage drinking. I don’t know how the hell we didn’t kill ourselves or each other. I didn’t drink yet and either did Derek, we were only thirteen and fourteen, plenty of time for that later. And I do mean plenty of time.

Luckily, when Mum and Dad arrived home we only amassed a small amount of trouble for ourselves. They were too much in love again to really care about what happened, we could have burned down the house, sold the family business to the knackers and turned the garden shed into a whore-house and they would hardly even have noticed!

When I began Second Year in the Tech, things were different. I was going out with the girl many considered the finest in the year. Older students respected me on account they’d spent most of the summer drunk at our house. I was kicked out of the “C” class, the smart class, because Gary Rowden and I had too much of a good time in First Year and it was figured best to separate us. He ended up in “2B” and I ended up in “2A.” This was the class everyone in “C” considered the moronic dumping ground of the school. I had swapped the company of socially retarded nerds like Paul O’Riordian, Marcia Gallagher and the Murphy Twins, who didn’t look alike at all, for the anal-triumphs of Daragh McMennigham and Barry O’Hara with a collective IQ of 25 and all the other dregs of the socially advanced and academically challenged class of “2A.” But worst of all I wasn’t in class with Caroline anymore and not long into the new school year we split up, broke my little heart in two, my first taste of the bitter side of young love.

My one saving grace was that Garry Anderson was in 2A, at least I had someone to sit beside and talk to. Strange thing though, Garry was also in my PE class, Woodwork, Metalwork and Mechanical Drawing Classes and somehow we went an entire year without noticing each other. I like to say I didn’t notice him because I was a punk ass, pompous shit, that thought the sun shown out of his own ass in First Year, and Garry was living under the radar at St. Catherine’s. But I’m sure he has his version, where is he is the hero making-out with the Parkinson Twins and Helen Gallagher!

Anyway, I couldn’t understand why Garry was in this class, he was too smart for these folks. Many of the students in this class were just as smart as the “C” students, yet they were treated as delinquents, because they didn’t have anywhere else to put them. It was an unfair system and I wasn’t about to get stuck in it. I was mortified that I had been moved out of the “C” class, so I went to talk to the principle of the school Master Ward, or Big Joe as we all called him. He told me that if I was making good grades by Christmas and behaved myself he would reconsider my placement. Jesus, if that didn’t inspire me to work my ass off. For the first time since I left the safe haven of the Common’s school I was getting As and Bs again. I kept quiet in class, let the other clowns take center stage, of which there were many and had a taste of what it’s like to be a nerd.

Despite being placed in the retarded class, I was having a great beginning to my year at school. I’d grown quite a bit over the summer and had done a lot of weight training with Derek. I was able to lift my own weight, that was Derek’s bench mark for how strong you were. I was always a fast runner, but now I was fast and strong and my football skills were getting better all the time. Now when I played football in PE the ball went in the back of the net easily and this pissed-off a lot of people since they use to be better than me. When I was in first year I didn’t really do PE class very often, because my back was hurting me as I grew, a mild case of spin bifida; large jar of sympathy please. I had an extra vertebrae and the specialist I went to see told me not to play contact sports, so mostly I just sat up on the balcony doing homework while the other students ran around the place having a good time. After that summer I felt much better and was eager to play as many sports as I could and Master Campbell had me try out for the U-14s school football team.

My friend Decal Cunnigham was quickly becoming one of the best goal-keepers in the county and had a spot on the South Donegal Team. Everyone agreed he was better than Shay Given, of the North Donegal Team and if Declan had kept up the soccer he could be in the Premier League today like Shay and play for the Irish team and make millions, but anyway, that’s someone else’s story.

I was the sweeper, the last line of defense, before Declan, thought of myself as a young Paul McGrath, though a lot whiter and with an Irish accent not an English one, but other than that pretty much the same. We had a great year on the team and I even got a man-of-the-match. It was great to get out of class early to go play the matches, other students looked at you like you were special and you could easily spot the jealous faces, they’d jeer at you and make fun, but inside they wanted to be on the team and wanted to be special too.

Our school didn’t really have a home pitch, just a small wet field along the side of Church Road, so for our home games we had only two choices. The first one, the least preferable, was Dunkineely the arsehole of a small town where Dad’s factory was located. It looked like a full size soccer field version of what we already had at the back of the school. There must have been a full ten-foot elevation difference from one goal to the next and unless Ireland was experiencing a drought, which never happened, the pitch was a venerable mud bath. The alternative was Emerald Park out the back of Granny’s house. It belonged to St. Catherine’s football team, no connection to our school of the same name. (A long, long, long time ago some Spanish sailors had a thing for St. Catherine of Egypt and after nearly dying at sea they prayed to her and she kept them safe and when they came safely ashore in Killybegs they went about making sure she knew they were thankful and ever since people have been coming to Killybegs on pilgrimage to pay their respects to her. There is a well named after her, a road, a housing estate, the school, the football team Jesus nearly everything in Killybegs gets named St. Catherine’s, everything that is except the chapel, which is St. Mary’s!). Well, back to the football field, it was about the only piece of flat land in the whole town and they were very protective about it. They didn’t like schoolboys using it for trivial U-14 games, but whatever the school worked out with the town, somebody must have bent over for someone, they allowed us to play a few games on it.

The best craic were the away games. The school didn’t have its own bus, so we all bundled onto a private bus that belonged to either McBrearty’s, Erskin’s or Keeny’s, the transport cartels of the early 90s in Killybegs. We all acted like complete edgets on the bus, singing songs, telling jokes and taking the piss out of each other. The best game I can remember was down in Falcaragh, in the northwest of Donegal. We were warned that this would be one of our toughest games of the season and we went into the game with a very strong mental attitude.

From the first whistle we dominated the game. I made a few great clearances and Declan made some great saves. We shouted and held the team together from the back. The lads up front slipped in four goals and we went home victors. You could tell Nigel Ferry, our coach/metalwork teacher was happy. He grew up in this wilder part of Donegal and it was good to leave the place with a smile.

In south Donegal we refereed to lads from this area as Rosses men. Known to be tough, big, ignorant men, they were spoken off in whispered tones like Finn McCool and other great Irish heroes. If you had a story in which you fought and beat a Rosses man, then you were a legend in your own time. Well, we hadn’t fought them hand to hand, but we had out played them on the field and that was just as good.

Football has always been my favorite game to play, hated to watch it, but I love to run around a field with a ball, such a simple, beautiful game. Even now when it’s been ages since I’ve played, I’m writing this while wearing a pair of soccer shorts that I’ve had for years; remember the glory, oh yes, remember the glory!

Second Year in the Tech also saw the advent of Glenties, a town about twenty miles north of Killybegs with a ridiculously large nightclub in it called “The Limelight.” It was a relic of the 80s and had been revamped for the 90s. On Friday night they had an under 18s disco, which really meant it was an under 16s disco, ‘cause anyone sixteen and over was already getting into the adult places due to the lack of enforcement of any kind of drinking law. That was and still is one of the greatest things about rural Ireland; if you look able to hold a pint, then you’re welcome to it. Our little world swelled when Glenties entered it, the number of people we could now love or hate, fight or befriend grew ten fold. Teenagers from all over Donegal and even across the border in Northern Ireland came to Glenties.

Even though the nightclub was called the Limelight, we always refereed to it as simply Glenties. For example “Dad, could I have twenty pounds to go to Glenties?” I wouldn’t want to go to Glenties for any other reason than the disco, so everyone knew when you said you wanted to go to Glenties that meant you wanted to go to the Limelight, stay out until four in the morning and hopefully find a nice girl to spend a few hours with, whether you got her name or not. My brother Derek called this the three Fs: Find ‘em, Fuck ‘em, Forget about ‘em. I wasn’t quite on his level and certainly wasn’t doing much fucking, I was just happy with the first F.

Glenties was the location of my first real fight. I’d had a few tiffs here and there in national school; with Derek, my cousin Paddy and one time I shoved Brian O’Rourke up against the prefab wall when I was only in fourth class at the Commons and he was in fifth Not very exciting really..

At the time my friends and I were still into heavy metal and hard rock and starting to get into grunge. Nirvana was a favorite, their songs and guitar rifts were filled with an energy that was present in our lives and when we heard this emotion put into music, it drew us to it and we fed of its energy as much as it fed of ours. In the middle of a “Teen Spirit” fueled mosh in Glenties I saw some fella bang into Garry in a not too gentlemanly way and I took it upon myself to walk over to him and with a neat little push and slam to the floor trick I’d learned in the Foresters Hall, I sent the other lad to the ground at about ninety miles an hour. He got up with a very bewildered face, as if to say “what the fuck just happened?” He came on for more and I did it again. This pissed him and his friends off a lot, but before it could go any further a bouncer came between us and broke it up.

I soon forgot about the skirmish and proceeded to dance with a half-decent looking girl, with beautiful long black hair, who had caught my eye earlier in the night. I asked her if she wanted to go outside and we went for a little walk. While up at the school, the designated spot for “shifting,” it turned out that she was a frigid cow. It was like kissing a wet paper bag that wouldn’t let you touch the goods inside. So, feigning sickness I left her standing and found my cousin Paddy with his bird and told him:

“Can you go back there and tell that doll I’m sick and have gone back down to the disco.”

“Why, what’s wrong with her?”

“She’s fucking terrible, whipping her tongue about the place and won’t let me near her tits.”

“Fucking prick tease. Alright I’ll send Rosie up to her. You’re a tight bastard Vial.”

“Just give me a minute to get the hell out of here.”

As I walked back to the Limelight I found the doors locked. I knocked a few times, little use really considering the noise inside. No chance of getting in, I decided to go across the road and get a burger and chips to pass the time. As I turned around I found myself facing four Glenties lads, one was the lad I’d had the run-in with earlier.

A few words were exchanged and then it was on: a real honest to god street fight. His friends gathered round and urged him on. He came at me and I snapped, my adrenaline started to rush and gush through my veins. I punched him, head butted him, kicked him, I was giving the lad a right beating in front of his friends in his own town, not a very smart thing to do. As the crowd got bigger I stopped for a second to look around and the little fucker caught me with a sucker punch right above my left eye, this was the only blow he had landed and drew from me another series of punches, kicks to the gut and head butts.

People were streaming out of the Limelight and the fight was broken up, his gang pulled him away ‘cause they could see the beating he was getting. A bunch of his friends made a move for me but some of the Killybegs people got me on a bus quickly, as the Glenties crowd were very pissed about the shit kicking I’d just given to one of their own. I was still feeling a rush from the fight and people were shouting “get him off the bus.” If it had been just to fight the lad again that would have been fine but every teenager in Glenties was out for my head. They started shaking and rocking the bus. The bus driver was getting somewhat worried and as soon as he could he got the hell out of Glenties.

My hand hurt the next day and I had to get it looked at, turned out I’d pulled a tendon in my thumb hitting the young man. There was a girl from Glenties at our school and when she saw me in the hallway a few days later she let me have it.

“What the hell did ya think ya were doing? Poor James he’s black and blue from the fight. You better not show your face in Glenties again bla, bla, bla…” What did she expect me to do, stand there and get a beating so poor James would be all right? I don’t think so. Bastard thing was, I was trying to hook up with a friend of hers, Paula; Caroline and I were on a break again, and now my chances were shot. Damn.

That fight gave me a bit of a reputation and many times over the years some cunt has tried to fight with me and I’ve never backed down yet, well now that I’m old and fat I might, but not back then. Fighting is something most civilized people frown upon, but when you live in a wild place like Donegal it is part and parcel of life, a kind of right of passage. If you can’t fight, you get your ass kicked.

My break up with Caroline came about after about a hundred stupid, childish fights we just couldn’t get along and her friend Carmel was doing her utmost to see that we split apart and in the end she had her wish. It was a tough break-up for a thirteen-year-old and for a few weeks I thought it was the end of the world, but then I got over it; the elasticity of the teenage heart is amazing. I messed around with two girls on and off, nothing serious. One was older and the other was the same age as me and the first breast I ever kissed as a teenager belonged to one of them. I’ll never forget that. I’ve a soft spot in my heart always there for her and a few years ago when I saw her as a grown woman I was very happy to have once lain in a grassy field with her. But in my mind none of them ever came close to Caroline, she was my first and I had to put that special bit of love away, deep, deep inside me.

It was a welcome break when Mum and Dad told me that they were going to take Derek and me on holidays to Tenerife with them just after Christmas and we’d be there to ring in New Year’s Eve 1992.

I was still brooding a little over my breakup with Caroline, trying desperately not to think about who she was going out with now, and just lay around the swimming pool looking at topless women. The old German ladies with tits down to their knees were enough to make you gay, but thankfully there were enough beautiful young women lying there to redeem your manhood. Then just when I though I had Caroline out of my head, I was in a bar with Mum and Dad with some people they had met and the song “Sweet Caroline” started playing from the band and put a big damper on my mood. I didn’t feel like going out with Derek for the rest of the night and just went home with the old pair. I think Dad called me a “mopey bastard” and I felt embarrassed that I wasn’t tougher.

However, the next day was much better and we went for a drive up the main mountain in the center of the island, an extinct volcano, so we hoped. Our map informed us that it was something like the second highest peak in Western Europe. Now I wasn’t an expert on Geography but wouldn’t the fact that the island of Tenerife sits off the coast of Africa not exclude it from that statement? Guess it’s like living in the North West of Ireland and calling yourself Southern Irish. Imperialism knows no boundaries.

We rented a convertible Suzuki jeep and drove on down the four lane highway (Amazing what some EU money can do) to explore the island. When we left Playa de la Americas it was very hot and I only had on shorts and a T-shirt. By the time we were at the top of the mountain, admiring the location where they shot Planet of the Apes and many Western movies, there was frost on the ground. My God, did I ever freeze my ass off, I was so cold and couldn’t wait to get back to the lowlands where it was about ninety degrees and put a jumper on! Not exactly my idea of a Tropical holiday.

After coming back from the pool one afternoon Mum was waving around a flyer about time shares. She’s been talking to someone down at the pool about it and they thought it was the best idea ever. Thanks to Granny Sharkey Derek and I were avid fans of the TV show Watchdog and we knew only too well that time shares were bullshit. Dad knew it too and Mum was pretty persuasive that we could at least just go and take a look, we didn’t have to commit to anything, just a quick look.

They had a real flashy apartment building set up for the display model and dazed tourist were wandering around with their tongues hanging out following the time share reps in their blue blazers like hungry dogs. Most of them had never imagined this kind of luxury or wealth and to be able to share in just a fraction of it was more of a temptation than most people could handle.

After out walk around even Derek and I were sold, everything we heard and seen on TV was just propaganda and maybe this operation was legitimate and we were eager to have out little slice, Mum was in the whole nine yards too.

Our man in the blue blazer sat us down to talk about “numbers” and that was when Dad started poking holes in the man’s scam. They were using the logo of a very well known English insurance and investment company and making it seem that they were connected. But when Dad asked if they were the man fumbled and tried to tell a big story about their similarities. Dad just wanted a simple yes or no. Then he took off on another tangent that was playing to the sympathies of us, the other three, wishing that Dad would stop harassing the guy about his company. Their magic had worked on us, but Dad was invulnerable to it, like kryptonite to superman, Dad was breaking them down question by question. To the point where they wanted us to get out and leave as soon as possible, fearing any of the other entranced tourists might hear Dad. When we finally left the building and were back in the car and their spell was wearing off on us, I could appreciate how brilliant Dad had been. If it had been up to us we would now have been neck deep in time share excrement!

By the end of the week I was back in nice, wet, predictable Ireland with no volcanoes, topless sunbathers or time share scamers. That was my first time ever coming back to Ireland from the air and as the plane prepared to land in Dublin it swung out over the city and Dublin bay, I could see that Ireland was a really small place. A wee island with her own wee problems, and my problems were even wee’er than that.

Chapter 5

2007-04-11T15:58:00.001-05:00

Chapter 5

Life Moves On

My years at the Common’s school went very rapidly, it felt like I was growing up too fast. A boy called Michael Cannon that lived a few doors down from us on St. Cummin’s Hill, but he had always gone to the Common’s school, use to play Transformers and He-Man with me and John-Martin and Ciaran, but at the Common’s he was made fun of for playing with those toys. So even though he was older than I was, I had to stop playing with all the toys that I loved and pretend that I didn’t like them anymore. Michael Cannon joked with me that he would tell people but he never did, I would have died from embarrassment. He-Man was out and girls were in and you couldn’t get them from Matel!

When I was still in fifth class, around age eleven, Lillian the headmistress took a few months off for maternity leave and we had a replacement teacher called Ms. Burke come to us. She was a fierce looking woman, with short cropped hair, terrible dress sense and must have been no more than twenty-five at the time. She was a nasty piece of work and treated us like stupid children. After being respected as an equal by Lillian her treatment of us didn’t go down so well with everybody in the combined room of fifth and sixth class. My brother Derek was in the room and was always giving Ms. Burke a hard time, so in response to that she gave me an even harder time because I was his brother. Guilt through association, fuck.

One morning, she was picking on one of the sixth class boys, Brian “Gizzy” Gillespie and he said to her “Why are you always picking on me?” She was stuck for an answer so Derek shouted out “Because she fancies ya!” In response she just screamed “Derek Vial.” Then burst into tears and ran out of the room and refused to teach for the rest of the day. We were all very happy when she left for good and relieved when Lillian came back, though she did give us a lecture about being mean to Ms. Burke, but she was mean to us first and Lillian understood that.

The big excitement at the Common’s School every year was whether we would go on a school tour or put on a play. Last year when I was in fourth class we put on a play and Lillian wrote a script that managed to include the entire school, all 128 students, in the cast. She combined Little Red Ridding Hood, The Wizard of Oz, Jungle Book, The Three Little Pigs, The Beatle’s Yellow Submarine and Grandma We Love You all into one intertwined story. I was a hunter in the Jungle Book scene and had only two lines “You’re not the only one” and “Beats me.” I should have won an Oscar, but I was robbed by the Academy, the bastards. The play was a huge success and we put on three or four show at the Forrester’s Hall and all the other schools came to see us and we did a friends and family show. My costume was little more than a grass skirt and paint on my chubby little belly and I was very conscious of how I looked. Especially when Sinead O’Neill was around, she was a Munchin in the Wizard of Oz section, in which my brother Derek was the Scarecrow, and she looked so cute in her costume, but there I was with my big eleven year olds’ puppy-fat belly for all the world to see. I would have killed for a t-shirt.

Then in an unexpected turn of events it was decided we could also take a school tour that same year to Dublin. An orange juice company was offering a promotion with McDonalds and everybody in the school collected tokens so we could get a two-for-one lunch deal of a Big Mac, Fries and a Coke. Sixty of us bundled onto McBrearty’s bus at six in the morning outside the school and drove to Sligo, where we got the train to Dublin. Hardly any of us were awake; sixty zombies under thirteen years of age and half of us had never been to the capital before or set foot on a train.

My cousin Kenneth had left the town school at the start of the year and had come to the Common’s because he was being bullied, but one of the bullies transferred to the Commons too, (tough life!). At McDonald’s Kenneth ate six Big Macs and everybody was impressed, he was a hit with the girls at the Common’s and left the bullies behind. We went to Madam Tousards Wax Works Museum and Derek had an asthma attack in the tunnels. Then it was to the botanical gardens, which totally blew, the old flora wasn’t too exciting to a bunch of pre-adolescents. We would have rather pulled all the flowers up and thrown them at each other. Next stop was the Viking Exhibition and it was fucking amazing, Dublin was celebrating its Millennium that year (888 AD to 1988 AD) and all the rage was looking for Millennium 50p coins, people were saying they were worth ten pounds each, so we horded them like Viking treasure. They had a Long Ship they pulled out of Quay Street when they were building the new financial center and it was pretty cool. From our history classes we thought of the Vikings as the enemy, because they were always invading monasteries and chasing the monks up into the round towers, so all this celebrating of Viking culture was unusual. It was the first time I made the connection that the Vikings that stayed became Irish and that meant the Irish people were part Viking too.

. We finished the day at the Zoo and I don’t know if the animals were more amazed at all the country kids staring through the glass with snot hanging off the end of their noses or if we were more amazed at them licking their arses. We had a double-decker bus take us all over the city and to any on-looker we must have looked like the biggest pack of culchies ever. Mouths wide open pointing and staring at everything Dubliners just took for granted, like the O’Connell Bridge, The Ha’penny Bridge, Grafton Street and Trinity College. I’m just glad none of us were wearing wellies and chewing on a rush!

We took the train home to Sligo that night from Dublin and the fifth and sixth class boys and girls played dares in their carriage, while the teachers turned a blind eye. It was one of the greatest days in my life at that age and it was amazing that only four teachers were able to look after all sixty of us and not loose any of us.

Anyway, it felt like no time had passed before I too was in sixth class and getting ready for my Confirmation and that meant leaving the security of national school and going to the Tech in Killybegs.

At the Common’s School I was best-friends with Jonathan Gallagher, who was suppose to be with Tricia Whincup on the School tour to Dublin, but I liked her too and it ended up being awkward. He used to live around the Circle, behind St. Cummin’s Hill when we lived up there, but moved out a few years before us. His Dad owned one of the big boats in town and they were very rich. As big as our new house was, theirs was even bigger and it was nice inside too. We still had a lot of work to do on ours. We got into a routine of sleeping over at his house every Saturday night, and the odd time at ours, but he was the oldest in his house and we didn’t have anyone to annoy us at his place, unlike Derek at home.

We were always watching some show on TV like McGyver or Quantum Leap. His parents watched Dallas and The Late, Late Show with Gay Byrne, but I didn’t care much for those. The one that really stands out in my memory is V. The TV show about the aliens who came to Earth to be our friends and it turned out we were their friends the same way cows are our friends.

I watched my first porn video at Jonathan’s house. It was called Naked Came the Stranger and was one of those really bad early 80s pornos with all the big pubic hair and story-lines, like it was suppose to be a real movie, except the main characters took time out to eat pussy, eat cock and fuck! We found it behind his parents VCR and when they were not about we would slip it in the player and sit amazed and disgusted at the same time. Somehow my mother found out, must have overheard us talking about it, and totally flipped. She sat me down and let me know how wrong it was and that love and relationships were not like what we had watched on the video. I promised not to watch it ever again. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

A few years later my little brother Alan called his little brother a Bi-Afran ‘cause he was so skinny and his mother phoned my mother to give-out to her for letting her child use such profanity. Mum said “That Bitch, I really wanted to tell her about the Porno!” but she refrained and let another good Catholic live the lie that was their life.

After watching V and all the other shows we would try to go to sleep, but it never came fast. We would put on the radio and play an Elvis tape Jonathan found on his father’s boat and talk to each other about the girls we liked and whether we wanted a Ferrari F40 or a Porsche 911 or 959 when we got rich. I told Jonathan that I’d get him a car phone for his Porsche when we were older. I lay on the hard floor beside his bed, but it was comfortable and those were the best of times and I fell asleep dreaming about a silver Porsche with a car phone.

Just before Confirmation we were taken into the Tech for informal examinations. Lillian had prepared us well and we were all fairly confident of ourselves, she reminded us to turn over the page to check for more questions. However, we were more interested in seeing who the other students were. I saw Declan Cunnigham, who lived in 62 Conlin Road and was one of my best friends since I was just a baby. I also saw my former associates from the Hill. They pretended not to notice me, so I pretended not to notice them, but something I did notice: they still looked like children! It was as if they had never grown up (not that I was that old, come on I was 12), I didn’t pity them one bit I bet they were still playing with their Transfomers and He-Man toys.

Confirmation itself was no big deal until the moment I was kneeling before the Bishop with my Uncle Aidan behind me as my sponsor. I nearly shit my pants and even have the photo to prove it. The bishop put his hands on me and rolled his Rs as he said my confirmation name “St. Brendan the Voyager.” And then it was all over and I was walking back to my seat in a pew with all my friends.

The build up to the event was a long drawn out one and Father Sharkey must have worn a new road out to our school from the town in his Renault 19. He quizzed us a lot and told us how we should stand in the chapel, not slouch like some sixty year old, and how we should answer the bishop and behave. It was like one of the plays Lillian use to put on, so we went along with the script and everything went well.

One of the most exciting parts about confirmation, alongside all the money you get and the dinner out to some nice place like Castle Murry, was getting your outfit. I guess it was to mark the progression from childhood to adulthood. This Christian ritual is perhaps an adaptation of the ancient tribal ritual Celtic adolescents use to go through when they were introduced to the hunt and made men. But in the modern day and age of the Celtic Island with the giant stag gone and a ban on most al weapons, it’s now a matter of going to a place like Classic Casuals in Donegal Town and getting new clothes; no wild boar were killed in the making of this young man. The main aim, besides leaving your childhood behind, was selecting an outfit that might get you noticed by the girls from the other schools and if they did that was half the battle over even before first day at the Tech started.

When Derek made his confirmation brown leather jackets were all the rage. It had to be the soft velvety kind, not the stiff plastic. However, under pressure and some seriously bad fashion advice Derek went for a leisure suit that would have looked just right on Don Johnson in an episode of Miami Vice! Every time I see a photo of the suit I smile and think to myself “What the hell were they thinking?” Armed with the knowledge of Derek’s big mistake, I decided to play it safe and went very conservative when it came time to choose my clothes, but it sure did get him noticed.

Brown leather jackets were out that year and if your folks were too ignorant to your pleas and went ahead and got you one, sorry but you missed last year’s fashion train. This year it was cardigans, light dressy jackets and chinos. While I was in Classic Casuals getting my cardigan, Declan Cunnigham was in there too and we ended up with near enough the same outfit; that’s how cool we both were, 12 year old culchie trend setters.

