Looking Under Stones

by Joe O'Toole

  ‘That’ll toughen ye up, lads. Dismount and line up.’

  We lined up along the firing positions. A few hundred yards away was a row of targets, set in front of the sand dunes. Each target was a huge rectangle on which was painted a full-sized image of the head, shoulders and torso of a man. The enemy!

  The adrenalin really got pumping when they distributed the ammunition. Those long, .303 bullets are vicious, evil-looking things.

  ‘You’ll get twenty rounds a man. Now, remember your training.’

  Okay, I thought. I took careful aim. Although the target seemed miles away in comparison to the one in the drill hall, I was confident enough.

  ‘In your own time. Five rounds. Fire!’

  I fixed my sights on the black spot; I squeezed the trigger. BANG! It was angrier, louder, more disconcerting than I had ever expected. Cordite filled my nostrils, pungent, nauseating. And despite all the warning and cautions about the strong recoil, I was completely unprepared for the ferocity of the kickback after firing. My poor shoulder, narrow and unpadded by fat, wasn’t able for it at all. Honestly, I thought it was dislocated. I rested the rifle on the ground.

  ‘Your magazine empty already, Private O’Toole?’

  ‘No, Sir.’ My voice sounded funny through the ringing in my ears.

  ‘Well, carry on then.’

  Make no mistake about it, after that first shot, it became more important to protect my shoulder than to hit the target. Before we started, we were bemoaning the fact that we had only twenty rounds to fire for the whole day. After releasing the first bullet, all I could think of was how would my shoulder stand another nineteen of these? Thomas and myself were black and blue for a fortnight. Ronan Burke was suffering as well, but as his father was one of the senior battalion officers, poor old Burkey had to pretend that all was fine. Our discomfort wasn’t helped by the knowing grins of the old hands, who knew what to expect, and who were watching us closely. In our defence it must be said that we might have flinched but we never moaned.

  That summer and for the following two summers we attended FCA summer camp. It was an exhilarating prospect: a three-week holiday away from home on our own, and we were to be paid at the end of it. We spent the first two summers in Kilworth camp, which is situated on the main Dublin–Cork road, between Mitchelstown and Fermoy. For us young lads, trying hard to grow up, these sojourns among a very experienced mixed group of Army and FCA personnel were probably rites of passage.

  At each camp we were assigned to a special unit where we were given an intense introduction to, and instruction in some aspect of the army. We spent a fortnight on the machine gun – a noisy, frightening, death-dealing weapon capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute. It literally tore up targets with its ferocity. We also did a course on the Bren gun, a recoiless sub-machine gun that was accurate and user-friendly – well at one end anyway. It became my favourite weapon. We became respectful of the uninhibited Gustav, a short, snub-nosed automatic weapon which sprayed bullets in a manner that would be better described as indiscriminate rather than inaccurate. It was as liable to discharge a round by giving it an involuntary knock as it was by pressing the trigger. In shape it was quite like the Uzi sub-machine gun used by detectives at armed checkpoints today.

  We became reasonably expert in the use of the mortar. This discharged bombs that looked like smallish missiles; if memory serves, they weighed about seven pounds each. The mortar resembled a five-or six-inch diameter pipe, extending about four feet at an angle from a small, flat, metal base on the ground. The remarkable thing about this weapon was that it did not have a trigger. The bomb was held at the mouth of the tube and then let slide down inside until it struck the firing pin at the bottom. This exploded the detonator, which fired the bomb back up the tube to its target half a mile away. The team member who drew the short straw got to release the bomb down the tube, but whichever one of us it was, we managed to put extraordinary space between ourselves and the gun before it had slid the four feet to the bottom of the tube. Raw fear is a powerful motivator. Getting out of the way was much more important than getting the correct angle of elevation to hit the target.

  One day, after dropping the bomb down the tube, we were waiting with our fingers in our ears for the explosion, which never came. The bomb lay undetonated at the bottom of the tube and nobody was prepared to admit that they could remember the drill for dismantling the gun when it could explode at any moment. We funked it like real men and let one of the regulars deal with it.

