Two Walls and a Roof

by John Michael Cahill

  The day came for our trip to Cork and we all trooped into the bus, with Kyrle trying to lift both his speaker and tape machine. We had tested both inventions many times by then and we were very confident, as was the whole school, that Kyrle’s was a real winner. Everyone was amazed at our talents and our reputation as geniuses would be confirmed if only we could win, and become the best in Cork city and county.

  In the projects room there was a long line of judges sitting at long tables and you passed from one to the other displaying and explaining your project. The long table in front of them was a bit off-putting because each guy was talking and showing right beside you, and it was going to be hard to concentrate. Nevertheless Kyrle opted to go first in front of me. He started to show off the tape machine and his speaker and microphone. I saw all the judges lean forward and look at his big box, complete with reels of tape. The judge asked him to explain how it worked, could he show it actually working, and had he really built all that by himself. Kyrle said, “Yes Sir, if I have a power point I can plug it in. I did make it all by myself, well my brother here helped a bit too,” and he smiles back at me. After applying power, he turned it on and the reels spun but no sound came from the tape. He didn’t panic though, just did another test. Still nothing happened. The judge was very sympathetic and quite amazed that this young lad had actually made this device, even if it was not working. He was about to pass it on to the next judge when Kyrle says, “If I can use my brother’s test box here, I can fix it I'm sure”. Now all the heads turned round again. The judge was delighted to agree and we got at it. Within a few minutes Kyrle, using the substitution part of my tester, had it working and then it was talking perfectly, recording the judge and all those around him. I was totally delighted that I had been able to help him and in so doing it proved the value of my box too. I only had to explain the compass part which worked as a voltmeter and the end result was that I won first place, and Kyrle got second. We didn’t know we had won though until the Lord Mayor made the final announcements and presentations later that evening at five o’clock. What I did know though was that later in the day, during the question time, I won first place out of all the technical schools in Cork. To add the icing to my cake, I also came first in the public speaking competition where I was lucky enough to be asked to speak on my favourite subject ‘Corporal Punishment’ or as I called it ‘Pad’s Punishment’.

  As the Lord Mayor began announcing the winners, it was almost embarrassing the amount of things we had won for the school that day because our ‘question time’ team also won with our help. It was such an achievement that Dan gave us all a day off a few days later, and I remember our pictures with the presentations and certificates used to be hung on the wall of our foyer classroom for years, though probably they are well gone by now. My main prize, as I suspected, was cash. I was presented with thirty pounds, and on the way home I asked the teacher if the bus would stop and I could buy all on board crisps and lemonade, which I did. If there were any doubts about our fame, they were then well vaporized. Nannie was delighted and took the balance of my money immediately. I don’t think she even gave me back a shilling let alone a pound, but she was very proud. Both Kyrle and I were on a high after that great day. I still have my little certificate stashed somewhere and the memories from that day will never leave me. It was then going to be impossible for that old priest to get rid of me, and Dan had been vindicated at last.

  Mad friends Disco days.

  When I was a teenager, we always seemed to have had long hot summers full of fun and all kinds of great adventures. As I look back on some of those days, I have to believe that some Force or Guardian Angel or Spirit had to have been watching over me because I escaped an early death far too many times to think otherwise.

  Around nineteen sixty seven or so, our neighbours, John and Donie Connoly, and I were sitting on the banks of the Awbeg River one beautiful sunny day in July discussing how we would become famous. We argued back and forth on the best way to achieve this, and finally concluded that in a small town the only thing we could do was a Christmas day swim; an unheard of idea at the time. The swim would take place in the very river we were then looking into, all serene and peaceful like the ‘gentle Mulla’ in poet Spenser’s Faerie Queene, with no currents and almost no water either. Of course the warm sun was also shining across our backs.

  We decided to do it, shook hands on the deal and began to spread the word that we would swim the river the following Christmas Day. The general feeling among those we told was, ‘well so what, anyone can do that,’ and it looked like Buttevant was not ready to grant us fame for that event, but we had shook hands on it, so we had to go through with it, and we started to ‘train’ for the day.