Declan and I had always been friends because he lived two doors down from Granny Sharkey’s. We played together as babies and ever since I can remember we have been in touch with each other. On my first day of school in the Niall Mhor, when I was four and a half, I sat beside Declan and the teacher moved us apart right away because we looked too happy or whatever reason the old cow Ms. McGinley decided. Most likely it was because she didn’t have a life and to see two four-year-olds happy in her class was just too damn much.

With Confirmation over and our summer holidays about to start, things were changing again and it was a good change. Jonathan and I got to hang out all summer together and spent most of the time at his house watching Ireland in the 1990 World Cup in Italy. Packie Bonner, the Irish goalkeeper, was from Donegal and that made it all the more special for all of us up in Ireland’s most northern county. We drew with England, then with Egypt, who we should have totally beaten and then drew with the Netherlands. We got out of our group by the skin of our teeth. In the next round we were up against Romania and that game was a nil-nil draw that saw us go through on penalties. The whole country let out a sigh and a cry when Cascarino put us through after the great Packie Bonner save. The Quarter finals saw us against the home team: Italy the bastards. We should have won but Tito Salvatore Schillachi put the ball in the net after a Dodadoni rebound from Bonner. But the best part of the game was off camera when big Mick McCarthy got in a fight with Schillachi and when the camera came back on he had a bit fucking bruise on his face. We’ll be taking the pope home soon! It was sad to see Ireland loose, but we’d never even been to the world cup before and it was our proudest moment. Thanks big Jack.

Gary Rowden and Desmond McGettigan, the veg man’s son, were in our little gang of close friends too. We were the boys from the Common’s School and football was our common bond. Gary was the best player of us all and was the biggest Manchester United fan ever and really wanted to play for them more than anything else in the world. Every year in the parish league people talked about him for days after; natural skill, great goal scorer. Funny thing is, if he had kept on the right path and not strayed he just might have done something with football, but he didn’t. He got older, lost his dream, hung out with the wrong crowd and pissed it all away.

At the beginning of the summer we had the Parish League. It was open to all teams in the Parish of Killybegs and they invited schools from neighboring parishes too. Some schools were either in a parish that was too small to have a football league or they were Protestant areas like Dunkineely and without a catholic church there was no Parish league and that meant no fun! The boys from Dunkineely were a funny breed, very rough around the edges but great football players. That last year in the Common’s saw some of the best Parish league football ever.

For years a kid called Alan Hamilton, a.k.a. Hammy, was the star of every eleven o’clock and lunch break football game at the Common’s National School. He was a few years older than the rest of us, but it wasn’t just that advantage, he could make the ball stick to his feet and literally walk the ball from one end of the field to the other. He was greedy as hell, but when he was making seven or eight goals a game we didn’t really care. Our team breezed through the Parish League and only in the final did we feel any way threatened! It was unbelievable; Dunkineely couldn’t even give us a decent game. Gary was the captain and when we won the trophy he held it up and kissed it like we’d just won the FA Cup at Wembley Stadium.

I don’t know what happened with my soccer skills during that summer, but they improved a hundred fold, it must have been all the practice in Connaghan’s garden and with Jonathan pretending we were members of the Irish team or Man United, he was Mark Huges and I had the big Mick McCarthy Throw. I started first year in the Tech as a mighty player and which was a good thing ‘cause I hadn’t shone very brightly on the field before. I remember one time were at Gaelic football practice with Pat Connaghan out at Fintra and I got the ball and made a great break with the ball and blasted it towards the net, only to put my head up and see that I was running towards the wrong goal! We had set up another set in front of the regular goal and all I heard from some smart arse was “Where ya born in a fucking field?”

I just kept getting better and better. My soccer ability bolstered my self-confidence. Up until then I was a bit of a shy lad, I was grand around the Common’s kids, but my St. Cummin’s Hill origins kept me back when ever I was around the other kids from the town. It made me feel like I was that small runt again, playing in the muck with He-Man figures and living in a council house.

It was in my first year at the Tech that I fell in love and her name was Caroline Gallagher. She was from Bruckless, just out the road from the Five Points where I lived. I’d never seen a beauty like her. Oh, I’d got to know a few girls here and there over the past few years, most of them a year or two older than I was and most surely they had dated my brother Derek before me. I’d been in the Scouts with Johnny and it was there that I had my first French kiss from a girl called Louis Mulroy down the back of the bus on the way to Ardara for a big Scout meeting. She frightened the shit out of me when she tried to stick her tongue all the way down my throat. I didn’t know what was happening and after five seconds I pulled myself away from her in disgust. My next experience was with Terraceta Mullin when the Scouts went to Loch Dan in Co. Wicklow for a week, but none of these girls even compared to Caroline. I found it impossible to tell her how I felt and every time I was around her I got tongue tied and said something stupid. I would stare at her in class, especially my English class with “Gay” Ray Murphy. I had the perfect angle for looking at her without the teacher catching me. More than once I caught her staring at me, but neither of us had the nerve to do anything about it. And sure enough a girl as good looking as that couldn’t stay single for too long.

She started to go out with a fella called Dara McMennigham. He was about as smart as lump of dirt and had the nick name Gonzo due to his looks. He was loud and liked to make fun of himself in school, so that made him cool enough for her to go out with. I was so jealous the whole time they dated. I heard her talking to one of her friends about him and how stupid he was and how he had spelt her name wrong on her Valentine’s Day card. I was also crap at spelling, but I learned to spell her name just incase I ever had to send her a card or a note and I wasn’t about to make that mistake!

When they broke up I made the decision that I would gather all the courage I had and ask her out. Sadly, I was too slow and she had said yes to Declan while I deliberated. I was completely distraught. Declan when he found out I liked her so much, being the perfect gentleman, apologized and broke up with her. Now the cat was out of the bag, she knew I liked her and in the middle of French class I managed to get the words out, with the help of Gary Rowden, and before I knew it I was going out with Caroline Gallagher.

I was so nervous and I couldn’t talk to her at all for the rest of the day. I didn’t know how to behave around her and when school was out for the day, I hung around with her until her bus arrived. All the Bruckless gang was shouting over at us, slagging her about who the boyfriend was this week. I just kept looking at her and all I could focus on was a little piece of green snot hanging from her nose. I kept looking at it, as beautiful as she was; it was all I could see. I went home happy from school that day, very happy. It was April 1991 and I was on top of the world.

Chapter 4

2007-04-11T00:39:00.000-05:00

Chapter 4

Granny and Granda Sharkey

Granny Sharkey was one of the best people in the whole world, everybody loved her. She was always meeting some stranger, taking them home and making them one of the family. She had a guest book where people would sign their name and write some information about themselves and where they came from. There were names from Germany, America, Australia, France, Russia, England, from all over Ireland and tons of places I can’t even remember.

Granny wasn’t originally from Co. Donegal, but from Co. Cavan, one of the other southern counties in Ulster, where they have pigs. She met Granda in Drogheda, Co. Louth, where he was from, I don’t know if they have pigs there, they were married fairly young and when she passed away a few years ago from cancer, there was a very romantic story told about them and here’s my ragged recollection of the story.

They had been seeing each other, going to the pictures and things like that and Granny, Margaret, was hoping, Granda, Paddy was going to ask her to marry him. But her folks had a fella picked out back in Cavan for her and when it looked like Paddy was not going to make a move she made her way back home. When Paddy heard this he found his courage and got the bus to Ballyjamesduff and when he got to the town there was a fair and he had to search for her and when he finally found her he asked her then and there to marry him. The song “She Moves Through the Fair” was sung in their memory at her funeral. Jesus, that’s romantic, I hope I can tell my grandchildren a story half as fantastic as that.

Shad the best looking garden, front and back, in Conlin road and won loads of prizes for it. There was a pear tree out the back and a huge sycamore, gooseberry bushes, copper beaches and a green house too. We use to climb the big trees when we were kids and ate the pears long before they were ripe. Stomachaches and the shits were a great part of my childhood.

She was a great woman for bingo. Every Friday night she would get on the bingo bus outside their house, 64 Conlin Road, and from what I hear she was a great character. She would shed all her womanly-housewife tendencies and become her own person full of obscene jokes and gossip. She won the odd time at bingo, but she didn’t care about the winning, it was all about the society. I went once or twice with her, but didn’t like it too much, Derek on the other hand loved it and won the Snowball once and got ₤400. He used the money to buy himself and me racer bikes and never let me forget it! Anytime we had a fight he’d cut in “but I bought you a bike” and that would end the argument. What could I say to that?

She was the family conscience and every Sunday morning at the eleven-thirty mass you’d find her in the second row from the front, on the left-hand side. We use to go with her when we lived in town and she was so proud when I became an alter boy. That was when I was going through the phase when I thought I wanted to be a priest and never get married. However, I had an ulterior motive for becoming an alter boy and that was to get out of class for an hour with Declan and the boys, but in her eyes I was a great wee fella. I remember thinking it would be great to be a priest: free house, free car, clothes and all that. But when I found out the rest of the job: visiting the sick, going to funerals, no kissing girls, I gave up the idea. After we started living out the Five Points we didn’t go to Mass with her anymore and the other relations sat a little further back in the rows. Until eventually she was the only one in the row and I think that must have hurt her feelings.

My best memory is of her standing in front of the fireplace at her house, fag in mouth, brushing her long dark hair, talking to Derek and myself, telling us some tall tale about when she was a young girl back in Cavan. A portrait of Granda hung behind her, ashes spilled from the fire and onto the teapot that was always stewing there. Everyone said she didn’t get a gray hair till she was at lest sixty-five and she’d been one of the most beautiful women around when she was younger.

When Derek and I started going to the Tech in Killybegs, she made us lunch everyday. Her cheese toasties were great but her stew, Sharkey Special as she called it, was the best. I got the recipe for it once, but I couldn’t get it to taste as good as hers. And it was best of all when she mashed all the potatoes up in a bowl and then mashed the stew into it, oh I can nearly taste it now.

Derek was always her favorite, I didn’t mind ‘cause it was him that spent the most time with her, although she liked me more as a teenager than Derek as he was starting to get into a lot of trouble at school.. However, it is the foundational years that count when talking about the share of one’s love. Granny was mad about antiques and old artifacts and she and Derek were always watching the Antiques Road Show on the BBC together. One year Granny was given a metal-detector for Christmas and after that she and Derek were always out in the fields at the back of the football field or at Fintra beach looking for lost Celtic treasure. Although, all they ever found was some lost change and buried tin cans, but one time a lady lost her diamond ring at the beach and it was Granny and Derek to the rescue and after two days of endless searching they came up with it!

Granny was full of stories about ghosts and UFO’s, she would have made a great writer for the National Inquirer: Headless Ghost Gives Birth to Alien Baby! However, it was Granda who was the real man for stories; he could tell you something that would stay with you forever. He was the Donegal Poet of the year and won an Allingham Poetry award: when he spoke, people listened.

When he wasn’t in his armchair with a cup of tea or eating his dinner, Granda was in his work shop every waking-minute of his life. Though he had the heart of a poet and philosopher, he had the hands of an engineer. He was an innovator in the marine electronics field and it most likely it was his creative edge, rather than his knowledge of mathematical formulas and electronic circuitry, that lead him to his greatest inventions. He served in the RAF during WWII and he put to good use the expertise he learned from working on radar. He often mentioned that he never flew bombing missions, just reconnaissance and the technical side.

The Electric Fisher was his greatest invention that I can remember. It was a tool used to capture fish alive for research without harming them. It worked on a fairly simple process. You put a metal plate in a river pool, the plate was connected to a net you held in your hands, then standing down stream you zapped the fish with small electric currents and they floated down stream to you and hey-presto you had a fish in the net! Universities around the country and the world took an interest in his inventions, but he didn’t patent them and didn’t make much money from his hard labor. He could have been a millionaire ten times over, but he didn’t care about money, he was happier to have the work done and then relax with a pint and a short of whiskey in a pub someplace, telling a story about Sheamy the Leprechaun. A lot of people saw this as a failing in him, but to me it shows greatness of character; man might make the money, but money never makes the man.

People have told me over the years that he was the smartest person they ever met. My respect for him is immeasurable. He was a Renaissance man if ever there was.

Granda was a dog lover and when Granny was out with her metal detector at the beach he was out there with the dogs, throwing a stick into the water for Bruce, Sam, Wilma, Gemma or Marla, to help them get rid of the ticks and fleas as he said. He loved to wear his green body warmer and always looked like he was either going to or coming from a hunt.

Christ, they were both missed when they died. 64 Conlin Road was more than a house it was the entire center of our family’s universe. One day a year, on Christmas Eve, we all gathered to open presents with them and drink tea and eat toast and pate. Apart from a funeral or a wedding, it was the only time when the whole family actually got together. We made a small army with all the aunts and uncles and twenty-six grandchildren. No wonder there was so much for people to talk about. Those were magic days I’ll never forget.

Chapter 3

2007-03-26T00:40:00.000-05:00

Chapter 3

A New Beginning

In 1987 Dad moved to his own factory in Dunkineely, a small town a few miles east along the coast from Killybegs, and it was a real factory with a canteen for tea breaks. He had been sharing a shed in Ben-Roe with McGettigan, the Vegetable man. This was Dad’s first real factory and even though he never said so, I could tell he was very proud of himself. The new factory had a blast freezer and made C-Fish a competitive business among the other emerging white fish factories. Dad still had his Lit-Ace van, but he also had a lorry and Jimmy. Jimmy was Dad’s right-hand-man and grew with Dad as C-Fish grew. He had a shock of red hair and a mustache and dressed very snazzy, with his brown leather jacket and denim jeans and button down shirt “Right up Jimmy’s Street, Mum would say.” Jimmy was always very kind to Derek, Jenny and me, every Christmas he gave us a great present or a card with money. One year we thought he got us a pinball machine, but it turned out to be a crappy board game and a BROS (Matt and Luke make me Puke) tape, that was the one exception!

In May of 1987 we moved out of St. Cummin’s Hill and bought a house at Aughyvogue, the Five Points. The house was an old school house, Robertson’s National School 1879, (1987 moved around), is what the plaque read when we found it in the garden.

When we moved out of St. Cummin’s Hill I had another brother Alan, born in March 1985. He was the first “planned” baby as Mam and Dad called him. He had a birthmark on his ass and everyone pointed to it and laughed. He was a great baby and quickly became very spoilt. Resentment grew among the siblings, but not much was ever said.

I was sad to be leaving St. Cummin’s Hill, as my best friends were all there: John Martin from number.3, whose house I stayed in at the weekends, Ciaran Boyle lived in number 12 and Patrick Caraban with the crazy red hair lived in number 5 with the English mother. The boys who lived out the Five Points were a totally different breed. First of all, all the families that lived out there were much wealthier than any of the people we grew up around on the hill, except the Kees, McHughs and O’Sheas who lived on the other side of the wall. All the boys out there were several inches taller than any of the town boys of the same age, Derek and I felt tiny. Must have been all the good country living or as Brenden Connaghan said “It’s ‘cause we eat all our porridge!”

Derek was making friends right away, but I was a little shyer and took my time getting to know the neighbors. Besides, nobody was my age, they were either younger or a few years older. I was still clinging on to my old life and friends on the Hill and was not quite ready to let go and fully embrace my new life at the Five Points.

On the upside, the new house was huge. I couldn’t believe we were moving into the biggest house in the neighborhood. It had four bedrooms, two sitting rooms, one of which we turned into a playroom, a big kitchen with a blue tilled floor and yellow cabinets that everyone agreed had to go! There was only one bathroom, and it was tiny, out of proportion to the rest of the house. There was a garage, which Dad turned into an office and utility room. C-Fish was growing all the time.

I had a bedroom all to myself. Derek and I had been sharing a room since we were born and now as we were getting older we really needed our own space. Derek got a bigger room than I did because he was older. His had a red trim cause he like Manchester United and mine had a blue trim, 'cause I liked Everton. Everton were useless, literally the day I started supporting them they stopped winning and became crap, but once you choose to support a team you couldn’t change your mind, you’re stuck with them for better or for worse. Changing teams is just not done, I think the Catholic Church might have had something to do with that.

The house still needed a lot of work, so when we were still living up St. Cummin’s Hill we use to come out after school and help with whatever we could. Mum give me a dinner knife one day and told me to get to work pulling moss and weeds out of the wall and around the side of the house. It was times like that when you didn’t appreciate the size of the house. Derek was a little more useful and climbed into the old stone drain that went under the road to the Connaghan’s field. Dad feed him sewer rods and they unblocked the whole thing, so that when it rained it wouldn’t flood over on to the road.

Work-men, handymen and plumbers were constantly working on the house. One of them was Colm Cunnigham, my friend Declan’s father, I saw him moving a wardrobe from one room to another, he got his hand jammed between the wardrobe and the wall and hit the vein on the top of his hand. It swelled up like nothing I had ever seen before, it looked sore, I couldn’t believe he didn’t cry.

In Killybegs I went to the Niall Mhor National School, up by the Chapel. It was less than a ten-minute walk from our house on the Hill, down Stony Batter, past the Sail Inn and the Bank of Ireland, down the back street past McBrearty’s Taxi, then past the launderette with its nice warm smell, past the wee river beside the fire brigade and then up the hill past the Forester’s Hall; the old Niall Mhor was on the left and the new school was on the right. In third class, I was in the one on the left.. Even after we moved out the Five Points, we still went there for a few more weeks. I was sad to leave.

Dad bought a car, a BMW. The boys out the Five Points were impressed. I was in the Connaghan’s shed playing snooker with Brenden and Ronan, when Michael Burn, from the lower Five Points came in and started talking about the car. At first I didn’t even realize he was talking about my father, I felt embarrassed. Even boys older than me who had never talked to me before, asked me about the car when I was at the swimming pool in Ballyshannon. The BMW gave me a small amount of celebrity and everybody called it the “big BMW” never just BMW. Dad drove the car very fast all the time and smiled as he drove. I loved it when he dropped us off at the Niall Mhor in the car and people stared at us. With the big house and the new car, I was living a life that made me a stranger to myself, but I liked it.

Near the end of May, we started going to the Commons National School. My last day at the Niall Mhor was great. I felt special ‘cause I didn’t have to finish Third Class with all the people I’d been going to school with for the past five years. Everybody knew it was my last day and when three o’clock came I felt a great sigh of relief, but at the same time I was very nervous and afraid of starting at the Commons. I didn’t know anyone there, except for the Connaghan boys who lived up our road.

The first day at the Commons was surreal. Everybody thought Derek and I were twins, even though he was a little bit taller. We had to sit in class that first day and introduce ourselves. There were only about a hundred and fifteen students in the whole school and every room had two classes in it. Third and Fourth class were in one room, that meant Derek and I were in the same room, at least for the rest of May and June till we got our summer holidays. We broke our flask of tea that first day and made a mess. It was in Derek’s bag and all his new copy books and things got soaking wet.

The teacher was called Ms. Ward. She was very short with black hair and looked angry. Ms. Sleven, my teacher in the Niall Mhor who replaced Mrs. Moran when she moved to Athlone, was very good looking and most of the boys had a crush on her, but you could never have a crush on Ms. Ward.

Lillian Holmes was the headmistress and she welcomed Derek and me to her school. I liked her immediately, she knew our mother from when she was younger. She had just been made the headmistress after a man called John Danny left for the Niall Mhor to become the new Headmaster. Everybody talked about him like he was the greatest man in the world. Just before I left the Niall Mhor I heard everyone there talk about how strict he was. Anyway he wasn’t going to affect me and I was happy with Lillian as our headmistress.

The girls at the Commons took a great interest in Derek and me, which was strange because no girls had ever taken any notice of me before, except Dervala Hannigan, who I married when I was five. Notes were passed asking if I liked this girl or that. I liked a girl called Sinead O’Nell. She wore glasses and had make-up on, girls my age at the Niall Mhor never wore make-up, as far as I was concerned, she was the best looking girl I’d ever seen. For the past three years I had been secretly in love with Mairead McGing, but she liked Declan Cunnigham and I had to get over it. She was rich and I often had dreams where I was able to give her everything she wanted and she loved me for it. But Sinead O’Neill seemed more real and I was too shy to talk to Mairead anyway.

I was very disappointed that year on the 21^st June; Bonfire Night. Up Cummin’s Hill we use to have the biggest fire you could imagine, the whole street would help make it over a few weeks: car tires, win bushes, newspapers, old furniture, rubbish, if it wasn’t wanted it went on the fire. As there was only a small number of young people at the Five Points compared to Cummin’s Hill, my new situation was heavily undermanned for collecting flammable material. Our fire was mostly winbushes, they burned bright for a few minutes then quickly burnt themselves down to smoldering embers. But there was an upside to this kind of bonfire.

Since there were no tires or other types of noxious trash, and the fire was a manageable size, we were able to cook over the embers. I hadn’t expected this and Derek and I had to rush back home to get potatoes and tinfoil, sausages and a frying pan that Dad would allow us to put on the open fire.

A few years before the boys from Conlin Road had the biggest Bonfire ever in Killybegs. They had something like a hundred and fifty car tires on the fire and even one giant airplane tire they stole from one of the big boats. I went down there the next day with Declan and the ashes were still very hot, so we fanned a few spots back to life and threw some paper on top of it to get it going. I was rushing back with some newspaper I found in the bushes when I tripped over the wire from inside a burned-out tire. I fell into the little fire we got started and immediately my trousers went up in flames. I started beating out the flames with my hands, but they wouldn’t go out. Declan’s father saw us from his shed and rushed down and got the flames out and carried me up to his house and put me in the sink and ran cool water over my burns. I had to be rushed down to the doctors and I had blisters all over my body and the doctor pulled a huge chunk of my skin away from my knee and said I’d lost three layers of skin. He wrapped it in gauze and Mam had to change the bandages every day for weeks. Mam said if Colm hadn’t got the flames out it could have been a lot worse so I was very thankful he had been there and said a prayer to my guardian angel thanking him for Colm.

We were only at the Common’s School for a few weeks when school got out for the summer holidays at the end of June. Life at the Five Points was a very different from the life I had known on St. Cummins Hill. Even in the few months that I had been living there I felt different from the boys up the Hill. In July I went to spend a weekend with John Martin and all was fine. We went to play over by the O’Shea’s house and for some reason Ciaran, Patrick and John Martin ganged up against me. Told me I thought I was too good for them. I got very upset and went straight over to his house, got all my stuff and walked down to Granny’s house to find some comfort. That was the last time I ever played with them.

Chapter 2

2007-03-26T00:34:00.000-05:00

Chapter 2

First Memories

When I close me eyes, open my mind and think of my first memory, it is always the same. I am standing by the front window in our house on St. Cummin’s Hill. Looking out the window I can see my brother Derek getting into Constantine’s big, purple Opel Record estate. He is going to school because he is four and I am only three. I remember wanting to get into that car more than anything in the world. But I stayed at home with Mam and my younger sister Jenny.

Our house on the Hill is number 14; Mam’s sister lives in number 13, unlucky for some and proved very unlucky for them. They are the Murphy’s and their Dad, Sean, always looked very angry. Derek, my cousin Paddy, who's the same age as me, and I were terrified of him as children, but my Dad wasn’t and one night when he wouldn’t let Dad use their phone, Dad punched him in the nose and split his face, then turned around and told him to “Fuck off.” Sean Murphy was always shouting at our cousins, I would have hated to have him as a father. He liked to kill animals, especially gray crows that ate the eyes out of baby lambs, he was in the gun club and had a sitting room full of trophies he’d won for marksmanship. Their sitting room was always dark and we learned never to go in there when he was there; “I can’t see the fucking TV,” is what he would say if you opened the door even a crack. Other people hated him because he was the social welfare officer and he pissed a lot of people off with his superior attitude. As kids we feared the name Sean Murphy, as some kids feared the bogeyman.

In all there were 18 houses in a line on St. Cummin’s Hill, with McGuire’s in pole position at the top and the Friels living at the bottom. The Friels were a family of settled tinkers, gypsies, itinerants, knackers, I’m not sure which one is the current acceptable term, but they provided a lot of drama and gossip for the town of Killybegs, almost as much as the Sharkeys. They always had a few greyhounds out the front of the house and a donkey or two tied to an ESB pole. In accordance with the heritage they stemmed from they collected car tires and batteries, pieces of old copper and bicycles out the front of their house. These objects would be rendered into money by some stretch of the imagination, recycling years before it became a cool-yuppie-middle class-save the whales motif. My most noted memory of the Friels is of them collecting periwinkles along the coast around Killybegs. In the summer months they could always be seen with a big sack of ‘winkles over the bar of their bike. A periwinkle looks like a snail, and like escargot is a delicacy in the right market, but around Killybegs people just think of it as a dirty snail from the sea.

Our house had a green door and the paint was flaking, but all the years we lived there were happy years. We were poor, not Frank McCourt poor, but poor enough to be on welfare and having to live half the time at Granny’s house. Dad was fishing and had a hard time controlling the drink. I don’t remember much about his drinking, only that Derek and I use to hang out in Roger’s Hotel and play video games and pool when weren’t even tall enough to see over the top of the table.

He came back from the pub once and he and Mam had an argument and he shouted and she shouted and he got his brown leather suit case out of the hot press and threw clothes into it and threw some of my things in it too. I don’t know where Derek and Jenny were, but only my stuff went in the suitcase. Mum went off to Granny’s house and Dad said we were going to Dublin. We walked down the town and he used the phone box across from the Sail Inn and called Brendan Daily, Derek’s Godfather. He was suppose to come and meet us and take us to Dublin. But he never came and after standing around the town with the big brown leather suitcase I think Dad got tired and we walked back up the hill. I was sad that we were not going to Dublin, but then I didn't understand what was happening. He called one person, he didn’t come, guess Dad didn’t try very hard and went home.