  But of course it was not for the guns we went to camp; it was for the sex, drink and opportunities. So every night we washed and spruced ourselves up, poured on the Old Spice aftershave and headed out to assert our manhood, or at least find it. Midweek it might be the Glocca Maura or Blue Dragon pubs, which were right beside the camp on the main Cork road. At weekends we would undertake the four-mile walk into the fleshpots of Mitchelstown, or organise a lift for the nine miles to Fermoy. Fermoy was sophisticated; there was even a rumour that there were prostitutes to be seen there.

  Undoubtedly we got our opportunities, but to tell the truth, apart from a few poorly directed fumblings, we were less than a threat to the innocence of the local young women. But we learned from seeing others. And we knew what was expected of us; we engaged in conversation with the young Lochinvars, Adonises and playboys of the battalion and ensured acceptance by nodding, laughing and nudging as appropriate. We would know what to do next year. In the meantime we were still young, foolish and game for anything.

  THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES

  ‘Make sure you tell this in confession and ask forgiveness.’

  Canon Lyne was on impurity patrol, and had found an over-zealous young couple in a remote, dark corner.

  My teen years coincided with the beginning of the 1960s. All the written evidence now confirms that the early years of that decade were ‘the swinging sixties’. Later in the 1960s there was free love; people made love, not war; the hippies helped free the young generation of inhibitions by letting their hair grow and sticking flowers in it. They smoked stuff as well. Except that nobody told Canon Lyne, who refused to go with the flow and continued to use the crook of his walking stick to extract clinging, fumbling couples from dark corners around the town on dance nights. His dire warnings of hellfire and damnation made him a figure to be feared. Singlehandedly he held back the tide of ‘corruption’ into which we were only dying to jump; we thought we would never get to participate in the ‘swinging’ bit of the sixties because of him. But his rule only lasted until people got a little more ‘cop on’ and the couples realised that the whole exercise was far more comfortable in a bed, which had the added advantage of being well out of reach of Canon Lyne’s walking stick.

  By their nature Dingle people are iconoclastic; clergy were respected for themselves and not simply because they were men of the cloth. They had to measure up, and if they were completely out of line then their writ ran out. Canon Lyne had always been held in high regard and was well liked, but nearing the end of his time in Dingle he became overenthusiastic and therefore ineffective. The world moved on and left him behind.

  The 1960s brought a political awareness, especially among the young generation. John F Kennedy’s presidency of the USA was an international turning point for Irish self-esteem. He was one of us: ‘From the White Cottage to the White House’, as the postcards of his family home in Wexford were keen to point out. People travelled from Dingle to Dublin and Limerick to wave at him in that summer of 1963. I was in the shop on a dreary November evening later in the year, tediously polishing Granny Smith apples and displaying Jaffa oranges in the way that Teresa insisted, when Pat Neligan came running in with the news: ‘President Kennedy has been shot.’ It was incredible and it was devastating. We kept the radio tuned in for any scrap of news and heard of Dallas for the first time in our lives. He was in the hospital. But there was no hope. Then came the confirmed report: President John F Kennedy has died. Teresa cri
ed. Undoubtedly we felt a sense of loss. All Ireland did.

  During the 1960s, Dingle began to attract a more cosmopolitan clientele; it became more and more touristy and the business community began to respond. In no time at all there was a public toilet.

  The next major event occurred when Greaneys opened a chip shop in the Holyground. This was like being on holidays. Soon the bag of chips on the way home was part of every night out, whether you were hungry or not. It was all happening in the Holyground – O’Connor’s shop installed a jukebox. Now we were truly international. Joy was unconfined. We would crowd into the shop and sit in a line on a stool that ran along the wall opposite the counter, and soak in the music. It cost sixpence per single. Even if no sound had come out of it at all, it was still a wonder to see, through the glass of the jukebox, the silent mechanism glide along the line of singles, the mechanical arm reach in and extract the precise selection, then rotate it horizontally and transport it back to the centre for placing on the revolving turntable. It was magic!

  As for the music – cringe! We thought we were sophisticated, but we had no taste at all.

  There was some soft country rock, but as this was just before The Stones and The Beatles had hit the headlines, we were confined mainly to Bill Haley, Elvis Presley and Pat Boone.