  Training for me was to wash every day from then on in cold water, not a difficult task for me as we rarely ever had any hot water. The months passed by and we kept spreading the word, hoping for an audience on the morning, but still no one gave a damn.

  About ten days before Christmas it began to rain like mad. Within days the river began to flood, and one evening we went down and had a look at it all. I was petrified as I’m no great swimmer, and the water was already out in the fields with the very spot where we had made our pact under at least two feet of water. The lads were still all for going ahead, as Donie was like a fish in the water and afraid of nothing; not even God, and John was almost as good. Christmas week arrived and the rain, which had stopped for a day or two, began all over again, lashing down in buckets. Then we heard that ‘the powers that be’ were secretly ‘confiscating’ our swimming togs to prevent us from drowning, as Nannie was sure would happen. To get around their plan, I borrowed togs from a friend of mine. Christmas morning arrived; cold, dark, and miserable, but not raining at least. We felt that there might still be a crowd to see our swim. The Connollys were as determined as ever and their poor mother Liz, who was Nannie’s secondary bank, was sure we would all die. She could not stop her sons or their mad friend from going, and so she begged us to at least have the Pope’s blessing from the Vatican so that we would all go to Heaven when we drowned. To pacify her we had to kneel and pray as we got the Pontiff’s blessing from Rome, curtsey of her television set. I remember not thinking much of the Pope, but genuinely praying a lot that we would survive. Then off we went after hugs, kisses, and tears from poor Mrs. Connolly and her family. Nannie had refused to kiss me goodbye, as she said the Devil was still stuck inside me because I was breaking the heart of an old woman and ruining her Christmas dinner. But secretly I believe she felt sure that we three would not do the swim because we had no togs, and we would all be too shy to go in naked.

  We got to the river entrance with not one person to be seen as an audience; fame seemed to be eluding us. As I suspected, Liz Connolly had hidden her sons’ togs, but that did not deter them one bit, and they announced that they were going in naked. I felt a bit odd about that initially, but soon the feeling left me, so we all stripped off stark naked and got out of the car in plain view of the road. We climbed up on the wall and stood there for a while examining the situation while shivering with the cold. By then most of the field was flooded, with a current coming from the river swirling out into the field. It looked very dangerous but I did not have a real bad feeling about it, thinking I could probably stand up in the current if needed. As we stood naked on the wall we began having some doubts about the current, but not Donie. We all shook hands, yelled something mad and jumped in over the wall, running right into the freezing waters. I can’t honestly remember what happened next. I do remember the shock of the cold water, and it suddenly feeling way deeper than I had hoped for, but it did not go over my head. I think the current pushed us down the field to a shallow area by a gate. The next thing I remember was the three of us were walking naked back up the road to their car, shivering and laughing our heads off with relief. When we got to the car we shared my towel to dry off. I think the two lads brought no towels, feeling they might not need them after they drowned, or
they cared little about drying off. We got dressed quickly just as the local policeman arrives on a pushbike. “What the hell are ye doing in there?” he shouts in the window. “Nothing Guard, we were just swimming”. I sniggered and Donie and John exploded laughing. The guard, who was at a loss to know what to do next, just shook his head and left. I suppose someone driving past into Buttevant must have seen us on the wall, and rang the guards telling them of the naked guys about to jump into the flood.

  We went home for the dinner full of excitement, full sure that now we would be famous, but alas, I believe no one in Buttevant even cared or believed that we had actually done the swim. All we have now is the memory of it. Over the years I told numerous people about it, but it hardly got me a look of surprise; certainly no fame came from it. Of course it’s quite commonplace today with sea jumps, lake jumps and even river swims on Christmas day for charity, but no one ever that I know of jumped into a flood, and I still say it deserved more fame than it got. Now like the famous line from Titanic, ‘it only resides in my memory now’. Perhaps the Pope’s blessing did save us after all, and kept me alive for the many other escapades that were ahead of me, but I would have more faith in the gift from the Faeries.