Memories of him on land are what I really remember. In 1984 he bought himself a box of fish and a rusty old Fiat, with holes in the floor and he went In-Through to begin his Fish-Run. In-Through is an area west of Killybegs and there are loads of arguments about where it begins and where it ends. Depending on who you ask they’ll tell you it starts after the next river or road after their house, nobody ever wants to actually own up to living there.

Well, Dad began to sell his fish door to door, getting up early every morning and not getting home till very late in the evening and had to leave again to go to the eight o’clock auctions down the pier. He was always gutting fish at the kitchen sink and soon we had a phone with the number 31497 and Dad had a business called C-Fish. Granda Sharkey helped him convert one of his sheds into his first miniature fish factory and he employed three men from the Hill: Cyril McBrearty from No. 10 and Nigel and John Joe Dowds who lived next door in No. 15.

The Dowds’ were the best people in the world and always helped us out, especially Mrs. Dowds who felt sorry for Mam, being so young and having so many children and not a clue in the world. She made us buns and cups of tea all the time and when Jenny and I painted our hair with black paint, she put us in the bath and showed Mam how to get it out using margarine. The Dowds’ were from the North and Mrs. Dowds and John Joe spoke with a voice that was different from the people of Killybegs. Her’s was a little musical, a soothing voice you’d want to hear when you were up set. John Joe spoke less than Mrs. Dowds, but when he laughed his whole bald head went red. I’m very thankful for having known their whole family: Carol, Emmet and Nigel were like big brothers and sister to us.

Dad bought a cream colored Toyota Lite-Ace van and his fish-run In-Through was official. I went with him a few times and some of the old ladies gave me a pound or two for myself. Derek went more than I did because he was older and made more money too. Dad collected his earnings in a biscuit tin for coins and a S.M.A. baby formula can for cash. I often wonder if he misses that simple system?

The first nine years of my life are a blurred plethora of images: my first day at school, my first holy communion, first family holiday to Galway, best friends, weekends at my cousin Paddy’s. But I’d like to move on to a time in my life when everything changed, when my entire live shed one existence and began another. I don’t want to focus on those years here, as I’m still digging around in that memory box and find that the short story is the perfect fit for those bursts of memories. That can be another journey we take together some time.

Chapter 1

2007-03-20T11:50:00.000-05:00

21 Years in Ireland

George Vial

Prologue

Where are you? Are you at the airport, waiting, waiting because there’s something wrong with the wing, they’ve overbooked a flight and there’s a storm coming in, and you’ve got to wait another four hours. Perhaps you’re on a crowded bus in the city and your late for work or leaving two hours after you should have shut down the computer and got back to your family and you’re hurt ‘cause they make such a big deal out of being ten minutes late and never give a damn about the extra hours you give at the end of the day? Then again your bus could be completely empty and you have no schedule and it’s rolling across-country and you want to be at your destination, you want to go places, but you don’t want to travel, you’ve a crick in your neck and you can’t sleep and all you have to keep you company is this stupid book that someone gave you for your birthday, Christmas or an out of the blue gift and said they thought you might like it. Maybe you’re at home and you’ve lost someone close to you, your mother died or your husband of fifteen years left you or you left him and because of that you are somewhere else. Often we find ourselves where we don’t want to be and we wish and wish we could be in that other place, the place where we were last happy and if we could go back there we’d freeze time, we’d make it stop completely and choose to live out those moments as the rest of our lives, ‘cause they’re safe, we know them and we never have to face the bad change. Then again, you could be somewhere I could never imagine and that is fine too, but no matter where you are I ask that you let me come along and I will be company. I will try to make you laugh, make you mad, confuse you, clarify you and when nobody is looking we can cry together.

I’m going to tell you my story, feel free to interrupt me, I’ve been know to talk too much and when we are all done, if you feel like, if you are in the mood, you can tell me your story or we can take another voyage together, we can go to sacred places, places where the wind is silent and natures beautiful colors roar in significance and we lay upon soft ground and feel a faint warmth of a fading sun. Come on, grab your hat, we’re already late to go nowhere.

Chapter 1

Origin of the Species

Before we get too lost in my story let me give you a few basic bites of information that are important to me, think of it as the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to My Life: but you won’t need a towel or a privet bush. It’s just a few bursts of information I feel everybody should know about the little island of Ireland. You see, that’s where I come from and too many people have tried to force this round peg into the shamrock shaped hole. It rubs me the wrong way and I always like to be rubbed the right way. So let me bore you, or thrill you, it’s up to you how you take it, and listen to my rant.

Ireland, the Island of saints and scholars, shamrocks and leprechauns, Guinness and whiskey, a country with thousands of years of history that have all been reduced to a handful of obnoxious stereotypes. When I walk into a bookstore I see shelves stuffed with books on Ireland. They have scenic pictures of green beauty, pubs to visit, songs to sing and histories to read. There are the tales about how poor the Irish are and have nothing to eat but potatoes and dirt. Books that blame the English for all her ills, even after eighty years and more of independence and not a mention of the self-serving crooked Irish politicians that have tried their hardest to choke the life out of the island. Have you ever noticed that if you take a map of England and Ireland and flip it sideways, it looks like a collie dog fucking a terrier? Geographic predestined antagonism between the two islands if you ask me.

Then there is the poetry; modern day Celtic bards, not an original thought in their own heads, but reproductions of a time that is gilded and lost. They are filling away at their own craft making it fit the shamrock shaped hole – cookie cutter literature.

A few years ago I read a book by an Irish author, it was a great book, you’d be hard pushed to find even one of my complaints between the covers. It was a story of ordinary people and the ordinary tragedies that befall us all whether we’re Irish, Norwegian, American, Russian, English or Mexican. In point, it was a universal book, like the poetry of Thomas Kinsella. You read it and realize it could have been penned by anyone from anywhere. Then after putting it down you’re proud that such universality exists and emanates from the little island that is intellectually chained by her clichés.

Rather than complain and moan and talk about it with a pint in my hand (which doesn’t sound half bad), I hope to open up that world to you, if you’ll listen. I want to take the typical Irish poor-mouth, Celtic winged, song singing, happy-beer-drinking-green-leprechaun with his crock of gold story and make it dissolve in the light of reality, but you’ll have to forgive me for putting on the Quiet Man and running around the place like a mad lunatic on March 17^th 1998.

Even if some of the stereotypes appear in these pages, I want you to recognize that they do make up part of the Irish character, but there is far more to the beast. An American is not just a cheeseburger and coke, a Mexican is not just tequila and beans and a German is not just beer and sauerkraut (well, actually…just kidding)! The soul is an individual creature, more than the sum of its parts and should never be taken for granted. As the old Indian said “You cannot know a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins,” or something very close to that.

Now here’s the history lesson and there will be an open book test at the end! The Irish are an amalgamated people, mongrels of the best sort (a cross between a collie and a terrier you might say). A pure Irish person is a myth, a figment of the imagination. The history books tell us since we are an island out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, we’ve been subjected to many invasions. The Celts, contrary to popular thought, were one of the late invaders, we’d already been quite shaken up by the time they came along, all manner of Cro-Magnon man and all that. We’ve got monuments older than the Great Pyramids, but it’s hard to get the tourists without the sun and sand – Board Failte (our tourism board) need to get on that a little more – imagine ‘Newgrange: The Egypt of Ireland!’

The Romans touched the island for a brief moment, but decided not to stay. I imagine the day their tour bus came it was a wet and windy, wintry Tuesday afternoon, they took one look around the place: a piss-poor climate with primal men running around in loincloths and decided to leave it alone. If only they’d taken their raincoats with them, the Vatican City might be in Ireland today! At least we’d have given Avignon a run for its money – come on Board Failte get on it – ‘Athlone: The Rome of Ireland!’ Chateauneuf de Pape would have a whole new meaning.

The Vikings planted their seed among the soils of Ireland when they gave us our capital city in 988 AD, adding a little Norse aggression to the blood of the Celtic warrior and setting Dublin up for a great Gaelige Football team; Jason Sherlock pure fucking Viking. However, the mix was not thick enough because around 1171 AD the Normans (soon to be known as the English) arrived by invitation and never left. They turned a little sour under King Henry VIII and his split with Rome (told you we should have had the Vatican). Then we became the famous persecuted Irish. Gaining control again of the island was going to take a very long time.

The Spanish, the good Catholics they are, helped us out with little effect, but added a nice little bit of Mediterranean blood to the race, giving us the Black Irish. Then we went through all the tough years of Penal Law, Emigration and Famine. In the early part of the 19^th Century the population of Ireland sat around 8 million smiling Paddies; then came Pytotopthora the bastard, the catalyst for the potato famine. Bad years such as Black ’47 drove the number down to around two million depressed and bitter souls, fueling generations of poets, novelists and musicians with-hard-done-by inspiration, the kind of inspiration you just can’t receive from magnetic poetry. Finally in the 1920’s we gained something that looked like independence. The Irish Free State was created, minus six counties in the North of the island up in Ulster. Counties Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan escaped the annexation, retaining a little of Ulster for the Irish and that was the beginning of a whole bunch of new troubles.

In 1959 a New Zealander by the name of Dr. Vivian Vial came to rest on the shores of Ireland. His invasion went pretty much unnoticed by the general population. Only the few folks in the Department of Agriculture who hired him to teach genetics to the church-made-stupid scientists of Ireland noticed him come quietly in.

His expedition to Ireland came via British Honduras in Central America, where his first son Bill was born and Northumberland in England, where my Dad, Charlie was born in 1956. Along with his wife Nessie, they settled in Blackrock, an emerging suburb on the South Side of Dublin. Then a daughter, Jane, was born completing one of Ireland’s newest families.

All seemed to be going well, until Vivian remembered he didn’t come alone to Ireland and he actually had a family. Ten years or so had passed by this time and a divorce through the bottom of a beer glass made my Grandparents very bitter towards each other. Charlie, after a very rebellious teenage life went north to Greencastle in County Donegal to become a fisherman, when he was only sixteen. Bill followed him soon and Nessie and Jane went back to New Zealand. Granda stayed on in Dublin and began his new career drinking for Ireland.

In Greencastle there’s a fisheries school where Charlie learned his trade and earned his Skipper’s Ticket. The course involved spending a lot of time in Killybegs in the south of Donegal. Killybegs at the time was emerging as Ireland’s premier fishing port, but it was here Dad learned to drink like a man and met my mother Noelle Sharkey.

She was the daughter of Peggy and Paddy Sharkey, relative new comers to Donegal, having grown up in Cavan and Louth respectively. There were seven children in the Sharkey clan and Noelle was the third youngest and a dreamer like her father.

The Sharkeys stood out from the rest of the Killybegs locals for a few reasons. Paddy was a self employed inventor with the look of a mad scientist, a shock of white hair, stained yellow from cigarette smoke sweeping across his face as he worked on electric-fish-catchers in his work shop out the back of the house. Peggy, Mrs. Sharkey or Granny Sharkey as most people knew her, was the matriarch of the family and a noted figure in the community of Killybegs. Her garden was the envy of the town, a place filled with fruit trees and flowers, natural rock birdbaths and nests. It was a little paradise and people complained when she wouldn’t give up ten feet at the end of it to make way for a wider road. She loved her garden and many of my memories of her are of her sitting out there feeding the birds and pulling weeds, with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth.

They also had a black child, Kevin, adopted as a baby and reared as one of the family. Due to the cool climate in Donegal, Ireland’s not that far from the Iceland on the scale of things, it is racially one of the whitest places on earth and their adopted son really set the Sharkeys apart from the crowd of sallow skinned red and brown headed families, Kevin would be of the later type of Black Irish. They were the kind of family that when dinner conversation ran out in other homes, they could always turn to the Sharkeys for good gossip and pass their mealtime without having to look at themselves.

It was Paddy who met Dad first. He literally found Charlie down the town in a pub and brought him home to get something to eat. My mother instantly fell in love with him, even though she was only thirteen and he three years her senior. At first he didn’t notice her, because she had many older and just as beautiful sisters, but by 1976 there had been courtship and a pregnancy and in June of that year they were married in St. Mary’s church, The Chapel.

There had been some argument about the wedding between Granny and the Church. The two of them being so young, the state of the bride and the fact that Charlie was a Protestant and Noelle and the rest of Killybegs were Catholic. Peggy would have none of it and caused such a ruckus that the Parish Priest could do nothing for fear of her and they were married in the main church and not in the vestry. However the bride wasn’t allowed to wear white and my mother was married in a primrose colored dress.

My brother Derek was born on the 20^th of October 1976, the first of a new generation on the island: half-New Zealander and half-Irish. He had dark hair like both the parents but like Dad he had the dark Spanish skin of his Vial heritage. The Vials were from the Basque region in Spain. Miners by trade that went to Cornwall to take part in the tin mining and when Her Majesty’s Empire ear marked New Zealand for colonization and found Gold, they went there to try their luck at a potentially prosperous style of mining. The gold was scarce and they became sheep farmers. My Great Grandfather became the head of the largest meat factory in New Zealand turning over $35 million a year, that’s a lot of lambs to the slaughter.

A year later I was born on the 29^th of December 1977, four days after my Mother’s eighteenth birthday. I was a small baby, not a full six pounds, if I had been a salmon I’d have been thrown back. My uncle bill remembers driving over to Letterkenny in the snow to pick me up in an old Volkswagen Beatle, I however have no recollection of the event. I was Christened Charles George Vial after my Dad, but very soon Charlie George was dropped down to just George to avoid confusion.

It’s bad enough growing up in a small Irish catholic town with a Spanish surname, but a first name like George, takes the biscuit. It’s not very Irish, in fact it’s totally English and I had the piss taken out of me all the time when I was in school… “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie…” You would think I’d have been given a name like Patrick, Michael, Seamus, Mathew, Mark, Luke or John, at least a name that sounded like an apostle or saint, anything but Charles George. The namesake of an English King, actually two lines of Kings! It must have been a subconscious compromise between my parents, since I was raised Catholic and only had to bear the burden of a Protestant name.

When I was five or six I was so upset about my name, the older boys kept making fun of me, that I ran into the kitchen crying and asked Mam why couldn’t she have called me Peter or Patrick. So she picked me up, leaned me over the sink, splashed some water on my head and re-christened me Patrick Vial. It didn’t stick though, and an hour later I was still Charles George Vial as it said on my silver christening mug.

Off all the counties in Ireland, Donegal is the most remote. Not just because it’s geographically the most northern part of the island and almost as close to Iceland as it is to Cork. But because it’s bordered by Northern Ireland for the most part and only connected to the rest of Ireland by the few miles of Leitrim it touches. A local band, The Goats Don’t Shave, once sang a song saying that they “Should build a wall around Donegal and legalize ‘em all, Las Vegas in the Hills of Donegal.” The wall is already there psychologically and that is what makes Donegal such a great place. We talk like Northerners, but we’re Southern Irish: We live in the North of Ireland, but we’re not Northern Irish. We’re fecked up that’s what we are.

Well anyway, Killybegs is in Donegal and that is where I grew up. As I said Killybegs is Ireland’s biggest fishing port and is of great importance to the rest of Ireland and Europe for that fact alone. Killybegs is a very deep harbor and many foreign freighters land in there because there is nowhere else in Ireland fit enough to birth them. All this coming and going of foreigners gives a very international air to life in Killybegs. A young Irish lad growing up in the midlands might meet a few tourists here and there and maybe even go on a foreign holiday themselves, but besides that they live in a very Irish world. In Killybegs the young folks get used to sharing their space with Spaniards, Frenchmen, Nigerians, and many, many other nationalities. A Nigerian boat broke down in the harbor in the late eighties and a couple of hundred men from that country had to near enough seek political asylum in Killybegs for over a year and a half. They added a great bit of color to the life around the town in more ways than one and even helped the local soccer team get a bit of skill.

Besides all that, Killybegs is a beautiful place. It sits under the Caledonian fold mountain of Conerad and from the water it appears as if the mountain itself rises almost vertically up out of the sea like a Norwegian Fjord. The bay itself is well sheltered with St. John’s Point on one side, stretching six brave miles out into the Atlantic Ocean and the Donegal coastline on the other side offering a little protection from natures worst advances.

The area is littered with beaches and coves for many miles, but none surpasses the beauty of Fintra beach. Of all the golden stretches of sand I’ve seen in the world, there has never come one to equal her. Perhaps I am biased, but if you are ever there on a warm day in July or any other day of the year, go and visit it and make your own decision. The hinterland of Killybegs is rough and rugged, but an abundance of rivers, lakes and forestry make up in beauty what it looses in practical matters as far as land is concerned. If you want a flat piece of ground, you have to make it yourself. John B. Kean could have written many sequels using Donegal if he was so inclined.

Killybegs is a four-hour drive from Dublin (depending how fast you drive), but only a thirty-minute drive from Slieve League, the highest sea cliffs in all of Europe. They drop 1972 feet straight down into the Atlantic and every year some brave German or Australian tries to scale it without a rope or harness and a few hours later the cliff and rescue service is scooping their remains out of the water with a bucket. They are one of the most beautiful sights you’ll ever see. Everyone goes on and on about the Cliff’s of Moher down in County Clare, but they’ve got nothing on Slieve League.

Killybegs, Na Cealla Beaga the Irish name for the town means “The Little Cells,” a name earned from the beehive cells used by the monks who were the first to settle there, the monks knew what they were doing when they chose the well sheltered bay. Killybegs is a little bit of paradise, as long as you’re not passing the fishmeal plant at low tide. Killybegs has a smell all to itself and the locals learn to live with it, ‘cause they tell themselves “It’s the smell of money.” That may be true for a few in the town, but not for the majority who toil all year round in the factories and boats, loosing limbs and lives for a dream that often never comes. I heard a statistic once that Killybegs had more millionaires per head of population than anywhere else in the country and the town was nicknamed the home of the “Mackerel Millionaires,” in the 80’s. You’re as likely to see a brand new BMW parked beside a 1983 Ford Escort with a bail of hay in the back seat and a collie dog in the front seat, eyeing up a terrier tied up outside a local pub.

If you are up on a hill, looking down over the town at night, it appears small and insignificant to the expanse of the ocean around it. Then you look further across the bay and you can see the town of Bundoran, twinkling like fairy lights and you are reminded that the whole of mankind is insignificant to the awesome size and power of nature and we are all merely here at her discretion. For this you must offer her respect and even though the people of Killybegs make their livelihood from her sea – they do not own it – they are merely tenant farmers on the oceans of the world.

2007-03-20T11:37:00.000-05:00

Constant of Why We Don’t Go

Going home

Too many memories,

Washing through the mind,

A pin prick of pain

In the temporal lobe,

Constant.

Happiness to look forward to,

Smiles, hellos, hugs.

Old demons, new ghosts,

Pin prick becomes a small hammer,

Thud,

Constant.

Anger, Love and Hate,

The holy trinity

Of emotion,

The nod of a head,

The narrowing of eyes,

A kiss like a fist to the mouth,

Whack,

Constant.

Still going there,

There is no peace, and no quiet,

No denying it’s time to go,

Unfurl yourself and go,

Go, go, go…

New Poems

2006-07-06T16:03:00.000-05:00

Girl on a Beach

You were just a little girl
Sitting on the beach,
With a pen and scraps of paper;
While a storm raged on.

You could have run away,
Sought safer ground,
But you wanted to capture the fierce beauty
That lay within the winds.

Sand blasted your face,
Stinging your eyes; grit in your teeth,
But the words kept coming,
Your hand kept moving
And you stayed to catch them all.

All around you waves crashed off rocks
Hurricane strength winds lifted sand-banks,
Changing your surroundings.
You clung to the edge of your towel,
Grasping to something familiar.

The tides rose higher and higher,
The waves crashed closer and closer:
Caught between the moon and the Earth
In their giant game of tug-o’-war.

It was too late for anyone to save you;
No lifeguard on duty, nobody watching.
Swept away in a deafening roar,
By an awesome natural force.

Your pen, clutched by a lifeless hand,
But the scraps of paper blew inland.
The ink was running, wet from sea-water and tears,
But the words, the beautiful words, could still be read:

You suffered, gave yourself as a poetic sacrifice,
So we could know the beauty that lay within a storm.

One Year Later

Even though it has been a year since you left,
We didn’t stop thinking about you.
We couldn’t stop,
You were in every ounce of our lives.
When we tried to sleep at night
You were there telling us stories,
In a hushed soft voice.
When I closed my eyes to cry
You were there to dry the tears,
With a soft protective hand.

There will come a day
When we can walk with you again,
Hear you laugh and listen to your dreams,
But until then we will love you
And think about you everyday,
As if you are here with us.

We miss you Mam,
And pray that God holds you dear,
As you were dear to us in this life.

St. Mary’s Graveyard, Killybegs 2004

People live and people die,
They die all the time,
And we are left as witnesses
To their ever fading memory.

Names engraved on marble,
Flowers dying on gravel,
Weeds growing up the side
Of a once thoughtful memento.

Hatred and hurt buried
Six-feet under,
No voice, no release,
Only memory and words left behind
To vouch for the fallen.

Every one of them walked these streets,
Breathed this air
And mourned these plots,
Never imagining that one day
They too would fill the earth
And return to the Universal Mother
What they had only borrowed.

I want to cry for you all.
But not a tear will come,
The well is empty,
Only ‘cause I know
That perhaps someday
I too will lie beside
You and gather dirt and weeds
Alongside my own memory.

But till then
I will be your witness
And withhold my judgment
Leaving you all at peace
In your plots,
The last place you’ll ever live.

Connect the Dots

If you were to connect all the dots
Since you learned to hold pencil between
Forefinger and thumb
What would the picture look like?

A red summer sky setting behind a mountain,
Bursting skywards, mushroom like
Above a Japanese City:

Or would it be a million lithe Gazelle jumping over a bluff
Into the jaws of a thousand gapping crocodiles.

A muddy faced child playing in a ditch,
Wondering where his parent’s are,
And why does his belly hurt so much?

Whatever picture it is that develops
When one connects to two, two connect to three,
It is a picture of the unique, of the individual soul,
One that only you can connect.

It’s your pen, no one will add the dots
Or place the numbers: only you.

Once upon a time…

A young Vine grew in the spring rains.
When the summer came it met the Sun
Reaching out its leaves to catch the warm rays.
Every morning the Sun and the Vine met
And began to love each other,
Giving each other happiness and life.
Then the fruit of their love was pressed
Into the most beautiful wine,
Bottled and stored,
As a special marriage between the Vine and the Sun.

Fossil

There have always been things that I’ve loved,
There have always been things that I’ve missed,
Cried for and lusted after.

But what have they all been but bitter disappointments,
So tonight I say fuck ‘em all, to hell with them,
I will do without, ‘cause once I get them, I just want more,
They cause a gluttony in a man’s soul and when he thirsts for such things
He can never be satisfied.

A savage beast is not so out of necessity,
It is out of a cruel inbreed want of pleasure,
Born to the marrow,
Killing for the joy, to feel the strength over the weak.
A carcass nibbled and left to rot on the side of a mountain.

The beast must be tamed, brought to bear it’s wrath,
Held up to its head like a mirror,
To see the waste that has lain in its trail of years,
Perhaps then it will only take what it needs to survive,
Or is it too late, is extinction the only real solution for
Such an abhorrence of nature, one that lives so far outside the
Realm of even animalistic civilization?
Should it be fossilized and buried under a hundred feet of rock.
Left there for someone treasure seeker to find a million years from now
And imaginatively try to piece together a romantic and heroic story for such
A savage beast cast in rock.

Will the chipping of the rock chip away its guilty conscience?
Cleansing it to a noble creature that may have roamed an ancient plain,
With grace and skill, will the lie remain buried with the bones
And a false truth told with petrified fossil pretenders of the real self?

I am afraid of the lies that will be read from this fossil long after the beast
Is gone, no longer able to tell its own vile story,
It own vicious tale of want and destruction,
Perhaps that yarn is best left untold, the reality too much
For the soft ears of a comfortable world.

So once again I say fuck ‘em all, to hell with them.

Ship in a Bottle

What delicate hands it takes
To place a ship within a glass bottle.
Sails extended after the final placement,
Then corked and sealed forever in a miniature prison.

There is no foreseeable escape from the world of glass,
That ship will never sail on open waters,
If a storm does rage, its power
Will be nothing but a deafened silence.

The captain of that ship is without a mission,
His sextet is useless, the North Star is but a
Fairy light twinkling for its own indulgence.
Deckhands are not homesick, never seasick,
For they know nothing of home or sea.

The only offered escape from such a vacuumed existence,
Is to smash the glass, shattering the bottle,
Destroying the delicate vessel inside,
Merely putting an end to an impossible way of life,
No problem solved, no real resolution.

But just as that bottle is broken,
Another delicate hand, gently maneuvers
Another ship within a glass bottle,
And at the very last moment, extends the sails
And places the fated cork, to begin again a silent life.

Poor Old Georgie Best

“Poor old Johnny Ray,” said Dixie’s Midnight Runners,
What about Poor old Georgie Best, the Belfast Lad?

He was sticking them in the net when I was born,
But there were too many distractions,
couldn’t keep his eye on the ball.
A fallen hero they call people like that,
Greatness squandered through a bottle.
Five years of magic it could have been twenty.

They’ve all been calling in requests for ya,
Singing your praises and Pele says you’re the best.

Your passing inspired me to get the boots out
And head to the park with my dog Guinness.
I kicked the ball up and down, tried a few flash moves,
The dog chased after me and the cold bit my face,
I’m out of shape, so I hobbled back to the car when a few
Youths came along looking for a game.

They say you had a new liver, a new life and you spent that one too.
Sure, if that’s the way your star shines, what are you gonna do,
You can only be the man you are, what’s the point in being someone else?
You could have easily ended up a fucking mess in Belfast with 12 waynes and
A job down Harland and Wolf; instead you took on the world and nearly fucking
Beat them at their own game, so to hell with the be-grudgers.
You’re the best Georgie Best.

History will polish up your blemishes and you’ll be remembered as a fine man,
And you deserve it too.
We’ll never know what went on in that head of yours,
But we can guess, and you had your reasons.
A drunkard and a womanizer, a footballer and a legend, a man and a myth,
Man United and Northern Ireland will put your name on jerseys and tomorrow’s Youth
Will wear them and when they pick teams and names
Out on the field at the back of the houses
I’m sure you’ll be among the names they choose,
He shoots, he scores, one nil, Georgie Best.

Flare Over St. John’s

Dad saw the flare from Dunkineely,
On his way back from work;
He didn’t think much of it,
But called it into the Coast Guard.

A few weeks later a big black Vauxhall
Pulled-up in front of the house,
They asked me if “Charlie Vial” was in,
I said I’d go get him.

He was wearing a black leather jacket,
And his bearded face looked tired;
She too wore a black leather jacket,
But hers looked too long, ill fitting,
Like she was wearing it because she had to,
She didn’t look tired, but sad.

Dad told me to make tea,
While they all went into the living room,
With the fake bamboo wallpaper.
Everyone held the mugs between their knees
With their hands cupped around.

They all stared into the watery tea,
A few words spoken, no answers from the mugs:
“So, you saw the flare?”
“Yeah, just over St. John’s”

When they left I asked Dad
“What was all that about?”
He said the flare was from
A Northern Irish Fishing boat,
Her brother was on it
And no-one survived.

Box of Kittens

Dad got the double-barreled shotgun,
The one Granda gave him with
The nice mahogany case
And filled his pocket with cartridges.

I helped him put the cat and all the kittens
In the box and carried it up the backyard,
And over the ditch into Danny’s field.

I could hear the mammy cat
And all the kittens scratching at the sides
Of the box as I laid it on the ground
And stood back.

Dad closed the shotgun from
The ‘broke’ position and fired
Directly, point-blank-range.

The box blew apart, disintegrated,
And kittens ran everywhere,
Dad fired again,
Reloaded quickly,
Like he was shooting clay pigeons,
Pivoted quickly, aimed, fired again:
After another reload all the kittens
And the mammy cat were dead:

We walked back to the house in silence
And said nothing to no-one.

The Brown Bread Brigade

2006-06-25T23:59:00.001-05:00

Mum wasn’t officially a member of the Brown Bread Brigade. It was more of a professional association, as there was plenty of crossover between them and the Killybegs Writer’s Group. But to Dad there was little more than a crust in the difference and he used the term synonymous with both groups.

The Brown Bread Brigade were crusty people as most would describe them, not saying they weren’t nice, most of them were very nice, but they all had that crusty element that separated them from true poets and writers, like the woolen jumpers that looked like they belonged to Scandinavian fishermen and the un-kept hair that was always tied back with a rubber band. But I suppose the main difference was that they liked to bake bread more than they liked to write poetry. I remember having some brown bread baked by one of Mum’s friend’s and it was great, not as great as Granny’s, but not bad with a slab of butter and jam on it.

Ester was the leader of the Brown Bread Brigade as far as I could tell. She used to live up above Melly’s Chip Shop, next door to Tony Deany’s. She was always very friendly to Tony and me and her husband (Man friend, I don’t know if Brown Bread Brigade people were allowed to marry, kind of went against the grain of the feminist side of the culture) let us sit on his motorbike that had the Isle of Man TT sticker on it.

Then there was Miffy, her understudy. She lived with Geraldine for a while, who was considered a member of the Brown Bread Brigade, but later she went over to the writer’s side full time. Miffy was very pretty when she was young and we were kids. She went out with Damien Dowds that lived next door to us when we were up St. Cummin’s Hill. Anyway, she was far too good looking to be hiding behind 80lbs of wool and baking bread. I wonder if she’s still in the Brigade?

I don’t know what Dad had against the Brown Bread Brigade, but whenever he and Mum were having a row, sooner or later the phrase “You and that fucking Brown Bread Brigade, why don’t you all just fuck off!” would pop up out of nowhere. There didn’t seem to be any harm in them as far as I was concerned, so what if they were a little new age and crusty.

I was a little too young to understand them completely at the time, but now looking back I can see they had a great way of life; living on the edge of accepted society, not quite Moonies or Hippies, they were their own kind of outsider. They took this quite literally when they moved out to St. John’s Point, a peninsula jutting six miles out into the Atlantic Ocean. I can’t remember if the house was Ester’s or Miffy’s, but I remember both of them being there and my Aunt Geraldine was sunbathing naked down the back of the house. However, we were more interested in the front of the house, where that summer a school of porpoise came close to the coast and for the good shelter offered by the Point and the rich feeding grounds, they decided to stay for a while. It was amazing to watch those giant mammals playing in the ocean like it was some kind of school yard or playground. The docile cows in the fields looked on at them thinking “fucking edgets, would you look at them fecking around like there’s no tomorrow.” Cows are very somber animals and need to relax if you ask me. They could learn a thing or two from the porpoise.

I am not sure if any of them actually worked full time or not (I’m talking about the Brown Bread folks now not the cows), or if they just lived on the dole and government allowances, maybe that’s what pissed Dad off about them. I know that Miffy went to put her fisherman’s jumper to good use and fished on my Uncle Kevin’s boat the Rose De Vore for a while. So did my cousin Lynn Murphy after she got her skipper’s ticket, but I don’t think the Brown Bread Brigade was a good fit for her.

I always liked the sound of the name “The Brown Bread Brigade.” Dad’s use of the word kind of gave them authority and validation. The only other brigade I knew growing up in Killybegs was the Fire Brigade, but as far as I know the Brown Bread Brigade didn’t have a fire engine and were not called out to chimney fires as much. Could you imagine five crusties running up the main street in Killybegs, past Gallagher’s shop and McHugh’s Video shop with loaves in arm and woolly jumpers flaying in the wind shouting: “Out of the way people, we got bread, we got brown bread!” Dogs would bark and kids would cheer them on and old women would complain that they were going too fast and sure it wasn’t like the whole house was on fire.

fecking loaf in the lake and kills a duck. I literally choked on the dentist’s instruments I laughed so hard.

The boy’s mother was the ultimate Brown Bread Brigade member. She was a total save the whales candidate with her “I hate the world ‘cause the world hates me” attitude and over sized woolly jumper! Christ, can you remember the clothes she sent her kid to school in? But then it’s sad when they get home and the mother has tried to kill herself, which made me stop laughing and think about my own mother.

The kid in the movie, Marcus, reminds me of my younger brother Bruce when he was that age. Although Bruce would never sing Killing me Softly out of key, with his eyes closed, but in other ways the kid and Bruce were alike. Both as young boys had mothers who were lost to them and to themselves. Both were gentle, good natured boys with a love of music. Genuine in their gratefulness, like getting the crappy socks for Christmas and when the rest of us would be like “ah fuck great, they’ll go fantastic with my hand knitted shitty scarf” they be like “thanks, I’ll get great use out of them” and actually mean it. I think it was hardest on Bruce to lose his mother, he was the most in need of her, and the sad fucking part of it is that he lost her years before she died.

Mum might not have worn the woolly jumpers all the time, but she definitely had the inclination, she was more of an all-day in pajamas person. When the time came and mum never got out of her pajamas it was like trying to talk to a brick wall, except you could get more response out of the wall than you could out of mum when she was in that one dimensional phase. Drove me fucking nuts. You could never have shouted loud enough that she would hear you. Just nod the head and avert the eyes. She didn’t deserve all the self pity she drowned herself in. There was still too much love floating around her, the buoy was there, all she had to do was grab hold.

Now that I think of it Mum could never have been a full fledged Brown Bread Brigade member, ‘because she like the mother in About a Boy, couldn’t bake for shit.

Friday Nights at Granny’s

2006-06-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

Friday nights were always the best at Granny’s house. Derek and I would be off school for the whole weekend on Friday afternoon; I was finished before Derek at 2 o’clock ‘cause I was a whole fourteen months younger and baby-infants and high-infants always got out at two. The thought even of having to stay till three scared me and I wanted to get off school at 2 o’clock forever. Of course, as I got older I had to stay later.

I’d rush home from the Nial Mhor National School, down the hill by the Fire Brigade, up the Back Street and past the Bank of Ireland. We nearly always had to stop to play at the window of Thornton’s, even though they closed down a long time ago. Their window holds magic and not just for children either, because I’ve seen adults play on it when they get drunk – and I’ve been one of those drunk adults.

You have to press your face flat up against the window and look down to the end of it, with one eye closed, where one of your friends would be standing, lifting his left leg and waving his left arm, bobbing his head to and fro and by some crazy law of refraction you are able to see another image perfectly symmetrical to the other and it moves exactly the same except on the other plane and it appeares as one body moving the same way in two directions at once. Cool.

This joviality usually lasted for five or ten minutes depending upon the creativity of the performers. I’d say “see you later” to Declan or call him “Decky” or “Colonel Decker” when I got to the Sail Inn. I’d go up The Hill and he’d go on up to Conlin Road, he lived up past Curan’s shop, next door to Granny’s house, we didn’t walk all the way home together.

I’d trek up Stony Batter with Ciaran and John Martin and some other stragglers and Patrick Caraban but he was younger than us and he mother was English and his dad was an engineer or something. And even though he was younger, we liked him and with his round head and red hair I found him quite interesting, everyone in my family had dark hair and angular features, he didn’t look like any of them.

Without fail, at the top of Stony Batter, John James Burke, John Martin’s father, would be there to relieve us of our ‘mala scoiles’ (school bags in Irish). He must have been the strongest man in the world ‘cause just one bag nearly broke my back with all the copy books and school books and work books and pencils and rubbers and toppers and crusted pieces of bread. But no bother to John James, he took eight or ten bags and carried them the whole way up St. Cummins Hill, which was the steepest hill for miles and miles around. From the half way point you could turn around and see a spectacular view of the harbor with all the fishing boats tied up at the pier, you could see men driving forklifts in and out of the auction hall and the gulls would be shitting all over the place as they swooped down to snatch a stray fish fallen from a box. Beyond that you could see all the big houses over in Ben Roe and beyond that you could see all the way over to Ballyshannon and Bundoran, but you could see them better at night when their lights twinkled like fairy lights on a Christmas tree.

Recently, the County Council had put in a railing that ran all the way up the steepest part of the hill and we used it to drag ourselves up the bastard of an incline. John Martin was real proud of his Dad for carrying the bags. I wondered why my father never carried the bags.

At the top of the Hill, which wasn’t really the top at all, just the beginning of even more hill, was the first house, the Friel’s house. The grey hounds would be barking at us and the donkey tied to the ESB pole would be braying at us and old Eddy Friel, if he was not yet too drunk would be shouting at us and Leo would say hello.

Leo was Derek’s friend and even though he was older than Derek he still talked to me and even played with me, but I was still scared of him. Their house was no. 18 and ours was no. 14 and other people called him a tinker, but I liked him and his older sister babysat us. But I didn’t like the way their house smelled, it reminded me of Jayes Fluid and once I helped carry a baby’s cot for a new baby in the house and I stuck my hand in cat shit, I didn’t like going in the house after that.
At our house John James would unload my school bag and I would go into the house to start watching Bosco or anything else that was on Bog 1 or Bog 2, the names we called the Irish television channels and I’d wait for Derek to come home. Mam would make me a cup of tea and sometimes give me a treat if Derek wasn’t home yet. But my sister Jenny would have to have the same ‘cause she was she was younger and would have a tantrum if she didn’t get what she wanted.

There was a giant birdcage on top of the TV with budgies and cockatiels in it, spitting sunflowers seeds onto the floor. I use to love watching Mam hover them up, it was amazing to see the piles of seeds instantly disappear, sucked up into the Nilfisk. When I was able to, I hovered them myself, it was totally fascinating to see them instantly disappear, it was as near to magic that we got on our house.
When Derek got home Mam would nag us to get ready for staying over at Granny’s, ‘cause we wouldn’t leave the TV alone. So we grabbed the rough sacs and packed pajamas for after our bath and clothes for Saturday because Granda might take us to Donegal or Sligo.

In those days we only got one bath a week and it was always on Friday night, no matter if we were at home or at Granny’s, unless we were at Paddy’s then we didn’t get one at all ‘cause they didn’t have running water. So it became something of an institution among all the people I knew in Killybegs to get really cleaned up on Friday nights and try to stay half-way decent till the following Friday, even if they had hot water all the time and a shower in the house.

We had no car and Dad was always out fishing or working so we walked by ourselves down to Granny’s. He worked a lot since he stopped drinking and now we had a phone and a video and hardly anyone else had those up The Hill. John Martin told Mam that “I had the life of Riley.”

If it wasn’t raining and if we were brave enough we’d go the short cut by The Circle and come out the back of Emerald Park soccer pitch, and come in the back way by Granda’s workshop. But mostly it was raining and we weren’t brave enough cause of the Murrin twins and the Kerry brothers who lived around The Circle. They would try to bully us, they were much older than us and there was nothing we could do. So we’d end up going down St. Cummins Hill and around by the cottages. The cottages were just houses that looked like ours, only they were older and nicer. St. Cummins Hill was very new and we were one of the first families to move into it after it was built. Granny’s house was on Conlin Road, although some argued, like Stephen Laferty, that it was actually Marine Drive ‘cause there was a green sign that said so, like the one that said St. Cummins Hill. But there was no sign for the Circle, so I guess they were part of Cummins Hill too even if we didn’t like them to be. But we all called it Conlin Road; me, Derek, Declan, Mam and even Granny and Granda. Conlin Road was even older than the cottages and some houses had big trees in the front and back gardens.

Granny’s house had the biggest trees and the most beautiful gardens. They’d won lots of trophies for her and she gave the trophies to me and Derek when she didn’t want them anymore. Dad was looking at the one she gave me and the base fell off, it probably wasn’t his fault, but he’d broken my Transformer on Christmas the year before trying to make it into a robot and this Christmas he broke my huge black Gobot Jeep. I thought he was trying to break my stuff and I cried, but I guess they were just accidents.

When you walked up No. 64, you’d get the most beautiful smells from all the flowers and the cherry blossom trees that had coconut shells hanging from it. The shells were used to feed the birds, Granny would put left over fat and lard into them and the birds would go crazy hanging from them and eating the delicious lard. Granny’s garden always had tons of birds in it, more than any other garden in the whole world. There was on rock in it, brought from St. John’s Point years ago, that had a depression in it and collected rain water, the birds used it as a bath and it was amazing to see them playing in it, like they knew it was Friday and time for a bath.

Granny was usually in the garden pulling weeds wearing yellow or pink Marigold rubber gloves and had a trowel in her hand. She loved her garden and it showed by the beautiful growth. Anything Granny loved; grew very well.

She’d greet us with a big hug, she never liked to kiss children ‘cause you just never knew who had a dirty, disgusting old cole-sore and especially she didn’t like people kissing babies. She said that’s why Kenneth Murphy always had a cole-sore ‘cause someone kissed him when he was a baby and now he always has one.

We’d all go in the house and throw our stuff in Magella’s old room. She was now living in Aileen and Pat’s old room and we’d go in there even though we were told not to and she had pictures of naked women on the walls. Her room was very exotic, we learned that word from Mam, and interesting, we loved to explore it. There was an old clog covered in barnacles that rested on a shelf, we were told Kevin, her boyfriend, lost it and when they found it, all the barnacles had grown on it. There was also a peacock’s feather in a vase and we would tickle our faces with it, but the naked ladies always took the most of our interest. There was one lady inside a glass bubble and it looked like she was on the moon and all alone and I wanted to be in there with her and kiss her, then she wouldn’t be alone at all. Derek liked the one of the lady swimming naked on her back, the sun was setting on her and she glowed red.

Her old room was not quite as exotic but there were still plenty of fun, cool things to root through, like the wooden box that had old Irish money and English money in it, along with postcards and fancy soaps that smelled great. There was a calendar with a blue train on it, but it wasn’t Magella’s, ‘cause we were there when Granny and Granda got it in Sligo at the train station and Kenneth Murphy stepped on the side of the real blue train and Granda told him not to and people thought he and Lynn were sisters ‘cause they had the same furry gold colored coats and Santa gave him a girl’s present. That made him very mad and when we teased him about it he tried to beat-up me and my cousin Paddy.

Granny would tell us that dinner was at half-six and to bring a cup of tea out to Granda in the work shop. Granda would be in the office with Bruce the dog at his feet. Grand was always wild excited to see us and no matter how busy he was he’d get up and bring us into the part of the workshop with all the tools and where his inventions were and where Miles and Johnny worked. Johnny was a “useless bollocks” Granny said and Miles was a great young fella from down Glenties way. She said Johnny was always stinking up her bathroom. If a new order of equipment had come in then the big box under the bench would be full of the best boxes and bubble paper. Derek and I would root through it until we found what we wanted, making sure to shake off the cigarette ashes that Johnny flicked in there.

Then we would say we were off to the Cunnigham’s, Declan and Kevin’s house, which Granny and Granda and even Mam called The Boyle’s. They called it that ‘cause Una Cunnigham, their mother, was Una Boyle before she married Colm Cunnigham and Granny and the rest couldn’t get use to the name change for the house, ‘cause the house was there longer than they were married.

Declan was my age but Kevin was a year older than Derek, but he still played with us when his own friends were not around, some of them were mean and they didn’t like our cousin Kenneth at all. I hated being around Kenneth when people came to bully him, ‘cause they’d pick on us too and when Kenneth wasn’t there they usually left us alone.

After playing with Declan and Kevin and having dinner and taking a bath and getting dressed in warm clothes by the coal fire, it would be late enough to turn on Channel 4 and watch horror movies. Borris Karlov and Long Chenny were the two names that Granny would say and sure enough one of them would be in the movie every Friday night. I liked the Werewolf movies best if all, but I didn’t like the Mummy movies so much. Derek and I couldn’t figure out why the hell the screaming woman didn’t just run away and damn those tannin leaves, ‘powerful cup of tea’ as Granda would say. Dracula ones were good too, but no matter how he died at the end, he would be back the next week, leading the Werewolf and Frankenstein in some crazy scheme to chase after the stupid screaming girl again; run for Christ sakes, run!

Granda would fall asleep in his chair and Granny would wake him up to go to bed and she’d tell us not to stay up too late, but of course we did. We stayed up until all the channels closed for the night. We got to hear the Irish national anthem and the British national anthem and then there was just fuzz. We’d silently creep up the creaking stairs and jump into our cold bed, but then we’d feel a warmth at the end of the bed. Granny had put hot water bottles in the bed for us and we stopped shivering as soon as we warmed up enough. There was a book on the side of the bed and we’d look at the pictures in it for a while. The Titanic was in there and The Lusitanian and a giant squid, the book was called Forgotten Titans or something like that. By then our eyes were getting very sleepy and Derek would make me get up and turn the light off and I would try to make it back to bed in the dark without knocking the pee bucket over. There was no upstairs toilet so you had to pee in a bucket when you had to pee at night. I often missed the bucket and peed on the floor and on my hand.

I would always wake before Derek the next morning ‘cause I knew Transformers was on TV and you had to get up good and early to catch the first part of the show, but I’d also watch The Pink Panther on Anything Goes and The Gobots, Centurions and He-Man. I loved it when it was just me in the sitting room and I could be in control of the television and nobody could tell me what to do. Before I turned on the television the room would be very silent and there was a slight feeling of warmth from the dead ashes in the fire and the only thing that broke the silence was the tick-tock of the broken coo-coo clock that always ran five minutes fast. There was a big painting of Granda above the mantle piece in his hunting jacket and there was a gun up on the wall and the cabinets were filled with Granny’s antiques that Derek loved. Granny’s house was much nicer than our and I loved it there.

Then the rest of the house would be waking-up after nine and Derek would come down and try to change the channel and Granny would make us cereal with warm milk and bananas and Granda would be up for his tea and then go down the town for the paper and after that out to the office.

If we were lucky Granda would need to make a run over to Sligo to pick up rough sacs for making his electric fishers. Granda had a huge blue Ford Granada and we would lie on the floor in the back when we got tired. Once I was leaning in the middle when I was told not to and Granda had to hit the brakes very hard and I hit my face on the dash, so I learned never to do that again.

Even when we were going to Sligo, Granda would stop in Doherty’s Fishing Tackle Shop in Donegal Town and talk to the owner for a while and maybe buy us a pen knife or a torch. Granny would tell him not to be too long as she wanted to go to Dunne’s when we got to Sligo. She had to buy a 3.99 chicken for Sunday dinner.

Derek and I played a game along the road counting the different makes of cars and there was always more Fords than anything else. Star cars were popular too, Granda called them Mercedes’. When we weren’t playing the game I stared out the window and imagined that I had a huge blade sticking out of the car and as we passed all the trees and telephone poles I was slicing them down, but I’d make sure to lift the blade when we buzzed past a house. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

You could see a Princess’s Castle when you drove up the hill before Kelly’s garage outside of Mount Charles. Granda told us that Rupunzel lived there and we always wanted to go up there, but nobody ever took us. So it had to remain a castle of our imagination, like the girl on the moon in the glass bubble.

Sometimes we’d call in to see our rich uncle Barry in Mount Charles. He owned a giant mansion down by the sea and it had a giant conquer tree beside it and we could dig around looking for chestnuts and collect as many as we could find. We didn’t really know our cousins, who lived there, but we loved playing on their toys, they had so many toys and we were all very jealous of them and my aunt Madge wasn’t very nice to us and Granny didn’t like her either.

When we got back to Killybegs after being in Sligo all day and we were well behaved, then we were invited to stay another night at Granny’s, even though she might be going to Bingo out in Dunkineely or down in Ardara. Granda would go down to Melly’s and buy us fish and chips, smothered in salt and vinegar and we’d eat it at the little table in the sitting room and watch the television.

Then when we were all cleaned up Declan would call on the phone and he’d be allowed to come over. Me, him, Derek and Granda would get out the Technic Lego and make things. I only knew how to make the same rally car over and over again, but it had an electric motor and it was very fun to play with. Derek had the yellow bricks and they had pneumatic pumps and he kept trying to make a digger, but it was very hard and didn’t look like much fun compared to my electric rally car. Declan was very skilled at making things with the lego and even had his own tool box out in his father’s shed and made things with us in Granda’s work shop. Granda showed us how to make catamaran boats with sails and we sailed them out at Fintra beach and Declan’s was the best one. He had Lego that you could make a fire station with and when we completed the station Granda took a picture of it.

When Granny got back from bingo Declan went on up home ‘cause he didn’t like to stay over. Granny told us we had to go to bed earlier ‘because we had to get up for Mass in the morning. We didn’t have to go to Mass when we were at home, but Granny made sure we went with her and we sat up the front, just one row back from the very front. I got to see lots of people from school at Mass and I even got to see a girl I liked, but she didn’t know I liked her and I was too shy to tell her. I often imagined she was the girl inside the bubble that was all alone on the moon and I was there to kiss her and make sure she was not alone. But she was rich and everyone knew her and I was not and nobody knew me.

Near the end of mass when the priest gave out communion I had to sit by myself for a few minutes, ‘cause Derek had just made his first holy communion and he went up with Granny and Ganda and the Murphy’s to receive communion. He made loads of money at his communion and I was excited to make mine next year, so I didn’t have to sit and I could go up in the line with everyone else and I would have loads of money.

After mass we got some pocket money to go to Molloy’s sweet shop and Granny went on home with Granda in the car to get the dinner finished. At Molly’s you could ether get ice-cream put onto a square cone with a knife or a quarter pound of canned sweets or boiled sweets. Cola-cubes were great but they stuck together in your pocket and bon-bons looked good but didn’t taste too good. If I couldn’t decide then I got a cone. There was a stack of newspapers on a small table by the chocolate bars and I always looked through to see if I could find the one with Dad’s name on it. If it wasn’t there then he was already up and about and if it was still there then I knew he was going to be in soon. Sometimes he came in when we were trying to make our minds up and he’d give us some more pocket money and you could get a can of smack pineapple or cola to go with your sweets or ice-cream.

Everybody in our whole family came to Sunday dinner at Granny’s house. The whole house smelled like food and it was a lovely smell. She’d have the best roast potatoes and corn and mushy peas, which I didn’t like, and stuffing. There was always a fight to see who’d get the leg and Mam would say to Dad, “Jaysus I wish your father would invent a chicken with ten legs.” My Granda Vial, who I didn’t really know, was a geneticist, but I didn’t know what that meant, but he lived in Dublin and worked in a big office.

Mam would tell us that we had to come home soon and we’d beg her to let us stay longer, but she’d remind us that we had school in the morning and we still had to do our homework and if we were really good then we could come and stay with Granny next Friday or go to Aidan and Francis’s house in Carrick to see Paddy. We wouldn’t argue and when we were full we’d go out the back to play and watch a game of football in Emerald Park.

If there wasn’t a game of football, then after we were finished playing, Derek and I would get our things at Granny’s and slowly walk back up the Hill to home and go back to our other life at 14 St. Cummins Hill. I loved my life better at 64 Conlin Road, but that was only my weekend life, the rest of the week was my real life and by Wednesday I loved that life just as much, until Friday came along again. And it was warm pajamas and roast potatoes and trips to Sligo and Lego and Vampires and Frankenstein and stupid Mummies and even more stupid screaming girls that wouldn’t run away. Damn those tannin leaves, powerful cup of tea.