  In the latter part of the sixties, music became the outlet for teenage energy; at least it was my outlet and that of my friends. We were immersed in the acid bands of the era: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Who and Deep Purple to name just a few. These bands were emulated by the new driving force in Ireland, a growing rock band scene. We liked The Freshmen and the heavier bands like The Plattermen and of course our all time favourite was ‘The Taste’. This was the great Rory Gallagher’s rock and blues band. He was a world class guitarist and lived in Cork City. Rory was the young people’s hero, and mine certainly.

  My friendship with Joe Hurley had faded quite a bit over the years and around nineteen sixty five or so I began to find friendship with three other lads. Kyrle had become friendly with them during my summer vacations in Waterford, and I just seemed to drift into that group as Joe drifted out.

  We were all becoming avid rock music lovers. Two of the lads were Jerry Hayes and Liam Fowler; Joe Moloney would join us later. All of us loved the freedom portrayed by the rock music, the long hair, the tie dye shirts, and every form of rebellion possible. It did not take long for the town to brand us as Buttevant’s hippies. I remember tying rocks and old rubber balls into my tee shirts while trying to dye them in an old pan down the yard. They turned out so bad that they actually looked real good. I wore them when Nannie was not keeping an eye on me, often changing outside the house. Pad Keely was not impressed with this carry on, but to his credit I don’t remember him ever casting real aspersions on our hairstyles. He had plenty of other material to throw at us.

  We four used to go for walks down the Charleville road and sit on the bridge dreaming of fame and what it would be like to live in America among the great musical stars of the day. Looking back on it now, I remember that Jerry Hayes had a kind of mystique about him, wearing really long hair and a moustache, and he always spoke with a soft gentle voice. I think women could not figure him out, and that accounted for their attraction to him. Liam Fowler, who was slightly taller, was good looking, fun loving, and a generally very likable guy. He also seemed to have some magnetism for the women as well. Joe Moloney was always deeper, quieter, and like me, he seemed to be searching all the time for the ‘right’ woman to come along.

  As teenagers we had no way of seeing our favourite bands, but we could dream of the day when we would see them live, which we did often. Unknown to us, fate was about to step in and provide us with some transport. It came out of Jerry’s passion to drive cars fast. Even though he could not drive at all at that time, he still wanted a car for the ‘cool look’ it would bring him. We were growing up fast into young adults, full of the joys of life, as Ireland was also growing economically into a time of new hopes and dreams. Unlike today, we were then living in a time of relaxed laws in Ireland when no guard really took it too seriously that you had neither a driver’s license, nor an insurance certificate, so one evening Jerry felt that he would ask his dad for the loan of ‘the van’. Jerry somehow persuaded his father, who was a local builder, to give him a loan of his work van; a dramatic mistake indeed. Then, even at a very young age, young Hayes had pretensions of becoming a rally driver, or more likely a Formula 1 driver. The minute he got behind any kind of an engine he became a complete lunatic. He just loved speed and driving fast had been his passion for as long as I knew him. It was the funniest thing to see poor Kieran Hayes, Jerry’s dad, slowly crawl up the town, never going any faster than thirty miles an hour so as to ‘save the wear and tear on his van’, and knowing what speed his son would be doing in it later that evening. We would be watching this from the street and smirking away as the fever would be gripping Jerry at the sight of his dad’s snail-like pace up the street. No sooner would he be into the van and out of sight of the house than Jerry’s foot would be boring a hole in the floor, converting ‘the snail’ to ‘a moon rocket’ in seconds. He would be driving flat out at seventy or eighty miles and hour, and bends on the road made no difference to this speed; they were just challenges to be overcome. He had this theory that we, his passengers, were really only ballast, as when he would fly round a bend he would shout out, “Bank to the left,” or “Bank to the right”. We, like slaves in the belly of the van, would suddenly throw ourselves at the left or right side of the van while laughing our heads off. This weight transfer was often all that kept us on the road and on four wheels, and many a time he drove on just two of those. We became very used to this ballast work over the years and would almost automatically throw our weight at the sides without any call from Hayes. But any poor misfortune who didn’t know the score got scared shitless, and would leave like a ghost having re-found religion during a short spin with Hayes. If Hayes happened to be giving some girl a drive, he became even worse going out of his way to impress her with danger; a rather poor method in hindsight. After we spent some years travelling the roads of Ireland with Hayes, we all believed that he was actually a most brilliant driver, and would trust him with our lives. Often we did, but one night he really scared us badly though to this day he denies its seriousness.