Happy New Year

2006-06-25T23:56:00.000-05:00

It’s that time of the year again when you have to work through all the holidays and your wife and friends or boyfriends or girlfriends have the night off and you feel like you are the only one in the whole world without the night off.

You smile your way through Thanksgiving, then sarcastically laugh your way past Christmas Eve and Christmas Day “Another refill? Coming right away sir, NGFY!” Then New Year’s Even comes along and you had to work on your birthday the day before and you are at your wit’s end and you thank God for the small mercy that the boss opened some of the cheapest sparkling in the house to share with the staff and as you count down “5,4,3,2,1….” You start counting down the hours till your shift ends and you can go home, open a special bottle of wine you’ve been saving all year and settling in with the misses at the God awful hour of 3am.

But then seconds before they all scream “Happy New Year” your wife staggers in the door, red faced not from the cold but from a Magnum of Concha Y Toro bucket wine and instead of hurrah, you think “ah fuck!” You can see the eyes are gone and she is trying to drag you out of work to come party with her, but you know you’ve still got lots to do before you can leave and she starts nagging and walks off in a stormer. You’ve to go after her and tell her, “Hey I’m still at work, do you mind, sit in the bar and I’ll be right with you.” An hour passes and she keeps filling up at the bar and finally you are ready to take her home. But you’re not going home yet, the party is still going on at her sister’s house and she wants you to be with everybody else and you try to explain that you are tired and don’t want to go, but you are reminded that she hangs out with your friends “all the time.” So you go to her sister’s house and she can hardly talk and everybody there is ready for bed and you make small talk and you turn around and your wife is gone.

You find her outside trying to walk down Independence Ave at two o’clock in the bloody morning and you have to chase after her less a drug addict or prostitute tries to sell her something. Then she falls down and you have to carry her back to the car and you hope she just passes out in the back seat, but as you are driving down I-35 she stirs awake and opens the back door to get out. So you’ve one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on her arm and you’re screaming at her to close the door “fer fuck’s sake.” She tells you to leave her alone, ‘cause you’re in the wrong, it’s her right to open the car door and get out on I-35 at 70 miles an hour.

Eventually you get into the driveway of your house and she falls down nearly killing herself on the edge of the pavement and it’s your fault again. Then you get inside and the dogs have shit in the hallway ‘cause she never let them out earlier in the day and started celebrating a tad too early. So the house smells of shit and she starts crying and you tell her to ignore it and you’ll clean it up and for her to just lie down and take it easy.

You find her a receptacle to barf up into and get her a glass of water and fix up the bedroom for her so she can pass out safely and you can unwind, take your work clothes off have a New Year’s Eve beer for yourself and try and save some sanity from the night.

Then you turn around and there is shit all over the house! She has grabbed the dog blanket with runny shit on it and dragged it through the house and down into the basement and the washing machine is going full blast. You find her in the basement (still crying about the smell of shit) but now the washing machine is about to blow up ‘cause she over stuffed it with shitty dog blankets and the motor has ripped the drum off it’s base and the machine is full of shitty blankets and shitty water. Ahhh, you scream for God’s sake go to bed and leave the fucking shit alone!

After a struggle you get her to bed sans the shit on her pants, and it’s after three thirty in the morning and now you’ve to start cleaning up the shit that is smeared on the wall on the stairs and just about every where. So instead of feeling like shit, you now smell like shit.

After a shower you lay on the couch, crack open a beer, sit back, take one sip and completely pass out from exhaustion, Happy Fucking New Year. Let’s do this again next year.

Sheriff Bewler’s Day Off

2006-06-25T23:52:00.000-05:00

Three a.m. is a very late time of the night to be going to bed or very early time of the morning for that matter, either way Sheriff Bewler was exhausted. Driving up and down Highway 11, stopping drunks, domestic violence calls, none of those things are fun. It’s not covert, gun slinging, door breaking police work like you see in the movies. Starsky and Hutch, fucking fantasy Ford Taurino paradise.

Six a.m. comes fast after you lay your head down and the annoying high pitch digital chime of the alarm clock is not very welcome. A blind hand slithers out from the covers and hits the snooze button, for the additional seven minutes of heaven on earth. Seven minutes later his hand automatically performs the same function. That’s 14 minutes past wake-up time. 14 minutes later than he would get into the shower, 14 minutes later than he would hit the road back into town, 14 minutes later than he would open the sheriff’s office on Main Street. But you know what? It felt good, and the world could fuck off for 14 minutes. Back to Snooze!

Needless to say, he surprised the shit out of himself when he finally woke up and saw Nine a.m. on the clock. He’d snoozed before, but never actually slept. His adrenaline didn’t pump, fight or flight mode didn’t kick-in. He just stared at the clock, as the digits went 9:01 AM. Time: what a wonderful concept he thought and pulled his comforter tighter to his body and thought ‘bacon sounds good for breakfast.’

Usually at 9:15 AM he’d be talking shit with Alice, the secretary girl, over his third cup of shitty coffee. He’d be flirting with her, even though he was graduating high school when she was born. But she liked it all the same and if he hadn’t such a noticeable position in the community, he might have asked her out long ago. Christ he thought, there were some tribes in the world where a nine year old could marry her grandfather – interesting bit of knowledge gleamed from the Discovery Channel.

Sheriff Bewler hauled himself out of bed at the crack of ten a.m. and lumbered all the way to the bathroom: Shit, Shower and Shave? Just the first two today thanks. As the warm water washed down his back he could hear his phone ring several times. Normally he could be in and out of the shower in five minutes or less, but today the water felt good and half an hour must have gone down the drain before he turned the water off and toweled himself off.

He checked his phone, six messages, as he slipped on a comfortable sweatshirt and lazy pants. He’d check those later, right now he had to get the bacon cooking. Bacon makes everything taste better and with two eggs and some thick slices of Texas toast the saying was not wrong at all. But he had to laugh with himself, just a little chuckle, the old bacon, pig, cop Trifecta. Been a while since someone had used that slang with him, last time it was his cousin Francis and he received a serious kick in the head for the affront.

11:15 AM, by now he’d have ticketed five cars along Main Street in the two hour parking zone, before the lunch crowd headed down to Mel’s diner for Pork Tenderloins and Chili Cheese Fries, ooh, that sounds good, a late lunch at Mel’s it would be. He just ticketed five cars a day ‘cause he knew that people had to park somewhere and as long as he made his monthly quota and generated a little revenue for the city then the old checks and balances were up held.

With the bacon and eggs giving him a little burst of energy he picked up his living room that looked like a refugee camp with clothes and shoes and bags and food containers spewed all over the place. He knew there was a couch under there somewhere and a TV. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually sat down to watch TV since he dragged the 32 inch flat screen back from Best Buy on an impulse buy nine months ago.

Oprah sucked, it was Book Club Day. As The World Turns, could keep on turning. The Weather Channel was predicting a cold day with an even colder night, followed by a week or more of cold to not so cold weather with chance of snow, sleet and freezing rain! But the Sci-Fi Channel was showing a re-run of the Original Predator movie with Arnie and Apollo Creed from Rocky running around the jungle and man he loved that scene where Jesse the Body Ventura was killed and Mack picked up his mini-gun and they shot the shit out of the jungle and hit nothing. How many times had he wanted to do that when they were up in the woods on the far side of town freezing their asses off as at a turkey shoot.

1:15 PM? Time for that Pork Tenderloin. He checked his phone again: Fifteen Messages. If he had a deputy, they would have been out checking on him by now, but he was the entire law enforcement team in town besides Alice at the office. Shit, the town would be fine for another few hours without him.

His feet crunched noisily on the gravel of his driveway. He looked over to his Crown Vic’ Interceptor then looked the other way and got into his VW Golf GTi. He bought the car three years ago after taking it for a test drive at Sam’s Auto Gallery on Mass’. The little red pocket rocket blew him away, but since then he’d barely put 2,000 miles on the clock ‘cause he was always in the Crown Vic’ chasing people in little sports cars and muscle cars that thought the highway was their personal race track. But throwing caution to the wind he snapped on his seat belt, tore down the road to the highway and planted the accelerator through the floor and had the little German hatch back up to 120 MPH in no time. He didn’t have to worry about being pulled over, since he was the only one that did any pulling over within 20 miles.

The Golf was a lot more fun to drive than his patrol car and could see why so many people speed at insane speeds. He promised himself he’d let the next speeder off with just a warning. He felt alive as he wrangled the gear knob through the slick little gear box, feeling the car respond to his every impulse. Past the Myers’ farm at about Ninety and back onto the big straight before hitting the bridge into town and slowing down for the traffic lights just before the railway tracks.

His town is what outsiders refer to as “a sleepy little rural American town. Sheriff Bewler had his own knickname for it “But Wipe MO.” He’d been born and breed in this town and lived there with the quiet resentment that people have for the place they grew up in but could never escape. Some people genuinely didn’t want to escape, but there are always those few who are afraid of the outside world. Afraid that they would never be accepted like they are in their home towns. In the outside world nobody cares if you are the quarter back of the high school football team, nobody cares if you were the home coming queen, in fact they don’t give a damn if your science project won first place at the county fair. But in your home town they do care, and that blanket of comfort is what keeps a small place like this populated, when all common sense says to move the hell away.

Sheriff Bewler could be considered one of these people, in a sense he rule the roost in this town. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone even better. He knew who beat their wife after too many Bud Lights, he knew who slept with an out of town business man for $500, he knew who was on parole for narcotics possession, hell he even knew who had a hit and run last year and continue to be a community leader. Sometimes this knowledge was too much, it ate away at his insides like a cancer. If he lived in a big city, and worked a regular nine to five job, he’d have anonymity and he wouldn’t know shit and people wouldn’t know shit about him either. But not here in Butt Wipe, MO.

Most people didn’t know his red Golf, so thinking about anonymity, he decided to drive around the town and see what people did when they thought he wasn’t looking. He dipped his ball cap and put on his sun glasses, totally undercover.

He drove down Main Street, not much going on there, just a few cars illegally parked here and there. He stopped at the light at the cross section of 2nd and Main. A mid 80s Camero pulled up alongside him revving its engine. The driver looked over at him with that “Wanna Race” face. Sheriff Bewler revved his engine in response and then stared straight ahead at the red light waiting for it to turn green. Wheels screeched and rubber burned as the Camero speed away furiously. Sheriff Bewler didn’t even put the Gti in gear, but made a note to himself to give Al Johnson’s son a talking to next time he was over that way. Punk kid.

He took a left on 2nd and made his way towards Mel’s diner on Mass’. The usual line of illegally parked cars were outside, so he said to hell with it and joined the line. The smell of hot grease wafted through the air as he got out of his car. Something’s cooking.

Soon as he walked in and removed his hat Mel shouted over to him from across the counter “Heard you’ve been playing hookie at work Sheriff!”
“Nah, not playing hookie, just taking it easy, you know, having a day to myself.”
“Do you hear that everyone, Sheriff Bewler is having a day to himself.” Melf and all the other patrons around the counter laughed and one of them chimed in “why don’t you get your legs waxed while your at it!” Jeers of approval came from around the room at this comment “good one Dick, get your legs waxed, well I never.”
Sheriff Bewler took the cheap humor in his stride, thinking to himself, you all better watch out for me next time your parked outside of here, been a while since he’d actually towed a car to the impound, have to correct that soon. “Good one Dick, very funny, is that what you do to your head? Haven’t seen skin that smooth since I changed my nephew’s diaper!” The crowd of funny men didn’t like that retort, a mumor of “oohhs” came from them, ‘cause everyone knew that Dick Brady had been bald since he was 25 and his $20 toupees didn’t do a great job of hiding that truth.

“I’ll have the truck stop Mel, over easy on the eggs and give me a side of those chili cheese fries and a coffee.” Everyone seemed to shut the hell up now and get back to their lunch, so fearing no more remarks, Sheriff Bewler grabbed the paper and spread it out in front of him. There was a local paper that floated about once a week, but for the daily news they had to accept the Star from up there in the big city. Nobody like the Star, but everyone read it, so they could heckle the folks up there “driving their Volvos and drinking lattes! City folk don’t know a hard days work, why I’d like to see one of them on my farm for a half a day, I’d have em broke in two by lunch.” But Sheriff Bewler knew that life in the city wasn’t all easy. A few months ago he’d been up there and was stuck in traffic on I-35 just before the Broadway Bridge and looking under the over pass he saw a whole community of homeless people just squatting under there, keeping close together for warmth. Steam was rising out of a vent as one passed a brown paper bag to the other. That wasn’t easy city living. When it’s tough in the country, it’s never as tough as it is in the city. He’d like to see one of these red necks make it through a half day in the city they’d be broke by two!

He laid a ten dollar bill on the counter, said thanks for the lunch and walked out the door leaving the “witty men with their jokes” he mumbled, thinking “I’ve heard that somewhere before?” What he didn’t remember was that that was a line from a W. B. Yeats’ Poem he read in his high school English class: “The witty man and his joke, aimed at the commonest ear” went the poem.

When he’d been reading the paper he say an add for Flight to Europe – Paris and London from $189 each way from Chicago. He’d never been over there, he’ll he’d never been out of the country except to go to Canada for the day once when he was fifteen with his family on vacation in Buffalo New York. Terrible vacation he remembered, his parents shouted at each other the whole time, the air conditioning broke in the car on the way back and his sister got sick allover the back seat. Yeah, he hadn’t been out of the country since. But just heading off to London or Paris or somewhere just like that, now that sounded good. He’d always wanted to go to Ireland, that’s where his great grandfather came from, Cork County or somewhere like that. Fuck it, that what he’d do.
He’d go to the bank, take out his savings, stick half of it into his credit card, rent out his house, take a leave of absence from work, get some replacement in for a few months and piss off to Europe.

Suddenly he felt like a huge weight was lifted of his soul, his head became light and all he could think was “why the hell hadn’t I thought of this before.” He could imagine it already, walking around London lost but not caring, sitting back in a pub in Ireland having a pint, taking a walk along a beach in France, maybe even go to Germany and have some sauerkraut. He drove in a daze as he made his way to the Farmer’s State Bank.
“Hey Sheriff Bewler” said Old Sam the security guard at the bank, “taking a day off I hear?” “Yes, I am Sam, thanks for asking.” “Well, you enjoy it, ‘cause we don’t get many of those these days.” “Don’t you worry Sam, I am.” He laughed at the little rhyme he just made. Today was a good day.

There was only one person in front of him at the bank line and he waved to all the folks in the back as they stuck their heads up in the air to see him. Then as he got to the front and Dorris had started to say “Hello Sheriff Bewler…” He cut her off, “Yes Dorris I am taking a day off. “
“Well, there is no need to be like that about it, I was just going to ask what I can do for you today?”
“Sorry, just a reaction and what you can do for me is deposit five thousand dollars from my savings account in this credit card account and just cash out the rest for me.”
“That’s a lot of money Sheriff, can I ask…”
“No Dorris, you can’t ask what it’s for, it’s for me, it’s my money, thank you Dorris.”

Dorris pottered off to get the Manager to make such a large withdrawal and he watched her as she explained waving her hands and flapping all over the place, her head going up and down like a chicken. The manager went into the big vault with Dorris and dissapered from his vision. He went to turn around to Old Sam and make a joke to him about having his side arm ready for the all the money he was going to be leaving with, but when he turned around he saw Old Sam lying on the floor dead or unconscious, and standing beside him was a youth of about 19 or 20 with his eyes popping out like he had spent one night too many taking Meth in some shack. The youth was holding a gun and was bending down to pick up Sam’s gun.
“Wait there now one minute young fella” Sheriff Bewler said as calmly as he could “we don’t need any trouble here.”
“Shut the fuck up pig, get your fucking ass on the floor and shut the fuck up.”
He didn’t recogonize the youth, but the scrawny fella sure knew who he was, “coulda sworn I knew everyone around these parts,” he thought to himself.
“If I have to ask you again, I’m going to cap your ass pig.” The kid was obviously out of control and he didn’t want him to start shooting in here with all the bank staff around.
He started to get down on the floor when the small rug under his feet slid one way and he went crashing to one side.
The nervous cracked-out youth’s gun went off only once, that’s all it needed to do. That was the last day Sheriff Bewler ever took off again. His ashes were scatted by his sister down by the river where he used to fish when he was a boy, a place he liked to go alone and think. Now he’d have eternity to think and muse on all the things he never did do.

Three a.m. is a very late time of the night to be going to bed, or very early time of the morning for that matter, either way Sheriff Bewler was exhausted. Driving up and down Highway 11, stopping drunks, domestic violence calls, none of those things are fun. It’s not covert, gun slinging, door breaking police work like you see in the movies. Starsky and Hutch, fucking fantasy Ford Taurino paradise.

Six a.m. comes fast after you lay your head down and the annoying high pitch digital chime of the alarm clock is not very welcome. A blind hand slithers out from the covers and hits the snooze button, for the additional seven minutes of heaven on earth. Seven minutes later his hand automatically performs the same function. That’s 14 minutes past wake-up time. 14 minutes later than he would get into the shower, 14 minutes later than he would hit the road back into town, 14 minutes later than he would open the sheriff’s office on Main Street. But you know what? It felt good, and the world could fuck off for 14 minutes. Back to Snooze!

Needless to say, he surprised the shit out of himself when he finally woke up and saw Nine a.m. on the clock. He’d snoozed before, but never actually slept. His adrenaline didn’t pump, fight or flight mode didn’t kick-in. He just stared at the clock, as the digits went 9:01 AM. Time what a wonderful concept he thought and pulled his comforter tighter to his body and thought ‘bacon sounds good for breakfast.’

Usually at 9:15 AM he’d be talking shit with Alice, the secretary girl, over his third cup of shitty coffee. He’d be flirting with her, even though he was graduating high school when she was born. But she liked it all the same and if he hadn’t such a noticeable position in the community, he might have asked her out long ago. Christ he thought, there were some tribes in the world where a nine year old could marry her grandfather – interesting bit of knowledge gleamed from the Discovery Channel.

Sheriff Bewler hauled himself out of bed at the crack of ten a.m. and lumbered all the way to the bathroom: Shit, Shower and Shave? Just the first two today thanks. As the warm water washed down his back he could hear his phone ring several times. Normally he could be in and out of the shower in five minutes or less, but today the water felt good and half an hour must have gone down the drain before he turned the water off and toweled himself off.

He checked his phone, six messages, as he slipped on a comfortable sweatshirt and lazy pants. He’d check those later, right now he had to get the bacon cooking. Bacon makes everything taste better and with two eggs and some thick slices of Texas toast the saying was not wrong at all. But he had to laugh with himself, just a little chuckle, the old bacon, pig, cop Trifecta. Been a while since someone had used that slang with him, last time it was his cousin Francis and he received a serious kick in the head for the affront.

11:15 AM, by now he’d have ticketed five cars along Main Street in the two hour parking zone, before the lunch crowd headed down to Mel’s diner for Pork Tenderloins and Chili Cheese Fries, ooh, that sounds good, a late lunch at Mel’s it would be. He just ticketed five cars a day ‘cause he knew that people had to park somewhere and as long as he made his monthly quota and generated a little revenue for the city then the old checks and balances were up held.

With the bacon and eggs giving him a little burst of energy he picked up his living room that looked like a refugee camp with clothes and shoes and bags and food containers spewed all over the place. He knew there was a couch under there somewhere and a TV. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually sat down to watch TV since he dragged the 32 inch flat screen back from Best Buy on an impulse buy nine months ago.

Oprah sucked, it was Book Club Day. As The World Turns, could keep on turning. The Weather Channel was predicting a cold day with an even colder night, followed by a week or more of cold to not so cold weather with chance of snow, sleet and freezing rain! But the Sci-Fi Channel was showing a re-run of the Original Predator movie with Arnie and Apollo Creed from Rocky running around the jungle and man he loved that scene where Jesse the Body Ventura was killed and Mack picked up his mini-gun and they shot the shit out of the jungle and hit nothing. How many times had he wanted to do that when they were up in the woods on the far side of town freezing their asses off as at a turkey shoot.

1:15 PM? Time for that Pork Tenderloin. He checked his phone again: Fifteen Messages. If he had a deputy, they would have been out checking on him by now, but he was the entire law enforcement team in town besides Alice at the office. Shit, the town would be fine for another few hours without him.

His feet crunched noisily on the gravel of his driveway. He looked over to his Crown Vic’ Interceptor then looked the other way and got into his VW Golf GTi. He bought the car three years ago after taking it for a test drive at Sam’s Auto Gallery on Mass’. The little red pocket rocket blew him away, but since then he’d barely put 2,000 miles on the clock ‘cause he was always in the Crown Vic’ chasing people in little sports cars and muscle cars that thought the highway was their personal race track. But throwing caution to the wind he snapped on his seat belt, tore down the road to the highway and planted the accelerator through the floor and had the little German hatch back up to 120 MPH in no time. He didn’t have to worry about being pulled over, since he was the only one that did any pulling over within 20 miles.

The Golf was a lot more fun to drive than his patrol car and could see why so many people speed at insane speeds. He promised himself he’d let the next speeder off with just a warning. He felt alive as he wrangled the gear knob through the slick little gear box, feeling the car respond to his every impulse. Past the Myers’ farm at about Ninety and back onto the big straight before hitting the bridge into town and slowing down for the traffic lights just before the railway tracks.

His town is what outsiders refer to as “a sleepy little rural American town. Sheriff Bewler had his own knickname for it “But Wipe MO.” He’d been born and breed in this town and lived there with the quiet resentment that people have for the place they grew up in but could never escape. Some people genuinely didn’t want to escape, but there are always those few who are afraid of the outside world. Afraid that they would never be accepted like they are in their home towns. In the outside world nobody cares if you are the quarter back of the high school football team, nobody cares if you were the home coming queen, in fact they don’t give a damn if your science project won first place at the county fair. But in your home town they do care, and that blanket of comfort is what keeps a small place like this populated, when all common sense says to move the hell away.

Sheriff Bewler could be considered one of these people, in a sense he rule the roost in this town. Everyone knew him and he knew everyone even better. He knew who beat their wife after too many Bud Lights, he knew who slept with an out of town business man for $500, he knew who was on parole for narcotics possession, hell he even knew who had a hit and run last year and continue to be a community leader. Sometimes this knowledge was too much, it ate away at his insides like a cancer. If he lived in a big city, and worked a regular nine to five job, he’d have anonymity and he wouldn’t know shit and people wouldn’t know shit about him either. But not here in Butt Wipe, MO.

Most people didn’t know his red Golf, so thinking about anonymity, he decided to drive around the town and see what people did when they thought he wasn’t looking. He dipped his ball cap and put on his sun glasses, totally undercover.

He drove down Main Street, not much going on there, just a few cars illegally parked here and there. He stopped at the light at the cross section of 2nd and Main. A mid 80s Camero pulled up alongside him revving its engine. The driver looked over at him with that “Wanna Race” face. Sheriff Bewler revved his engine in response and then stared straight ahead at the red light waiting for it to turn green. Wheels screeched and rubber burned as the Camero speed away furiously. Sheriff Bewler didn’t even put the Gti in gear, but made a note to himself to give Al Johnson’s son a talking to next time he was over that way. Punk kid.

He took a left on 2nd and made his way towards Mel’s diner on Mass’. The usual line of illegally parked cars were outside, so he said to hell with it and joined the line. The smell of hot grease wafted through the air as he got out of his car. Something’s cooking.

Soon as he walked in and removed his hat Mel shouted over to him from across the counter “Heard you’ve been playing hookie at work Sheriff!”
“Nah, not playing hookie, just taking it easy, you know, having a day to myself.”
“Do you hear that everyone, Sheriff Bewler is having a day to himself.” Melf and all the other patrons around the counter laughed and one of them chimed in “why don’t you get your legs waxed while your at it!” Jeers of approval came from around the room at this comment “good one Dick, get your legs waxed, well I never.”
Sheriff Bewler took the cheap humor in his stride, thinking to himself, you all better watch out for me next time your parked outside of here, been a while since he’d actually towed a car to the impound, have to correct that soon. “Good one Dick, very funny, is that what you do to your head? Haven’t seen skin that smooth since I changed my nephew’s diaper!” The crowd of funny men didn’t like that retort, a mumor of “oohhs” came from them, ‘cause everyone knew that Dick Brady had been bald since he was 25 and his $20 toupees didn’t do a great job of hiding that truth.

“I’ll have the truck stop Mel, over easy on the eggs and give me a side of those chili cheese fries and a coffee.” Everyone seemed to shut the hell up now and get back to their lunch, so fearing no more remarks, Sheriff Bewler grabbed the paper and spread it out in front of him. There was a local paper that floated about once a week, but for the daily news they had to accept the Star from up there in the big city. Nobody like the Star, but everyone read it, so they could heckle the folks up there “driving their Volvos and drinking lattes! City folk don’t know a hard days work, why I’d like to see one of them on my farm for a half a day, I’d have em broke in two by lunch.” But Sheriff Bewler knew that life in the city wasn’t all easy. A few months ago he’d been up there and was stuck in traffic on I-35 just before the Broadway Bridge and looking under the over pass he saw a whole community of homeless people just squatting under there, keeping close together for warmth. Steam was rising out of a vent as one passed a brown paper bag to the other. That wasn’t easy city living. When it’s tough in the country, it’s never as tough as it is in the city. He’d like to see one of these red necks make it through a half day in the city they’d be broke by two!

He laid a ten dollar bill on the counter, said thanks for the lunch and walked out the door leaving the “witty men with their jokes” he mumbled, thinking “I’ve heard that somewhere before?” What he didn’t remember was that that was a line from a W. B. Yeats’ Poem he read in his high school English class: “The witty man and his joke, aimed at the commonest ear” went the poem.

When he’d been reading the paper he say an add for Flight to Europe – Paris and London from $189 each way from Chicago. He’d never been over there, he’ll he’d never been out of the country except to go to Canada for the day once when he was fifteen with his family on vacation in Buffalo New York. Terrible vacation he remembered, his parents shouted at each other the whole time, the air conditioning broke in the car on the way back and his sister got sick allover the back seat. Yeah, he hadn’t been out of the country since. But just heading off to London or Paris or somewhere just like that, now that sounded good. He’d always wanted to go to Ireland, that’s where his great grandfather came from, Cork County or somewhere like that. Fuck it, that what he’d do.
He’d go to the bank, take out his savings, stick half of it into his credit card, rent out his house, take a leave of absence from work, get some replacement in for a few months and piss off to Europe.

Suddenly he felt like a huge weight was lifted of his soul, his head became light and all he could think was “why the hell hadn’t I thought of this before.” He could imagine it already, walking around London lost but not caring, sitting back in a pub in Ireland having a pint, taking a walk along a beach in France, maybe even go to Germany and have some sauerkraut. He drove in a daze as he made his way to the Farmer’s State Bank.
“Hey Sheriff Bewler” said Old Sam the security guard at the bank, “taking a day off I hear?” “Yes, I am Sam, thanks for asking.” “Well, you enjoy it, ‘cause we don’t get many of those these days.” “Don’t you worry Sam, I am.” He laughed at the little rhyme he just made. Today was a good day.

There was only one person in front of him at the bank line and he waved to all the folks in the back as they stuck their heads up in the air to see him. Then as he got to the front and Dorris had started to say “Hello Sheriff Bewler…” He cut her off, “Yes Dorris I am taking a day off. “
“Well, there is no need to be like that about it, I was just going to ask what I can do for you today?”
“Sorry, just a reaction and what you can do for me is deposit five thousand dollars from my savings account in this credit card account and just cash out the rest for me.”
“That’s a lot of money Sheriff, can I ask…”
“No Dorris, you can’t ask what it’s for, it’s for me, it’s my money, thank you Dorris.”

Dorris pottered off to get the Manager to make such a large withdrawal and he watched her as she explained waving her hands and flapping all over the place, her head going up and down like a chicken. The manager went into the big vault with Dorris and dissapered from his vision. He went to turn around to Old Sam and make a joke to him about having his side arm ready for the all the money he was going to be leaving with, but when he turned around he saw Old Sam lying on the floor dead or unconscious, and standing beside him was a youth of about 19 or 20 with his eyes popping out like he had spent one night too many taking Meth in some shack. The youth was holding a gun and was bending down to pick up Sam’s gun.
“Wait there now one minute young fella” Sheriff Bewler said as calmly as he could “we don’t need any trouble here.”
“Shut the fuck up pig, get your fucking ass on the floor and shut the fuck up.”
He didn’t recogonize the youth, but the scrawny fella sure knew who he was, “coulda sworn I knew everyone around these parts,” he thought to himself.
“If I have to ask you again, I’m going to cap your ass pig.” The kid was obviously out of control and he didn’t want him to start shooting in here with all the bank staff around.
He started to get down on the floor when the small rug under his feet slid one way and he went crashing to one side.
The nervous cracked-out youth’s gun went off only once, that’s all it needed to do. That was the last day Sheriff Bewler ever took off again. His ashes were scatted by his sister down by the river where he used to fish when he was a boy, a place he liked to go alone and think. Now he’d have eternity to think and muse on all the things he never did do.

Disclaimer

2006-05-27T13:53:00.000-05:00

A lot of these stories are true ones. The memory of growing-up in and around Killybegs. When you hold a mirror up to small communities, sometimes there are those who don't like the reflection. Capote knew this only too well.

If you find the refraction just a little too much and would like the angle of incidence changed in your favor, please email me at georgevial@hotmail.com and I will be happy to make a name change here or there.

George Vial

Sketch of a Midwestern Boy

2006-04-12T23:30:00.000-05:00

His Dad was of all-American blood, those that had been here three generations or more, but his mother was the daughter of a recent German immigrant. She grew up bi-lingual and used that to her advantage; teaching high school German for the past nineteen years.

She met his dad when she was in college and he just a boy, a private in the Army. Over the years they moved as the military dictated and while stationed on a base in Germany, Frank was born.

Frank Benson, most people called him little Frankie, looked like his father, with his mother’s diminutive stance. He was the apple of both their eyes: the perfect child in every sense.

Earned his Eagle badge at twelve, wrestled in grade school, went to state in high school and was at church every Sunday, nestled between his mom and dad and his younger brother and sister flanked their sides.

The summer he finished high school he was a church camp counselor, praised Jesus and prayed his heart out to the kids. He turned eighteen in June and his Daddy was made Full Colonel. The summer passed in religious bliss except when his Daddy called him from the airport and he couldn’t come to pick him up.

When he went home that Sunday afternoon for lunch his Dad didn’t speak to him, just looked at him with disapproving eyes. Frankie weakly gestured “I couldn’t come, I couldn’t get permission.” But it wasn’t enough.

In August, college started, he went to the better of the state school. Joined a fraternity and wrestled as a freshman. But that was a different league and intramural sports like soccer, Frisbee and running took their place. Average grades were obtained and the Colonel wasn’t happy. They weren’t good enough.

The summer came quick and once again he was a counselor at the church camp, surrounded by other youths blinded by their euphoric sense of righteousness. Even alone one night with a female counselor and she sucked his cock, it was all in the name of Jesus. Every time they did anything it was in the name of Jesus.

After going out to a restaurant one evening, Frankie and several other counselors, that had the night off in the name of Jesus, were stopped by two Buddhists spreading their word.

Frankie and another girl stopped to listen, the others told them to come on. Later, back at the staff-house a girl was crying, screaming quietly that Frankie wanted to listen to the heathen. A thought occurred to Frankie and he asked why couldn’t they both be right as long as they both believed in what they were saying? That only brought condemnation and several people prayed that he’d find his way back to Jesus. As not to upset anymore people Frankie stopped talking about the Buddhists and told them all that he was back with Jesus. The crying stopped.

During his sophomore year he met a girl that didn’t suck his dick for Jesus, she did it for herself and when they had sex it was for herself too. He found alcohol didn’t suit him too well and marijuana gave him a great sense of euphoria, which he’d never attained from prayer.

He cared less about his grades and even less about what the Colonel thought. His fraternity was distant to him and he only met the other Christians to play a friendly game of soccer, but off course, they couldn’t even kick-off without the blessing from big J.

When summer came along the Director of the church camp decided to make him a leader. All summer he was apart from the children, apart from the other counselors. He belonged to the politics that allowed everyone else to enjoy their religious bliss. By the time August came he felt empty inside and Jesus was not his friend: He often called, but Jesus was not at home.

In his Junior year he took a class in World Religions and found the Tao to his liking. He loved the idea of Karma and Chi and the Confucian Code was very human and attainable, unlike the blind faith he’d been fed on Sunday mornings as the breakfast of his childhood.

The new ideas were not very welcome at home. The Colonel warned him not to become a”Fucking Commi’.” His mother told him it was all right to explore new ideas as she had recently become a vegetarian and Jesus didn’t mind.

The other boys in his fraternity forgot he even belonged, except when dues were owed. He found his niche among the kids that he’d always believed were going to hell. Beer, BMX biking, free style walking and pot were the common bonds and what a simple society they made. The Chi was good.

He passed in and out of the church camp that summer as a volunteer because he had classes to retake and places to see. He didn’t mind ‘cause it kept the colonel happy and him free.

His senior year was a blur; it was just one big going away party. They started practicing in August and by May they had it perfected. He walked, Frankie Richard Benson, with no honors or distinctions, with a degree in the liberal arts. The Colonel asked what the hell he was going to do with that. He said he didn’t know, maybe he’d teach. “Teach what?”
“Teach Life!…”

He was allowed to stay at home ‘till August. So until then he worked in the kitchens of the church camp. That way he didn’t have to suffer Jesus looking in on everything he did.

At night when the kitchen was all cleaned up, he and the kitchen guy would go drinking or take a drive down to Lawrence and hang out with his little brother Tom. Tom had had gone through a much more quiet revolution of rebellion than that of Frankie, he slipped under the Colonel’s radar: it was what the first born son did that counted.

The Director of the church camp said he was walking a very thin line and if he cared to cross it he could. And he did. The Director fired him and the Colonel kicked him out of the house.

He went to live with Tom and got a job as a teacher’s assistant at a high school. His car broke down in the winter. The Colonel waited to be asked for help, but instead after a few beers, Frankie, Tom and a few friends took it apart with baseballs bats and a broomstick.

He caught the bus ‘till school went out for the summer, then bought a motorcycle, grew a beard and decided to see America.

That summer he didn’t call home, just a post-card once to say all was well in California. He didn’t need Jesus to ride pillion. He just rode where he Chi, his Karma, his Tao, his own sense of being liked. He saw everything he wanted to see, did everything he wanted and talked to whoever. This was his first season as a man of his own making: not a hollow shell of someone else’s design.

The Great Shoe-off of 2001

2006-04-12T23:28:00.000-05:00

Smoke filled the room, music sounded off the crowded walls, voices talked over voices with festive cheers, and glasses clanked and drink spilled joyously on the floor, the bar, people’s heads, just about anything at all.

Down the very back corner a crowd had gathered, they were exhibiting great mirth and joviality. A television set above their heads was showing the highlights of the day’s games, only a few eyes darted up to catch the results, all the others were head first into their pints. They were telling jokes, slapping backs and throwing insults. A rather cosmopolitan group it was, men, women, dark heads, fair heads, tall folks and short folks, laughing folks and serious folks, loud and quiet, a little bit of all sides of life.

Suddenly, a pint toppled over, two men pushed back their stools and glared at each other. Stone, granite cold were their eyes, hands flared out to their sides motionless as two desperadoes at high noon. Neither wavered, neither faltered, the bar became silent, members of the immediate crowd shouted “It’s a Shoe-off, we’ve got a Shoe-off here people!”

The two kept their eyes fixed waiting for the other to make the first move. The tall blond man, they called him the Viking, for his Scandinavian appearance, even though he spoke with the thickest Irish brogue you ever heard. His knees moved, just a twitch, then another deeper motion, then he pulled his feet up off the ground and showed his trickery; one shoe hanging off the foot of the other. A great move, not a match winning move, but the gathered people could tell they were not dealing with a novice of the Shoe-Off.

Now the other man took his turn, he went by the name of Sells, as he sold things, not very original, but then who the hell makes the rules of nicknames, in that game their can be no limits, although there should be with some of the names you hear about this place. Sells knew he had to make his first move count, he had to draw first blood as it were. This was not an adversary to toy with, so digging deep into his reserve from many an epic Shoe-off in the past he closed his eyes and mediated. He blocked out the people around him, the television, even George’s offer to buy the next round and that never happens. Sells had become one with the shoe.

As if by an invisible hand his shoes slipped off his feet and lay perfectly parallel to each other about five inches in front of his body. Then he stood up from his stool, eyes still closed and genuflected as if in the deepest prayer of austerity. The crowd gasped for now The Shoes were exactly where his knees would have hit the ground giving the perfect resemblance of one who’s feet are at their knees, like some kind of carnival freak and even demonstrated by taking a few steps forward on his truncated legs. Finally Sells opened his eyes to receive the acknowledgment he deserved from the people about him.

“Beat that ya big Viking feck! and George, I’ll have that drink now.”

All eyes fell to the Viking, what could he do to beat that, people began to mumble and turn away, the Shoe-off looked to be over. The talk picked up and drinking recommenced. Sells was about to shout in victory when he saw the Viking go into what could only be a spasm. He shook his head and hands, then clenched his fists tight and became still, stretched out his long legs, pointed his toes inwards. The hush fell to the amazed crowd, what could this man do to beat the impressive knees-with-feet move?

With the toes turned inwards he slowly lowered his feet to the ground and began to wiggle his feet out of his shoes with the precision of a surgeon. Where the shoes had come together on the ground they made a perfect triangle and now with the feet removed they stood alone, like some Celtic monument to the Feet Gods. And there it was the perfect shoe-move. Men choked on their pints, the women flushed and felt queer in their breasts. The Viking looked up with what could only be called the “eye of the champion.”

A voice called out from the audience announcing “Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we have a winner, a new Shoe-off King, you’re the man big fella and by the way how tall are ya?”

Emerging Man

2006-04-12T23:07:00.000-05:00

Waking, dry mouthed from the night’s excesses Conor lifts his bleary eyed head from the pillow and stares in disbelief at the alarm clock. Had tomorrow come already, just a few moments ago it was yesterday and that seemed to be endless?

The shower water pelting down upon his throbbing head seemed to clear the cobwebs at least until the Panadol took effect. He began to think about last night’s events. “What was her name? Yes Edel, that was it, brown hair, big boobs, eyes…shit can’t remember, but then who the fuck cares. We danced and drank, went clubbing on to Avalon, yeah that was sweet, she moved like a mink. Back to her place for some shagging and man was she ever good.” He began to laugh as he remembered that he had fallen asleep during their second bout. She had to wake him and call a taxi to send him home, calling an end to the night.

Twisting the shower off Conor felt a sharp pain in the wrist of his right hand, “Damn,” then he remembered why. Some guy had bugged him in O’Brien’s before he met Sarah and he decked him out cold, one shot, the good old right still worked a charm. Been a while since he’d done that, “and do you know what?” he thought, “it felt good.”

Conor grabbed a towel and began to dab himself dry all the while smiling and laughing to himself thinking “shit that was a good night.”

He stepped in front of the mirror and there gazing back at him was a red-eyed wreck. He grabbed his face with his two hands and squeezed, spread his fingers a little and peered out between them. “I’ve to stop this craic, it’s turning me into an old man.”

After brushing his teeth, the hair was fixed, the body clothed and with his gym bag over his arm he was ready to leave.

Since he lived smack in the middle of the city he walked to Bewley’s rather than driving, the traffic could take forever. His brother Jack was meeting him there for lunch, he had to be there in ten minutes, so the pace was brisk.

He passed an old drunk lying in a door way, Conor stopped, backed up a little and handed the man five pounds. The man’s face showed amazement and Conor said “Go on, get some food in ya, ye’ve a lot of drinking to do later,” the man smiled and Conor was on his way.

“Bunch a bana-aa-nas-sss pound” shouted the old knacker at the fruit and veg stand on the side of Dame Street. Conor hated her, she hassled him every day to buy and he always replied “forgot my wallet.” Recently she’d taken to replying to this with “Ya miserable Nordy.” To which he would reply “And fuck you too.” They’d developed a real hate relationship over the last six months since Conor had moved into the apartment. Some day he planned to buy something from her and shock the Dub’ shit out of her.

Hitting the bottom of Grafton St. Conor found the milieu of endless walking people a tad irritating. “Why the fuck do they all have to be walking in the other direction?” This was Conor’s thought and he was right, no matter which way you wanted to go on this, Dublin’s premier street, everybody else appeared to be going in the complete opposite direction just to impede your travels.

He shouldered his way up to Bewley’s, inside he found Jack already starting on a pot of tea. “I’ll have some-a-that,” and poured himself a cup, adding just a drop of milk, so sparingly in fact you’d hardly even notice he had poured any at all, then he took Jack’s water glass and poured some of it into his tea too. Now the cup was perfect, and age old tradition passed on to him from his mother, and destined to be passed on to his children, if such a day would ever come where he would actually have a cup of tea with offspring of his own.
“Fancy some grub?” asked Jack.

“Nah, my insides are wrecked, just tea for now.”
“Well I’m gonna go up and get some, back in a minute.”
“Grand job.”

As Jack left to go through the self-service line, Conor looked around the restaurant. Bewley’s always gathered the most pretentious crowd in the city. Young South Siders with no dining-out etiquette, only the knowledge that people of their stock ate at such places as this. As Garry was chastising all the people in the restaurant in his mind, he saw a waitress walking towards him with a tray full of dishes. He tried to catch her eye, but she just looked ahead trying not to drop her load.

“Damn, I missed that one,” thought Conor as she walked past him and on through the kitchen doors.

Robert sat down to regain his place at the table and Conor felt obliged to fill him in on what he had just missed. “Jaysus man you missed that, wild fine doll just went into the kitchen, she’ll be out in a minute, serious set on her.”

“Jesus Christ man, you’ve tits on the brain. So, you have a good night last night with that bird, what was her name?”
“Rachel,” Conor answered smiling.
“Yeah, Rachel, I was off with her friend Michelle, shagged her rotten baby, how’d you do?”
“Same as yourself and I was good, yeah, yeah baby, made her really horny.”
This imitation of Austin Powers was a regular part of Conor and his friend’s daily dialogue. In a way he idolized the sexy, super spy, shagadellic.
After lunch Conor and Jack stood among the bustle of Grafton St. talking.
“You be home after work Conor?”
“Nah, meself and Shane are hitting the Old Dub. Yah coming for a pint?”
“Nah, don’t fink so, I’ve a ton o’ shit to do for work.”
“Well I’ll drink one for ya then man.”
“You do that, I’ll catch ya later.”

Conor headed towards the Liffey and on to the bottom of Marlborough St., to the gym, the daily cure for his hangovers. Only for all the drink he’d be in great shape, but as it was, the gym and the drink balanced each other out. It maintained him at a healthy and very strong level without loosing the drinker’s physique, and that didn’t come cheap.

The routine usually consisted of 40 minutes serious lifting and a couple of hundred sit-ups. Then it was 30 minutes on the bike, which he didn’t really enjoy, but it gave him a chance to eye up all the women in the place. The good old bike had got him laid several times already since he’d joined the gym. Nothing seemed to be biting today and he let his mind wander, rather than his eyes.

He began to mull over his current situation: “ Twenty three years old, single, thank fuck, head chef, good restaurant, good wages, great social life, nice car, grand apartment, perfect roommate, the brother and good health was always a bonus. There had to be more,” but for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything else.

His eyes popped open as a buxom blond took to the treadmill in front of his bike. She was wearing lycra shorts and a sports bra; that was it. As she ran, her boobs nearly came out of her bra. She looked at Garry and smiled and he thought, “lunch has taken a bite.”

When she finished running he approached her. They talked chitchat for twenty minutes and it turned out she knew this great little place to get a bite to eat near her flat.

Before they had their food eaten, both had consumed four glasses of wine and with the blood flowing to all the right places so early in the day, they left their plates and some money and headed to her place.

This was no shy girl, Anne was her name, and she led him straight to her room. They frantically ripped of each other’s gym clothes and she pulled him into the shower of her en-suite. After washing each other down they fucked like dogs on her bed for a whole hour and then fell exhausted, to their respective sides of the bed.

Conor dozed off and Anne got up to make coffee. She looked in on the naked sleeping Conor and thought “What was it about this man that made me do this so freely?” She walked over to him, stroked his hair and kissed his forehead: This was the kind of man she could marry.

She let him sleep for about forty minutes then woke him with a warm cup of coffee. He kissed her and grabbed her into the bed beside him. They played about for a while, until he asked, “What time’s it?”
“Four fifteen”
“Ahh, shit I’ve to be to work in forty-five minutes.”
“Can I call you” she asked.
“Yeah, here’s my number, give us a call this weekend, we should go out.”

He hurriedly put on fresh clothes from his bag. Kissed her goodbye and bolted out the door, up towards the Green. He had to pass over O’Connell Bridge and as he did he stopped in the middle of it, went over to the edge and stared down into the river. All that water just flowing, a couple of hours ago it had been in Kildare or somewhere and now it was flowing out the bay to be diluted with the Irish Sea, “Wonder if the river minds loosing its identity in such a big sea?” He mused on this for a moment, thinking about how his life was just like the river’s: he had come from a small town and now he just seemed to dissolve into the all the other unknown faces that plodded around the city. There was just not much that set him or anyone else apart. He had no real identity, that worried him, his life had to be more than just this. How he had imagined his life would be when he came up here first. He’d stop drinking, womanizing, settle down a bit, put a hundred and ten percent in to his work and start carving out his place in the world, but none of this he had achieved yet; still just river water flowing into the big sea. Then he realized what time it was and said out loud “Fuck, got to be going.”

He arrived in good time for work. He moved into his little kitchen and relieved Shane. “I’ll see you later man in the Auld Dub about eleven, alright.”
“Yeah, I’ll already be tanked up, so ya better catch up quick!”
“I’ll start on that before I close here.”

The restaurant had 50 or so booked in and another 40 walk ins. The meals all went fine and Conor loved flirting with all the girls at work. The Maitre de was a 29-year-old red head, real slim and sexy. Conor shagged her and she still had a thing for him, but he had conquered that land and moved on. He’d love to get a bit of action from Sinead, a college student attending UCD, the snotty University on the south side of the city. He’d tried her a few times, but she was too wise to his reputation and remained unconquered.

He always kept a change of clothes at work and showered there too, he downed a few Bailey’s as he prepared to go out for the third time that week, and it was only Wednesday night. His life had turned into one big night out, really hard to tell where one night ended and the other began. All the faces he met, drinks he took, heads he punched, lips he kissed all appeared one homogenous blur in his mind.

He caught up with Shane in the Auld Dub. It was one of those newly built pubs in the Temple Bar area for Dublin’s new young and rising class. Not really Yuppies like the Eighties produced, but a different breed, more assured, less flashy and heavier drinking. A traditional band played some Christy Moore in the far corner, that made talking a chore and more often than not when someone went close to your ear to tell you something all you got were some muffled sounds and a earful of saliva. The air was saturated with smoke, some people didn’t mind it and others like Conor abhorred it. After only one drink he decided they should move on to another place to so they could get a bit of action, and give his ears some reprieve from the noise of the band.
They ended up in Peg Woffington’s the over priced, over rated ass-hole of a nightclub on Nassau Street. It was a glorified basement with a bar, overcharged admission and drinks and the people who went there, on a regular basis, over rated themselves.

Conor hit the bar like a wild man who’d been in the desert without a drink of anything for days. He turned around to hand Shane a beer but he was stuck in some bird and standing next to him, all wide eyed and horny, was no one but the waitress from Bewley’s he had seen this morning when he had lunched with his brother.

“I saw you at work earlier today, you from around here,” she started the conversation.
“Nah, from Donegal, Killybegs. Up here working, where are you from?”
“Just out the road, Dalkey, I go to Cathal Brugha, just work the odd day in Bewley’s.”

They talked for ages, flirting and giving each other the eye until last rounds were being shouted by the incessant bouncers, clanging their bottles and shouting “All right folks, this is a nightclub not a hotel, you can drink all night, but you can’t stay here.” He asked if she would like to walk and she said that would be good. They walked up Wicklow St. to the Green and ambled around it in the opposite direction as they should have been going, their talk was free and full of humor, neither were too intoxicated that it was just drunk talk, but actual conversation. Conor hadn’t actually talked to a girl in a while and found it quite refreshing rather than the usual hopping into the sack straight of the bat.

As they passed Planet Hollywood, toward the top of Grafton Street, Conor asked her if she’d like to come back to his place for one. She said no, but he could walk her back to her bus stop for the No. 8 and come into Bewley’s for lunch and then maybe they could see about breakfast another morning. Garry was caught a little off guard by her refusal but with her last prompting remark Conor thought it worth his while to walk her safely to the bus stop and be the gentleman. She kissed him quickly, but soft and gently, before she boarded the bus.

“Goodnight Conor O’Hara, see you for lunch.”
“Goodnight….” He couldn’t recall her name! He tried again “ Goodnight Ms. Bewley’s, I’ll see you there, eleven thirty in the morning,” he recovered with a smile, a wink and a nod.

On the way back up Grafton Street he ran into Shane with his bird. She had a girlfriend with her and yes it would be no bother for Conor to walk her home and take good care of her, real good care of her.

Bulmers cans sprawled across the coffee table, an ashtray next to them over flowed its bowels of butts and gray ash. The smell of both hung heavily in the air, the sharp nicotine odor cut thorough the air and the fermented apple smell of the Bulmers lingered everywhere. The opening of a window let in some welcome air and expelled some of the stench, from too many other mornings like this the smells had worked their way into the carpet and furniture.

The open window let in some extra light too. Clothes and shoes lay scattered all around across the floor and a comatose body occupied the sofa, wearing only its boxer shorts. Empty take-away food containers adorned the counter in the kitchen and next to them were many unwashed plates, glasses and sets of silverware. The sink itself was full of gray grimy cold water, filled the day before with good intentions, but now adding to the overall feel of filth.

Slowly the room began to take shape again, the water was replaced with hot fresh soapy water; dishes began to appear in the drying rack clean. The empty cans and ashtray were disposed off into a plastic sack. The television was switched on bringing life to the room and causing the body on the sofa to stir, reaching down for the rest of its clothes, dressed without saying a word and lethargically let itself out of the apartment.

Some Fibreeze was sprayed to combat the habitual stench of stale beer and cigarettes. A stack of men’s magazines has been toppled and it was righted and those that had got wet from splashing beer were throwing out with the cans. The corner of a poster curled up on itself, trying to force the rest of it to fall off the wall; it was re-tacked and looked decent even though the poster’s subject could never be called so.