  We were going to see a band called Chapter Five in Fermoy. I had been having no luck with the women for some time and I concluded it was my scruffy image that was causing it. Our idea of fashion then was non fashion: tie dye shirts, dirty torn jeans and a headband if you felt like it. The closer we looked to tramps the better we felt, and we all liked the look; after all we were Buttevant’s brand of hippies. This was not the regular attire of the time though, especially for those who went to hear the unspeakable country music which we despised, but there lay the problem, as most women then went for that kind of music. We had to conform or stay inexperienced as regards the ways of women, so we compromised and dressed like tramps while listening to country music.

  The night in question I had a master plan. I was going to go to this rock group dressed in a ‘suit’. This meant I would stand out so much that I had to be noticed, and the ‘innocent’ girls there would be fooled into thinking I was a real nice guy because of the way I dressed. That was the plan at least. When the lads arrived to collect me they collapsed laughing at first, and they simply refused to be even seen near me, as the suit was a dark wine coloured affair with some kind of alien material whose origin I could never determine, but it was definitely not Irish. Hayes immediately christened it my ‘pink suit’ which only added to the lads’ laughter. The Nan had bought it from the ‘Jew Man’ on tick, and that could possibly be one explanation for its odd texture and colour, as it was a cross between an Egyptian cotton and a Chinese silk. I never seen the like of it, and that night was my first time getting into it as well.

  Hayes said that he couldn’t soil his reputation by being seen with someone in a suit, let alone someone in a pink suit. He said it was just too much for him to bear. I
refused all their threats and wouldn’t take it off because I knew they would not go without me. In the end they capitulated with the compromise that I was not to queue up with them at the club, and off we went, late as usual.

  Hayes was picking up a girl in Mallow, yet another poor victim, and I and Fowler and Joe Moloney were relegated to the back of the van acting as the usual ballast. Fowler was feeling sick from his grandmother’s stew and kept moaning all through the journey to Mallow. Hayes was by then very late because of my arguments and him starting out late as usual, and he began driving even faster than ever. He picked up his victim and sped off at really high speed. He tore around the first corner and the victim started to protest loudly, but by then it was too late, and we were going to Fermoy on wings. I really became scared myself as Hayes was roaring the banking commands with a different frenzy. Soon the poor victim was beside herself with terror, and Joe was drumming away to himself, oblivious of the danger and banking automatically as usual. Fowler was roaring that he’d be sick if Hayes didn’t slow down because he was being thrown from side to side. It was as if a kind of madness had gripped us all that night, starting with the laughter over my pink suit. After about fourteen miles of excitement, screams of terror, sick moans, and drum sounds, Hayes suddenly went flying into a zigzag bend. It was at a place where the road crossed a railway line almost at right angles. He shouted the commands, “Left, right, fuck,” but we couldn’t change sides fast enough and he lost control of the bloody van. It hit the ditch and sped across to the other ditch, going up on two wheels, where it also hit the kerb and began wobbling. Then, with Hayes fighting for control, Fowler was thrown right up in the air and landed on top of me. Moloney had suddenly stopped drumming with the realization of his death’s proximity and he too started screaming, “Fuck, fuck, fuck Hayes,” then he too fell on top of me.