Music came in through the sitting-room door from one of the two bedrooms in the apartment, some Indie kinda Grunge that was popular in the early nineties and was now making a come back in the new millennium. A male figure with a bath towel around its waist stood in the doorway looking at the person who had started the clean up. They met eyes and grinned and then began to laugh uncontrollably. They were more than friends, they were brothers and they were laughing at the thought of their mother worrying about them moving to the city together and not having her to clean up after them. They knew she’d kill them if she seen the state of the room and she was due in an hour for her monthly visit. They had to get their asses in gear and get the place and themselves cleaned up before she arrived and dragged them kicking and screaming back to their hometown because they were unfit to look after themselves.

Conor and Jack managed to get the place clean in time for their mother’s arrival. Before Conor had time to announce to her that he had to meet someone for an early lunch, she told them she was dying for a cup of decent tea and was famished from her drive up to Dublin and that they would go to Bewley’s for a nice lunch and a cuppa.

Well, this worked fine for Conor as he had told Ms. Beweley last night he would be in around eleven thirty. Now a big issue here for Conor was that he is the apple of his mother’s eye and even though he has three brothers and they all know Conor is the favorite and this has lead to some advantages and disadvantages. One of the greatest disadvantages is that no girl will ever be good enough for Conor in the eye’s of his Mother Rose. Probably why he just sleeps around and never settles with one girl: none will ever be good enough for his mother and therefore none will be good enough of him.

Something about the girl he had met last night told him she was different and maybe it was serendipity that his mother wanted to go to Bewley’s for lunch.

As they walked down the street to Rose began her monthly inquisition of the two boys:

“Have you been going to Mass?”
“Yes, Mum,” replied Jack lying through his teeth. Conor decided to take a more honest approach.
“I work a lot of Sundays and I just don’t get time, I try to go Saturday evenings but I usually work then too. But I’ve been on my hands and knees praying most nights.” Conor said this a little too sarcastically and his mother picked up on it.

“Conor you’ll burn in hell with all those other sinners. When I get back to Killybegs I’ll ask Father Sharkey to say a Rosary for you and I’ll have a candle burning for you that the light will lead you back to Mass.”

“Christ-sake Mum, don’t you think that’s a bit much. This is the 21st century and people do have lives and can’t spend every free moment rhyming off prayers. Like how often do you even pray?”

“Don’t you dare challenge your Mother,” she said firmly and then adding for the record. “I pray every hour on the hour and every hour I choose the soul of one of you boys to pray for and now I see my prayers for you Conor have been landing on deaf ears!”

“Mum, I’m not going to hell, I’m just living life and having a good time and from the stories I hear from Dad about you when you lived in Dublin, when you were around my age, I reckon you did quite the bit of living!”

“Well that may be so but I’m praying for forgiveness now so I won’t burn in the fires of hell like all the heathen in this city.”

“Fair enough Mum, I’ll pray for redemption when I’m your age for now I am going to do a bit of living.”
“Will the pair of you give it a rest. You’re like two politicians arguing over some-fin that is not worth the air ya breath” Jack interjected. “Call it a truce, at least till we get through lunch?”

The two antagonists looked at each other and silently agreed to Robert’s wise counsel. The rest of the walk was filled with questions about their jobs, shopping for groceries, what they do with their spare time and had any of them met any nice Catholic girls?

“Funny you should ask that Mum, you’re about to meet a girl I met last night. She works at Bewley’s and I told her I’d been in this morning”

“Arrah Garry, I can’t be meeting some girl you met out in a nasty night club. She’s probably a tramp, meets guys every night she goes out and you are just the flavor of the day.”

“Well, I’ll say nothing, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.” Garry left it at that.

The trio made their way with Conor leading, to the section he had seen the girl in the day before. Mary’s head was stretched out, bobbing over and back like a bantam hen, eyeing the room for a hussy that fitted the description in her mind of the harlot her son was going to have her meet.

They seated themselves and a girl that was not her served them. By the time the meal was half way over there had been no sight of elusive one. Conor was thoroughly disappointed and Mary was thoroughly pleased.

Jack was getting a little impatient and made up the excuse that he had to be getting to work, even though he had scheduled to have the whole day off to spend it with his mother. Really he had to meet some of the lads for early drinks. His favorite soccer team, Hib’s, was playing their arch rivals, Rangers, in a big game this evening. It was tradition to go on the beer early to be in the right state of mind to do a wild bit of cheering down the pub.

“Mum, I’ll see you again next month, tell Dad I’ll call him tomorrow about how the big game goes tonight.”
“I hope Jack you are not going out to the pub to watch that game?”
“Naw, I’ve to work late and I’ll get one of the lads to record it for me” he said this with a wink in his eye to Conor that his mother didn’t see.
“You’re a good boy Jack, I only hope you are a good influence on your brother. See if you can’t get him to go to Mass with you this Sunday.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but hey, you just don’t know with these pagans! I’ll see you at home later Conor,” and as he reached over to shake his bother’s hand he sent the milk jug flying over the table spilling into Mary’s lap.

“Arrah, Jack. Look what you’ve done ya big egit.”
“Sorry Mum, I’ve to rush. Bye.”
“Conor where’s the toilets till I get myself cleaned off.” Conor pointed and off she went muttering something to herself, Conor reckoned it was probably some payer specially for the removal of milk from a pair of pants! That be a real fancy miracle, put Lever Brother’s right out of business.

Conor sat alone at the table, looking around to see if he could see the girl. She had said she would be here and with this thought Conor caught himself thinking ‘what the hell do I care’ and tried to put her face out of his system. Tried to tell himself that she was just another in a long litany of girls he’d take to before he settled down a million years from now.

Rose seemed to be gone an awful long time, it must have been a real long prayer she was reciting he figured and began to laugh like a mad man sitting all alone. Just then a hand plopped on his shoulder.

“Hi ya, there handsome,” it was her, Conor was speechless, he still couldn’t remember her name, then seeing the name tag on her uniform, he recovered.

“Hey, how are you Sarah, we’ve been in here a while, you get home safely last night?”
“Yeah, I got home safe all right, Da was up waiting me, he’s a big dote, always waiting to see if his little girl gets in home, oh yeah, sorry I’m late, I was put upstairs on a different station and couldn’t get down ‘till now. So how’s things with you today?”
“Fine, my Mum is in town, she’s here, just went to the bathroom. You want to meet her?”
“Ach, I don’t know, maybe we can meet up later?”
Conor was disappointed at this refusal, he’d never asked a girl to meet his mother before and this rebuke was a bit much. “That be fine,” she saw the hurt in his eyes.
Before she had a chance to respond Rose came back from the bathroom like a miniature whirlwind all flustered.

“Conor, can you believe the people here, I was in the bathroom, with my pants up to the hand-drier doing nothing unusual and in comes this pup of a girl telling me to stop being obscene, that old women like me should be in a home and not making a spectacle of themselves in public. Like can you believe the cheek.”
“Mum, calm her down there, yeah that’s wild terrible, but I’d like you to meet my friend Sarah.”

Rose turned to inspect the hussy that was leading her little Conor astray, she eyed her up, making a mental note that she was too skinny, her boobs were to large, her hair too long and not tied back like a good catholic girl’s should be, and her blouse was too tight fitting! After this observation, she slowly and coolly extended her hand to Sarah and said, “Pleased to meet you, Conor says you’re nice” and that was all she said, her face didn’t even break a smile.

Sarah extended her hand too and repeated “please to meet you” returning the cold stare.
Oh hell, thought Conor, a bloody stand-down on their first meeting, this is not a good start. To break the tension Conor interjected some lighthearted conversation.

“Mum, Sarah lives out in Dalkey and goes to Cathal Brugha, studying Hotel Management. Didn’t you work in hotels in Dublin when you were her age.” Garry was too late to prevent the error of comparing Sarah to his mother.

“Yes, I did, but that was when Dublin was not the dirty, fast city it is today.”
Sarah stood up for her city “It’s not that bad, I’ve lived her all my life and I don’t think it’s that fast or dirty.” Sarah finished this off with a blank expression as if to say retort to that.

“Well, I just read in the Times, about all the bad things happening in the city everyday and I don’t remember there being too many murders or robberies when I was living here. Young people these days have lost all morals, they’ve gone to hell.”

Conor couldn’t help himself, he had to join in on Sarah’s defense “Mum. I’m young, does that mean I’m immoral, am I going to hell?”
“Well Conor if you keep that tone of voice with me and keep not going to Mass, then I’d pretty much say you’re going to hell!”
“Rose, I don’t think I am going to hell, I go to Mass every Sunday!”

People had actually begun to stop in the restaurant and listen to their conversation, when Rose noticed this she turned to the gawkers and shouted “Get a life, you too are going to hell!”

This was too much for Conor, he had to get his Mum and Sarah outside and calmed down. “How’s about we three go for a nice walk in the Green?”

Both just looked at Conor and headed for the door out onto Grafton Street. Garry was thinking to himself that whatever chance he had with Sarah was gone now thanks to his mother’s insolence. Out on the street Conor took a good look at Sarah, her hair was down now, last night it had been pinned up. Her skin was tanned, not really dark, but an outside tan, not like most Irish girls with their milk-white skin. Her eyes were looking a deep marble brown. He didn’t really notice them last night, but now they were magnificent.

Sarah and his mother walked side by side, a little ahead of Conor. Neither were talking, Sarah was just staring ahead, Rose was looking at the ground and glancing to Sarah every once in a while. As they entered the Green the three came parallel to each other with Conor in the middle. Conor was thinking about his walk around the perimeter of the Green last night with Sarah. With only the two of them it had been a pleasure, now it was agony. They made it the whole way around without making any real conversation. Mary was being ignorant and Conor knew that when he got home with her later he would be having quite the argument.

Sarah didn’t say much either, she smiled every so often at Conor and this gave him hope that something may be salvaged yet of this day. Mary stopped abruptly, pivoted on one foot and look at the two younger ones and announced;
“I’m going to Brown and Thomas to do some shopping, Conor I’ll see you back at the apartment later, we’ll have dinner after that, your lady friend can come along if she likes.”
“Thanks mum, how’d you like that Sarah?”
“I don’t know, we’ll see, I might be doing something with my family.”
Mary couldn’t resist “Are we not good enough for you?”
Sarah went to open her mouth but Conor went first “Mum, just go on, we’ll give you a call,” and Conor being the apple of his mother’s eye he had to ask before he could let her go and have a clean conscience “you all right Mum?”
Mary said nothing in reply just winced her face, tried a little smile and walked away.
“Sarah, I do apologize f or my mother’s behavior, I don’t know what got into her, she’s usually not too bad, apart from being a freak Catholic.”
“No, need to apologize to me, it’s plain to see.”
“What’s plane to see?”
“That you’re her boy.”
“What’s that suppose to mean?”
“You don’t get it do you? She loves you so much Conor, that no girl is good enough to take her place, not that I am saying I want to be with you forever, but she is not ready for any girl to come on her territory.”
“Well, that’s probably why I haven’t ever introduced her to any of my girlfriends since I was fourteen.”
“Are you calling me your girlfriend?”
“Na, I was just making a reference” Conor flashed her a big grin as he said this and added, “How much longer have you off today?”
“The whole day, why?”
“Well I think we should go for a drink.”
“It’s only one in the afternoon Conor, are you serious?”
“Hell yeah, sure it’d be good fun, come on.”
“All right, I’ll go.”

The pair went back down Grafton Street to O’Neill’s pub, a trendy pub, very popular among the twenty somethings. When you went in first it looked like a small affair but as you walked further in you found that it snaked around, revealing nooks and crannies everywhere. They found one such nook to nest into and Conor went up to get himself a Bulmers and a Budwieser for Sarah. While the barman was getting the drinks Garry let his mind wander off:

‘Right, what am I doing now, I’ve pissed off the mother, I’m here in the pub with Sarah and where do I go from that, I don’t want to have dinner with the mother, don’t think Sarah wants that anyway, and how do I go from one in the afternoon to bed with Sarah when the mother is lurking around, maybe when I call the mother to tell her I’ll be back for dinner she’ll go off home early to Donegal, a shit, why am I even worried, I’ll just have a few drinks and it’ll all work itself out.’
“Hey, sir, hey” a voice was calling Conor.
“What?”
“Your drinks, that’ll be four pounds eighty.”
“Cheers mate.”
Sitting back down beside Sarah he took a big gulp of his Bulmers and felt the sweet nectar flow throughout his body loosening all the joints, making him feel at ease, letting his tongue loosen up a little too. Ah, this was more like it.

“Conor, your mother is quite a character, don’t be worried about her offending me, I am a big girl, I can look after myself. She’s nothing compared to my ex’s mother, Jeannie. She was a real Blackrock bitch, you know the snotty South Side kind. Jesus, she gave me a time every chance she got.”

“Glad to hear it. Sarah, this has been a weird beginning to an afternoon. Let us start all over again. How are ya?”
“I’m fine Conor, how are you?” She replied laughing.
“I’m great now, you know what?”
“What?”
“Your wild good looking,” Conor wasn’t much on compliments, but he felt compelled to say something to her.
“Thanks, you don’t look so bad yourself!”
“I mean it, since I saw you yesterday and then again last night I’ve been thinking about you. I’m not the sort of fella that likes to settle down or anything, but for some reason I get this strange feeling from you.”
“Strange, what do you mean strange?”
“Like, I like you or something.”
“Well, that’s encouraging for a girl, you like me or something, I hope something is as good as liking!” The two began to laugh at their silliness and waved at the nearest waitress for another round.

They stayed drinking in O’Neill’s until about five and by then they had quite a few beverages put away in them.

“Sarah, I’ve to call Mum, tell her we’ll see ourselves for dinner and for her to go ahead with Jack.”
“Conor, I can get us free dinner at the Hilton if you like?”
“Of course I like, how do you do that?”
“I work there on and off at large banquets, along with the job at Bewley’s, I know enough people there to get good service. After you call your Mum, call a taxi to bring us over there.”
“No, bother” replied Garry.

During a superb dinner they had two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon between them and for desert they had a few Bailey’s and ice. Conor was staring into Sarah’s eyes, and she was just looking at him with a smiling face.
“What are you looking at Mr. O’Hara?”
“Oh, it’s Mr. O’Hara now is it?”
“Yes.”
“I was just looking at you and wondering how the hell I met you and have come to be across from you in the Hotel Hilton, half drunk, well fed and most of all, I haven’t kissed you yet!”
“Does that annoy you that we haven’t kissed yet?”
“Not annoy, makes it more challenging.”
“Why, have I been a challenge?”
“Compared to most of the tarts I meet here in Dublin, yes you have been a challenge, for heaven sake, I’ve seen you in the day time, I don’t know when I last saw a girl that I met the night before during the day!”
“Conor I want to kiss you!” This threw Conor for a loop.
“Excuse me?”
“I said I want to kiss you.”
“Well I don’t think the Clarabell Restaurant in the Hilton is the best place of that. Can it wait?”
“I can get us a room here, it can wait until then.” Her smile was beaming and Garry couldn’t control the smile on his face either, he didn’t know if it was from the alcohol or pure happiness. But this was a good day in the life of Conor C. O’Hara.

They rode the elevator to the sixth floor and went down two corridors, Sarah stopped at room 628 and punched in the code. She was acting very cool, but Garry was holding his breath getting very nervous, which was not his usual self. He didn’t feel in control of the situation, somehow he felt like he was being seduced, but now was not the time to be getting philosophical, he was in a posh hotel room with a beautiful woman and she wanted him, he didn’t care who was in control if the end results were the same.

Sarah had brought a bottle of Cabernet up with her, got it from whatever connection she had to get the dinner and room. She opened the bottle with a screw she pulled from her pocket and poured a glass each.
“To us.”
“To us” replied Conor.
After taking a sip, she put a hand to Conor’s chest and pushed him backward onto the bed. Conor landed in a sitting position and took a gulp of his wine. Sarah began to sway to and fro, as if to some music in her head, putting her wineglass to her mouth and taking small sensuous sips. Then she put the glass down on a dresser and began to undo the buttons on her shirt. Conor just looked on in amazement. She looked up slyly as she undid the last button and as she stared him straight in the face she let the shirt fall off her shoulders and onto the floor.

Conor had to take a deep breath to prevent himself from hyperventilating. He wanted to reach out and pull her close to him, but her little show was not finished and he was being really aroused. As she undid her pants she walked slowly over to him and standing just inches from his face, she let her pants fall off her hips.

She now stood in only her bra and panties of white lace, she bent down to Conor and cupped his face in her hands and kissed him, then pulled back and looked at him. He was speechless, it was the greatest kiss he had ever tasted, the feel still lingered on his lips. He wanted more and put his hand out to her, she came in closer and straddled him, bringing her mouth to his once again.

They began to make love and for all the countless times Conor had performed this act in the past few years with nameless girls this felt like the first time, he felt like a virgin in her presence. Their lovemaking lasted for hours, sometimes taking a twenty-minute rest and commencing again. When they got hungry late in the night they ordered room service, ate a little and then went back to lovemaking.

Around four in the morning they lay spooned up in bed, Sarah was perfectly curved into his body, her skin felt so soft under his touch. They were talking about nothing in particular, conversation didn’t matter much now, all they wanted to hear was the sound of each other’s voices no matter what the words were.

As their eyes got heavier and to talk took an effort Conor leaned his head a little closer to Sarah’s ear and whispered “I love you.”
Sarah didn’t respond, she was asleep, and as Conor found himself falling asleep too, he thought to himself ‘at least I can tell her again in the morning.’

When Conor woke he didn’t recognize his surroundings and felt a little disorientated. Then the place came back to him The Hilton. He propped himself up in bed and stretched his jaw. Turning to his left he saw the empty half of a bed where Sarah had been the night before, on the bedside table there was a letter:

Conor,
Sorry to leave you to wake alone, but I thought this would be the easiest way. Last night was the most amazing night I have ever had with a man and Conor you are an amazing man. Before I fell asleep I heard what you said and although you didn’t hear me, I said it back to you “I love you.” I had to leave before you got up or else I don’t know if I would have been able to leave at all. I have not been perfectly straight with you Conor, I'm engaged to be married. I graduate from Cathal Brugha in about five weeks and then my fiancee and I are moving to Dusseldorf in Germany. He is going to manage one of the Hilton Hotels there, he is currently in London at Hyde Park. That is how I got the room here, I’ve good connections. I don’t know when I will be back in Ireland. I just want you to know Conor that I love you and will not ever forget you. Somehow I know our lines will cross again sometime in the future, I wish it could have been different. You’ll love some lucky girl one-day and I’ll be forever jealous of that.
Love you,
Sarah Daly

‘Shit’ thought Conor, wasn’t thinking that!
As he walked back along the Green from the Hilton, he looked over into it and smiled, smiled big and wide and said out loud “Some girl.”

Pouring a Pint of Guinness

2006-04-12T23:01:00.000-05:00

The selected vessel had to be perfect, exempt from all impurities, streak free and dry, not too cool and neither too warm; its environs had to be perfect too. The craftsman choose one that fitted the standard of the age honored tradition he had been taught since he could lift his own weight in liquid. Holding the holy vessel up to the light he saw that this was indeed a fine choice. Light that shone through a chink in the curtains hit the surface and splintered into all its magnificent elements.

With the sleeve of his shirt rolled beyond the elbow, he began the ceremony. The veins rippled in his forearm as he held the vessel tilted to the perfect angle and brought his right arm around in a large arc to pull the device that would loose the heavenly juice.

Instantly the coffee-brown foam swirled around the sides of the glass and swished like an angry ocean at the bottom. On and on the nectar of the hops flowed till the vessel was all of three-quarters full. Then the craftsman carefully placed it aside to let the vessel and its precious cargo work their magic.

The bottom most of the vessel turned dark as the darkest night, the rest still swirling the distinctive brown with spouts of blackness and purple shouting through it and falling upon that which lay to the south. The proud craftsman looked on at his creation as near to perfection as anything came to in life. He knew the time allowed for the settling and those seconds pounded in his head as he restrained his hand from taking the vessel too soon and sacking the beauty of the ceremony. When a hundred and nineteen of the poundings had gone through his ears he lifted the vessel once more and brought her to the source for one last suck from the nipple of life.

This time his right arm pushed the lever up rather than pulling down as he had before. The liquid did not tarnish the perfect blackness created by the settling, but made itself one with the rest of the liquid. As it flowed, the head now white as the snow atop mount Errigle on a winters morn, rose to the rim and stopped a fraction of an inch above the edge magically keeping it from flowing over and tainting the outside.

The craftsman took the vessel in his hands for the last time, and placed it on the mahogany-alter in front of him. He felt as if it were his child and giving up part of his own being was the hardest task asked of a master craftsman, and no matter how many times he performed the ceremony it was as hard as the first he had ever given .

A new hand came to clasp the vessel now, not one of a creator like the craftsman but that of a destroyer, the drinker. As cruel as the drinker appeared now, savagely gulping down the holy liquid, it was him that gave the vessel and her cargo its reason to be. For there was no greater shame for a master craftsman than to have one of his creations refused by the barbarians on the other side of the wooden alter.

This savage however, returned nothing to the heart broken craftsman but the empty vessel, gutted of her cargo and all the Neanderthal had to say for himself was “Hey man, that was a great pint!”

The Man with too Many Hobbies

2006-04-12T22:44:00.000-05:00

It was the summer of 1995, the year I did my leaving Cert and got the hell out of Newbridge College with Five honours and four hundred and thirty points to show for all my Dad’s money.

For the summer I was working in the Sail-Inn, the crappiest pub in town and possibly the worst restaurant in town, not because of the food, it was actually good, after all I was the chef, but for the décor. It was falling all around Vernon and Peggy and their hairy arm pitted daughter Janet. Vernon built the place like a Chinaman, as my Dad would say, he stacked one addition on top of the next. It was great fun to work there, I ate the best of the food and drank all that I wanted, not that the bosses ever knew. I think they must have had a fair idea, but they kept quiet as I only got a hundred and twenty a week and worked about the same number of hours.

I’d been through a few girlfriends that summer and around the end of July I meet my childhood dream girl; Karen Callaghan. She was beautiful, dark hair, dark skin, from a good family, she was the captain of the Rathfarnam girl’s school hockey team, that made her body fit too. I fell in love with her when I was about ten or twelve, when I’d seen her walking up the big pier with her father. I was on the Golden Rose with my friend Jonathan and all that night we talked about her and other girls as we listened to Elvis and I slept on the floor beside his bed. We were best friends; drifted apart since then.

Well, life was good and for the first time in history, that I can remember at least, Ireland was having a hot summer. Everyday was warm enough to go out to the beach at Fintra, the most amazing beach in the world. I’d been to a few foreign countries and never have I seen one that compares to Fintra. It’s a mile of golden sand with a cove at one end and wrappes around the other, out of sight, what we called the sinking sand. Local legend had it that a plane crashed there during the war and sunk beneath it. Often my brother and I would have a look, but we never saw anything.

Saturday’s were the best days because I had a split shift everyday between two and five, however Saturdays meant that everyone else was off and I could actually get to see people. This Saturday I’d taken my bicycle to work rather than my mother’s car. I took the car a lot since Derek was in Spain and I didn’t have to compete with him for it. On my break I cycled up to the beach, Karen said she would already be up there.

The tide was out when I got there and I spied around the beach to see if I could see any of the people I knew. I didn’t, so I asked some familiar faces lying half-naked on towels. They said Karen was down with my Dad and others on his new boat.

That was the first I knew Dad had a new boat. He had bought a semi-rigid a while back and the damn boat came apart at the seams in the middle of the bay, he and Jenny had to paddle the thing back to the pier. Wish I had seen that sight.

I could see the boat way off in the distance and I jogged all the way down to the shore, then wadded in and when it was deep enough I swam out to the boat, Christ I was in good shape then. Guess that’s what two years in a boarding school does to you; exercise your mind and body, damn that sounds Buddhist, that’s a good one a Dominican Buddhist!

As I swam closer I could see the boat was a beauty, white with a blue strip down her side. Karen was on board, she was looking perfect as ever in a red swimsuit, I called it her Bay Watch suit. Damn she was beautiful.

My Dad was looking twenty years younger on the boat with the latest design in sunglasses. Life was good to him back then, he didn’t have many worries. He smiled a lot and wasn’t quite so cynical, at least that is how I remember it.

When I was a kid growing up, I always wanted to be rich, so this girl would like me, her name was Mariead McGing. I thought she was the most perfect thing in the world when I was six, seven and eight. I got to sit beside her in third class, before I moved schools and was I ever happy. I always believed being rich would make her love me. Her dad owned one of the big boats and to be rich was the only way to make her love me. I slowed danced with her at my Conformation disco in the Forester’s Hall. I wasn’t yet so rich, but a little older and I didn’t feel intimidated by her anymore and love her I did not. Now, at Fintra beach, on Dad’s new boat with the most beautiful girl in Killybegs, I was rich; rich beyond my wildest dreams.

Dad sped the boat out the bay and I looked at Karen and wished I could have paused life there and then. I didn’t know it then, but that was the zenith, soon it would begin to dip down, down till it hit the lowest of low points.

Part Two

After a year of college in Dublin, an eventful year in which I two timed Karen and broke up with her, much to my regret and made some great friends, one of which decided to head to France with me for the summer.

I was now dating this tall blond, the twin sister of my roommate’s girl, she was everything a man could want in a woman, but she was no Karen. I came home just before I was to go to France with Damien and I was up visiting her in Donegal, when my Grandfather died suddenly.
I was there when he had his stoke and he said his last words, last coherent words, to me. We were giving him a little sup of brandy to thin the blood and he slurred “a wee drink’s good for ya, as long as it’s medicine.” I loved him and his passing really got to me. I’d never known death before and the fragility of life got to me. I felt like Mersault in The Stranger and what cared I for life, if we could all go at a moments notice.

I went to France all the same and returned not long after. I was in bits. Couldn’t seem to get it all together, I cried a lot and didn’t really know why. We got the boat out a few times, but nothing like the summer before. It rained a lot and when it wasn’t raining my Dad and mother were fighting and that made me not want to be in the house at all.

I didn’t go back to college and worked all winter in Dad’s factory. The boat was stowed away in some place in Northern Ireland for the winter to get serviced.

She was taken out a few times the following summer, but then Dad was getting separated from Mam and the boat was being ignored. He bought a tarp that covered it all and now the tarp never come off. The algae that use to come off with one wash was becoming permanent and the blue strip was fading and the boat was dilapidating in our front drive.

I didn’t feel so rich anymore and had to get away from home because like the boat, our family life was deteriorating and there was no escape like the first summer, when the days were warm and you could take the boat out the bay and leave all behind.

I do remember one Saturday in the summer of 1996, when we did take it out, I was up the stern and sleeping off a late night. I let my feet dangle over the side and a dorsal fin came up along side to check us out; cured my hangover fairly quick. Since then I can’t remember when we last fished or skied or just took her out for a good old run. There were too much other things happening in life and the boat, the symbol of richness that made me feel content was forgotten about.

That fall I went to Galway to another college and by Spring I had fallen in love with an American girl and ended up spending the summer with her in the Midwest for the summer of 1998.

The years were rolling by, I hardly noticed them at all, it felt like yesterday I had left boarding school one of the most successful students. It’s amazing all the factors that can go into screwing up your life.

That summer was bliss. I learned to live a whole other life and it made me happy. I was 1200 hundred miles from the sea and I didn’t miss it at all. I rowed boats out on small lakes and caught fresh water fish and played games and sang songs and fell in love everyday with my girl. I loved her more than anything and for the first time in years I forgot about Karen and the good, rich life I once had. This one, this summer in the Heartland of America surpassed that one.

In August I came home and didn’t really talk to anyone much, I didn’t even notice that we had a boat anymore. Mum had moved out and Dad was grumpy all the time. I worked for him till December, without talking much to anyone, I became a hermit up in my room and I had taken to mountain biking because of a friend I lived with in Galway. I used that to escape to the mountains and back roads, where it was just me and my thoughts, until I could head back to America.

I arrived back in Kansas City the day after Boxing Day and a whole new chapter began in my life. Commenced college for the third time and this time I wanted to stay, something I didn’t feel with the other places. English was the game as I had slowly been giving into my desire to write, it was a lot to do with all those hours I spent at home not talking, had to express myself somehow.

Jill went back to finish school in Texas in the middle of January and I stayed in KC to keep up with college. I loved the air she breathed and I did all I could to fit into her world; It was so different from my old one. I loved her a lot at the time and desperately wanted to be accepted.
When summer came again and she returned we didn’t love each other anymore and I was in love with Shannon. Somehow we just were in love, we made love one night and that was that. I broke up with Jill and carried on without skipping a beat. It was strange, but I loved Shannon in a way that I could never love Jill, even though I loved the air she breathed.

Shannon came home with me for Christmas and it was a good time. Being winter, we didn’t take the boat out but I took a look at her and perhaps it was because I was in love again, but she looked better than she had in years. I was rich again.

Whatever it was we too fell out of love about two months after we came back from Ireland. But we let it linger on for another eight months till I got brave enough and ended it. It took me another year to really get over it. I loved her so much I broke it off and from a far I can see that I loved her too much to stay with her. I would want her to live in a glass bubble, with only me and my love, but she had too much living to do and didn’t like me anymore.

I got pissed off in America and came home in August of 2001. I didn’t want to go but I was not in love and hated my job and most of the people I worked with. The first week I was home I got Dad to take the boat out. She looked like shit again, she started easy enough and we took her out the bay for a run. She made it as far as Drumanoo Head before the belts went on her and we had no radio or cell phone to call for help. I was scared for a while because the rocks were coming closer and closer, but Dad was not and he took the engine cover off and McGivered the engine back to one piece taking the belt from the water pump and putting it on the fuel pump and steamed the boat all the way home at about five knots.

When we got back to the pier I took her out to the petrol station and washed her for about an hour and a half. Dad had taken up horse riding and car racing and the weather had been terrible every summer and this one was no exception and the boat was ignored and let go to waste. It was a shame since she still looked fine and the seagull shit and algae came off with some love and care. When I was finished washing her I took her up to the house, the new house Dad lived in with his girlfriend, he didn’t live at home anymore. I think my mother was there but I didn’t see her because she was off the planet. The summer after Granda died, Granny died too, that left her depressed and her separation from Dad shortly after really put the last nail in the coffin of her sanity.

The boat was reversed up against the fence of the horses’ enclosure and there she has been left. I was up the other day and she is still there all-alone. It looks stupid out of the water, like some kind of alien artefact or dinosaur up on a trailer with the tarp over her, a ghost of what she use to be.

When I look at her I am reminded of the day I cycled out to Fintra and sat with Karen Callaghan in the back seat, while Dad with his sunglasses, skimmed her across the warm Atlantic Ocean, it feels like a dream now and I often wonder if it was.

My old life is like the boat, its been washed and stored away for another time. There is too much else now to go back to it. It will slowly erode silently away under a tarp. New hobbies have taken its place, life keeps moving.

I graduate college in a few months, eight years after I left boarding school. What have I really achieved? More than just a degree, I’ve earned a lesson in life. I have to let the boat and all its memories go lie in their grave just like my mother, let them all sleep their peaceful sleep of the ages.

Blaming it all on Paul

2006-01-20T11:37:00.000-06:00

When I came to class late and my homework was nowhere to be found you looked at me with viscous eyes from your serene teacher’s face.

My tired eyes spoke nothing to you. You only saw another student with an excuse waiting, the story of how no work was done when to much play was at stake. But I wanted to take you aside and tell you about Paul’s death. Then how would you react when I described how the fifteen-year-old boy took his father’s gun and blew his head off? The shocked look on your face would tell me all I needed to know. That it was all-right you understood, my work could come in at a later time, you hoped the families were coping well. Instead I am too ashamed to use Paul’s death, knowing it was never the reason for my tardiness. You scribble a comment down beside my name a little arrow to attack my grade-point-average all because I would not use Paul’s death.

Talking late at night and my mind is not there for you and we fight because these kinds of words come easier than pleasant words of love. You yell down the line how I don’t try, I never listen, I don’t make the effort. But how could I with the burden of Paul’s death. I can’t say this to you and blame it on the boy who said goodbye to my father and his mother then said goodbye to life. You would know this was not the reason, this devilish news sitting at the back of my mind. How the hell do I comprehend it or deal with it. I want to talk to you about it but the words are not there. The one’s that tell you I knew his pain, I understand his anger and confusion and how brave and foolish he was. But no it’s no good, well just fight more and I will tell you I am sorry and I truly am, please forgive me. I can’t blame it on Paul’s death.

The angry maintenance man, angry at the world for screwing him up the ass when he was trying to do the same to the world, comes to me in a fit of rage and reduces my manhood to boyish tears. Telling me it’s all my fault, that I am too blame. I want to scream into his face, it’s not my fault, it's Paul’s death. The fifteen year old boy who lies in the cold ground in St. Mary’s graveyard up Church road, dead long before he had ever lived not fair that one so young should have been so angry and have taken so much action. When I would say these words to you, you would soften and shake my hand and tell me you were sorry you had a bad day you didn’t mean it, it will O.K. No I can’t use Paul’s death, his is not for me to use, somebody else yes but not I. I had never met him, yet emotions are here with me and I know why. Poor Paul.

Girl on a Beach

2006-01-19T18:30:00.000-06:00

Today is the 19th of January 2006, the third anniversary of Mum's passing and this is a little poem dedicated to her. We all miss her, but each year gets easier:

You were just a little girl
Sitting on the beach,
With a pen and scraps of paper;
While a storm raged on.

You could have run away,
Sought safer ground,
But you wanted to capture the fierce beauty
That lay within the winds.

Sand blasted your face,
Stinging your eyes; grit in your teeth,
But the words kept coming,
Your hand kept moving
And you stayed to catch them all.

All around you waves crashed off rocks,
Hurricane strength winds lifted sand-banks,
Changing your surroundings.
You clung to the edge of your towel,
Grasping to something familiar.

The tides rose higher and higher,
The waves crashed closer and closer:
Caught between the Moon and the Earth
In their giant game of tug-o’-war.

It was too late for anyone to save you;
No lifeguard on duty, nobody watching.
Swept away in a deafening roar
By an awesome natural force.

Your pen, clutched by a lifeless hand,
But the scraps of paper blew inland.
The ink was running, wet from sea-water and tears,
But the words, the beautiful words, could still be read:

You suffered, gave yourself as a poetic sacrifice,
So we could know the beauty that lay within a storm.

Sarah Came Home Today

2006-01-19T18:22:00.000-06:00

Last year we had two roosters, Brian and Lady, and a chicken called Sarah. Lady is called Lady because we thought he was a lovely white chicken until he started to crow and fight with Brian.

Last year Daddy lived at home too. He and Mommy had been arguing a lot and Daddy didn’t come home until very late at night and Mommy would lock him outside. Then he had to get his own apartment and I can go there once a week.

Daddy is from Mexico and we all went to live there a few years ago, but now we live in Kansas City. My Mommy is from Oregon and I lived there too.

Daddy and Mommy were very young when I was born and even though they were married they didn’t do it right and I’ve heard Mommy call Daddy an “illegal immigrant.” I’m not sure what that means, but I know it has something to do with the Government and Daddy looks real worried when Mom says that.

Daddy can speak English and Spanish and so can I, but Mom only speaks English and when she speaks a little Spanish she sounds funny and is silly.

Without Daddy at home our electricity was turned off, then our phone and then our water. I showered over at the neighbor’s and we could use their phone too. Our neighbor grew up in Oregon too and she and my Mom used to be best friends. But now they shout at each other too.
Mommy said not to worry because I would be going to Oregon soon to stay with her aunt Rosie for my summer vacation.

I love staying with Rosie and her friend Phil, they are not really my aunts, but they tell me to call them Aunty. Last year when I stayed with them I got new clothes and dolls and got to eat all the time. They wanted me to eat the same food as them. At home, Mom let’s me eat whatever I want.

We also have a dog and three cats, so when we go on vacation they have to be looked after by our other neighbor Ann. She has three dogs, a cat and a baby of her own called Chris, he is two.
Oregon was beautiful, not nearly as hot as Kansas City. I stayed in Eugene with Rosie and Phil, but Mommy spent most of her time up in Portland with all her old friends. She didn’t come to see me much and when I did see her she looked very sad. I heard Rosie giving out to her and Mommy shouted back.

Mommy went home a week before me because she was going to climb mountains in Colorado. I know she’s going with her new boyfriend. The blond guy from the nice restaurant our neighbor Sandra works at. She won’t tell me about him, but it’s hard not to know.

Rosie came back to Kansas City with me. She paid all the bills, and got the roof fixed. I loved all my new clothes and shoes but Mommy didn’t like how they looked on me. When I went to bed I heard Rosie shouting and Mommy crying.

In the morning I got to see my dog and the cats and Sarah the chicken. I don’t know where the roosters went. Everyone was whispering and someone said they went to heaven.

I went back to school in August and hated it. Everyone can read and spell and count and even though I am the tallest in the class, I get stuck all the time. I wish I didn’t have to go to school at all, except to play with my friends.

Mommy is not friends with any of the neighbors and Daddy doesn’t even come to pick me up. I get to stay at home by myself, something none of my friends are allowed to do.

I’m going to be eight next week, but Mommy said I can’t have a party until next month when she gets paid. I really want to have a birthday party. Sandra and her husband said they would give me one and all the kids around the neighborhood can come. But Mommy says it can’t be called my birthday party, just a party and we can’t sing Happy Birthday either. Sandra’s husband said Mommy is being “ignorant as hell.” His mom died this year and he’s been grumpy all year. But I think he is right and I want to have a birthday party.

A few weeks later Mom threw me a birthday party and invited lots of adults. She let me make the cake and I didn’t like it. I felt like crying when they all sang “Happy Birthday.” It wasn’t very much fun, but I did get some nice presents.

The next day Sarah the chicken went missing and our dog ate my new toys. He had already eaten my shoes, the futon, the couch and did his business all over the house. Sandra and her husband had taken him for awhile, but he was too much for them with their own two dogs. They gave him back after he had eaten a hole in their wall. That’s why Mom fell out with them. Mommy wanted to send him to the animal shelter, but I cried so much that she didn’t.

All the chickens are gone, and the cats keep running away and Daddy is nowhere. I want Jose around, even if he was a stupid dog that eats everything.

Our phone was cut off again and so was the electricity. Mommy had a friend move into the spare room and he paid the bills and everything was turned on again.

He’s really nice, but he’s only Mommy’s friend. She is still seeing the blond guy, but she never lets me see him. Roger, the new roommate stays at home to look after me because he doesn’t have a job or a car. He just got out of the Marines. He said he had been in Iraq and many other places around the world. Jose got sick on his discharge papers and he was really mad and said he can’t get a job now.

He takes Jose for walks and when Daddy does come around he doesn’t shout at Mommy anymore. I like Roger, I hope he stays.

Christmas will be coming soon and I’ve been told to keep my letter to Santa very short. There are so many things I would like him to bring me (Brian and Lady count as one wish), but I can’t decide which ones to write down.

It snowed the week before Christmas and we went sledding over at the Korean Church. It was very cold, but baby Chris and the Puerto Rican’s kid went too. Roger was there and Sandra and her husband. Mommy came late and did a lot of complaining and wanted us to hurry up so she could go see her boyfriend. I wish she would stay with me more.

Christmas was really nice and Rosie sent me a whole new outfit. Sandra and her husband had us over for dinner and I ate two helpings. Her husband wasn’t too grumpy on Christmas and even gave me a nice present.

I spent Christmas Eve with Daddy, so I didn’t get to see him on Christmas day. The snow melted from the week before, so that was one wish I didn’t get from Santa.

The day after Christmas, which Sandra’s husband calls St. Stephen’s Day, was warm and I was allowed to play outside with no coat on. Jose was tied up to a tree, but he kept barking at the bushes. I went over to see what was wrong with him.

Santa had answered one of my wishes: There was Sarah. I picked her up and she clucked a few times. Just then Sandra and her husband came outside. They called across the road to me and I shouted back “Sarah came home today.” Everything was going to be all right.

Stephen Faherty

2006-01-19T18:19:00.000-06:00

It’s never too cold in an Irish winter, no colder really than October or March, but late at night when there is not a cloud in the sky and God’s light show is in full display, a certain crispness creeps into the air and if you’ve forgotten your coat you’ll feel the nip as you stagger home from the pub.

It was on a night like this that forty-two year old Stephen Faherty fell into the side of a back road on Christmas Eve 2012. He’d been drinking in his favorite bar, The Holly Bush, and had been there since five in the evening. He didn’t go to midnight mass on Christmas Eve anymore. In fact he’d mostly given up on God and his Church and all his priests. Frankie the bartender had tried to tell him to go home around nine but he’d got loud and rowdy and it was better just to leave Stephen with his pint and whisky chaser and keep him quiet.

People whispered about him when they thought he was drunk enough not to listen. He was a legend in his own town. He’d grown up there when he was a wee lad and earned great fame at sixteen when he won the Ulster Irish dancing championship. Boys his own age made fun of him for being a dancer, but they were careful not to say it to his face, cause he could dance with his fists just as well as he could with his feet.

He kept up the dancing for years, all the while he finished secondary school and went to college in Dublin. He got first class honors from Trinity in a business commerce degree. That set him up nicely with his first job in a big office in Dublin managing accounts for multinational companies that came to Ireland, raped her for tax incentives for five years and then left. Even though he was becoming a successful young businessman, the dancing was still his real passion. He practiced all he could and in the summers he went to the USA and Australia to compete in the World finals. He’d won it once when he was eighteen and had placed well every year since.

Then the phenomenal success of River Dance broke onto the screen of millions during the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest half-time interval. It was suppose to fill a ten- minute void while the presenters and performers took a break. Instead it rocked Ireland and it shook the world. It made the rest of the amateur entertainers look like pure dog’s bollocks, it was fresh, it was electric it was what Stephen Faherty had been waiting for.

When he saw the dancers fly across the stage, he knew in that instant it was what he wanted to do with his life. It didn’t take long for him to contact RTE and find out where he could meet the right people and learn more about the River Dance. As such there was no word of another show like the one during the Eurovision. However, in the weeks and months following the enthusiasm grew so much that the producers had no choice but to create a full-length version of the River Dance.

Stephen got the call from the organizers, they wanted him to try out as one of the back up dancers. He dreamed of being the man in front of everyone, but that position was filled and there was no chance he was going to give it up. The only problem now facing Stephen was he had to quit his office job in Dublin. The River Dance was going to be full time for at least a year and the pay was nearly half what he was making in Dublin. He thought hard, but not long and took the audition.

He passed with flying colors and three months later he was on stage at the Point Depot dancing before five thousand people. He felt his life come alive for the first time, his stale outer shell crumbled and he could see the look on the faces of people that wanted to be him. He was earning respect for his dancing and that meant more to him than all the money in the world.

He followed the River Dance troop all over Ireland and the UK. The success grew every day and it wasn’t long before a fully-fledged tour of the USA and Australia was in the works. The River Dance became an entity beyond its humble beginnings and no one could keep up with the success of it: not its producers or its main dancers.

Rifts began to tear the original crew apart and there was arguing about money and by the end of the second year the female star of the show was replaced by a nobody and even though she was out there dancing her heart out to thousands of people every night, she didn’t catch the audience like the first girl had. It was then that they knew they had to be careful. Placing the wrong person in the leading role could send the whole magic of the River Dance faltering back to earth and back to the small halls and classrooms of Ireland.

It was because of this thinking that so much energy was spent trying to retain the male star. He wanted more money, wanted half of what the show was earning or he was going to leave and start his own production company. By the end of another year he did leave and Lord of the Dance was competing with River Dance.

Stephen had been asked to join the Lord of the Dance but he wanted to stay with the original troop. The new male lead was an amazing failure. He had about as much charisma as a wet paper bag. Looks he had, but nothing electric, nothing that made him become superhuman when the lights came on and the music started.

A year had passed and The River Dance was loosing ticket sales to the Lord of the Dance, they had to get it right or it would be the end of them. Wherever they went they trailed behind their rivals and the reason for this was that the defector knew their tour schedule and made all his own tour dates a month or two before the River Dance was to perform in any city. This infuriated the River Dance Company, especially since their lead man was nothing compared to the magician of the Lord of the Dance.

They were booked for six nights in Sidney and the first night came out to terrible reviews. People who had already bought tickets for the second show didn’t even turn up and the venue was half-empty. On that night, just before the intermission, the lead miss-timed a jump and caught the back heel of his lady lead square in the face. The sharp heel cut a gash in his face and sent him off balance, he fell hard to the stage floor and the cracking of his knee could be heard for about twenty rows back. All the dancers on the stage froze, the music stopped. Nobody knew what to do. The dancer tried to get up, but his leg was like a useless appendage making him sprawl around the place and the blood gushing out of his face made him quite a sight.

Two men from back stage ran out and grabbed the fallen man and carried him behind the curtain. In a panic the producers were about to get on the microphone and announce they’d have to cancel the performance when Stephen Faherty leapt up in the air, stood beside the leading lady, did a little clip-clip with his heels and raised his hand to signal the orchestra to continue the music.

The magic was back in the River Dance and the reviews of “the man that Saved the River Dance” were so overwhelming that they were forced to add three extra nights to their Sidney shows. They had found what they were missing. Stephen was the most famous man in the world for a week. He was on the cover of nearly every magazine in over eighty countries and the hype for the US tour just took a huge jump and ticket sale soared there too.

The American tour started on the West Coast and slowly made its way east, stopping off in Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, Philadelphia and eventually the highlight of the performing world; Broadway in New York City.

Stephen Faherty stole Broadway, the papers said they hadn’t seen a human move like he did since Fred Astaire was prancing around with Gene Kelly. He signed a contract with the River Dance Company for two more years with an option to extend, increased salary and stock options, to become part owner.

This was the high point of Stephen’s life and that summer when he went home to rest for a month before another nine months of touring he was treated like royalty and his home town threw a huge street ceremony in his honor and allowed all the bars in town to stay open all night without closing.

He bought airline tickets for his parents to go to Jamaica for two weeks, partly for them and partly so he could have some peace and quiet at home without them in his face every five minutes seeing if he wanted something or could they do something for him.

While they were gone he got up around six every morning and went for a five mile run, picking up the paper on the way and after a short work-out he’d have his breakfast and read the paper.
On the sixth day of such luxury he opened the Irish Times and read the headline: Four Irish Slain in Jamaica. His heart jumped in his mouth and his eyes scanned down to the names on the page. He crumpled the paper up into a ball and threw it away.

He was their only son and spoke some very brave words at the funeral. Everything was left to him: the house, the lands, the cars, everything. The River Dance Company tried to make him come back to them, but he refused to even talk. As suddenly as his life began, so too did it end.
This is why it was such a tragedy on Christmas morning 2012 when they found the frozen body of Michael Faherty lying in a ditch on the side of a back road, with more alcohol than blood in him.

Every human has a story to tell; some are of fame, some of riches, love or death. Whatever it be, we should all take a minute to listen and learn from the lives of others.

Short Story of Love

2006-01-19T18:10:00.000-06:00

After loading the last of the vines and brush into the back of the Ford pickup, he looked across to her, where she stood gazing into the cleared brush. Her long brown hair lay to her shoulders, the profile of her face, in view, showing off one blue eye, her thin shoulders hung erect, upright posture, T-shirt clinging to her small breasts, he craved to taste one between his lips. Her torn jeans hung about her waist like the finest fashion elegantly on display.

As he called to her she turned her gaze from the brush toward the sound of his voice. She’d worked hard all day with him, cutting vines of poison ivy and unwanted bushes from her grandmother’s backyard. She looked at him now, as if for the first time that day. From the heat of the work, even though it was only April, he had peeled of his sweater and bore only a white under shirt. He still held the chain saw and the veins rippled in his arms from the weight of it. Effortlessly he had wielded it all day. His eyes, she just couldn’t figure out; they were blue as hers, yet they now seemed fathomless, she found herself unable to discern what story they told.
Warmly a sensation arose deep inside her. Her face began to blush and she adverted her eyes from his face. He approached her, all the time keeping his eyes fixed on her face, he stretched his hand out to her proffering the keys.

“You wanna drive?”

“Yeah, sure,” she replied.

They bundled into the cab of the Ford. He couldn’t keep his mind of her, how she had labored all day with the capacity of many a stronger man. This was no prissy girl and he liked that.

She stared through the windshield, at the road ahead, as she gunned the truck’s ignition. She could feel his eyes burning at the side of her face, but she dared not meet his.

“That’s about the last of it” he started.

“Yeah, Grandma will be pleased” she returned.

The truck drove off and the noise of the old engine was the only sound in the cab as the truck moved slowly along the gravel road. Both were keenly aware how far away they were from another single soul and the tension of the isolation and the possibilities it brought seemed to thicken the very air inside the truck.

He too could feel warmth spreading through his body, centering in the groin and radiating out. Rather than let her see him blush, he cracked the window letting in some welcome fresh, cool air. All the while she kept her eyes solidly fixed on the road.

After a while he spoke again. “It’ll be good to finally get this over with.”

“Yeah, sure, wonder what else Grandma might have us do?”

“Dunno” he replied.

The silence crept in again. He knew they were approaching the fork in the road where it turned back towards the camp area and dining hall, where she would take her leave. He lacked the courage to throw his arm around her, make her stop the truck, embrace her and make love to her like wild animals out among the wilderness. If only he could have read her thoughts, that would have become the reality. Instead it lay dormant inside each of the other’s fantasies.

As they reached the fire pit, where they were to discard the vines and brush, he felt a pang of regret inside at the loss of the moment not seized. He helped her up into the back of the truck and began tossing out the debris of their labor.

She pulled a vine causing him to slip, falling towards her. She caught his arm, felt the tense muscle underneath her hand, held it for a mere sensuous second and propped him upright.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

With the truck now cleared she drove it back up to the shop and parked. She carried the gas can and he the chain saw to the concrete pad, where he began taking off the case to clean the innards of the tool. She watched his small, strong, delicate hands working over the chain and body of the saw and imagined what else they were capable of.

A few minutes later he was done and she drove them in her car back to the dining hall. Her Grandma greeted then smiling asking how the chopping and clearing went.

“Fine” they both replied.

She smiled at him, a smile that seemed to belay to him she felt as he did and perhaps this was not the time, but that another would come and they would not lie again to themselves.

“I better be getting back to the city, I’ll see you later Grandma, give me a call,” she said to her Grandma all the time looking at him, smiling.

“See you later Erin, it was nice seeing you again,” he said returning her smile.

“Yeah it was fun, see you again.” She said as she reached out a hand towards his face, and with the gentle touch of someone who has loved another for years, put her finger to his eye and cleaned a little saw dust from the corner of his eye.

His eyes at this moment met hers is a distinct fusion of the soul for a few moments and somehow he managed to get out the word “Thanks” across his lips.

“Sure” she replied and walked towards the door, waving goodbye without looking back.

He walked to the sink and began to wash his hands. Her Grandma started to talk to him and he nodded and said “Aigh” in all the right places, not really listening, but watching her car disappear down the road and out of his life ‘till the next time they met.

Days later her skin and his began to burn from poison ivy, but this physical irritation was nothing compared to the emotional burning hidden deep inside these two estranged souls that had sought and found, but not taken the love that was offered.