  Lyney used to throw shapes when Elvis kicked in; Thomas always fancied himself as a bit of a rocker. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Painful as it is to confess, it has to be admitted that there would always be strict silence, some closed eyes, a bit of gentle body swaying and full attention for Jim Reeves as he crooned his way through his maudlin standards. Some I can still remember. In fact, how could you forget lyrics such as:

  ‘Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone,

  Let’s pretend that we’re together all alone …’

  Sometimes we might buy an ice cream cone or a mineral. For us, us that was as near as it ever got to American drugstore culture.

  As teenagers, the international news that interested us was not the Cuban Crisis or Vietnam, although I still have a vivid recollection of the image of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, taking off his shoe and pounding the podium with the heel while addressing the United Nations. What really got our attention, when the Pathe newsreels came on before the ‘Big Picture’ in the cinema was the footage of Teddy Boys in Liverpool, the Rockers on Brighton beach or the Mods in Carnaby Street.

  The Teddy Boys made a major impact on us. Somebody said that they came from an area of Liverpool called Dingle, where Billy Fury was born, and that they were originally called Dingleboys. Whether that is true or not, they were trouble, and they were definitely not the role models that would have been chosen by our parents. Nonetheless, or maybe because of that, they were our spiritual leaders. They established the fashion trends. By then, clothes and hairstyle had become important statements of self. It was important to adopt an identity, but the crucial choice of which look to go with – Mod or Rocker – was difficult to make. I was, as ever, mixed up. I favoured the music of the Rockers but the clothes of the Mods.

  The crew-cut hairstyle was all the rage. It began as a tight, shaven look, not unlike the standard American GI crop, but then grew somewhat. The ideal, the Holy Grail of crew-cuts, was to have it growing straight up from your head and be trimmed absolutely and perfectly flat as a plateau on top. Every possible trick was tried to get it right. Somebody even suggested that a light electric shock applied to the hair ends was guaranteed to galvanise recalcitrant hairs into military erectness. That was a thought too far. Personally, I could have made a fair shot at it were it not for a ‘cow’s lick’ of hair, slightly north of my right eyebrow, which stubbornly refused to respond to any encouragement and invariably hung flaccidly and limply to the side when all the rest was at vertical attention. When I mentioned at home that I might get a crew-cut, Teresa was so horrified that I thought better of it.

  At the start of that summer, Teresa and Myko took me aside and advised me to make the most of it; the next school term would begin my Inter. Cert. year, and I was warned that after September it would be ‘heads down’ for serious study for the exams.

  It was a great summer. I went to Dublin on my own to stay with Aunty Phyl in her flat in Haddington Road. It was a different world and I was having a ball. Rock ’n’ roll was pre-Beatles but was really livening up. Chubby Checker and Sam Cooke had the world ‘Twisting the Night Away’; even older people were trying it. Rock films were a new genre. I went to see Play it Cool in one of the O’Connell Street cinemas. It had Billy Fury, Helen Shapiro and Bobby Vee; it was brilliant. We had been talking about it in Beenbawn and I had promised to let them all know about it, so I sent a postcard back to Lyney and a few of the girls with my very first film review. It was that important.

  I took the big decision during that holiday. Phyl had taken me to the Metropole to see State Fair with Pat Boone playing the lead role. His hit record ‘Speedy Gonzalez’ was a regular on the jukebox in Dingle, so it was good to see him in the flesh, so to speak.

  It seemed that everyone my age in Dublin had a crew-cut. Everyone, that is, except me. So, on the basis that it’s better to be dead than out of fashion, I went into a barber’s on Baggot Street and asked him for a crew-cut.

  ‘Another one of them,’ was all he said.

  He cut it tight at the sides and flat as a pancake on the top, and then brushed it back. Despite the confusion around the cow’s lick, it wasn’t half bad. Aunty Phyl was taken aback.

  ‘What did you do to your hair, Joseph?’ There was an unmistakeable edge to the question.

  But I was singularly pleased with the outcome and headed home for Dingle feeling fierce proud of myself. I was the bee’s knees and the height of fashion. I was soon disabused of my cockiness – Teresa was disgusted. ‘It’s no style at all,’ she said dismissively, one of those rare occasions when she managed to deflate me.

  Keeping up with the changing hairstyles was a huge challenge. After the rigidity of the crew-cut came the fashion for longer hair, shaped into that extraordinary style at the back known as a ‘duck’s arse’. To get the V-shaped DA you first had to rub plenty of Brylcreem into the sides and back of the head. Then you combed the hair from both sides simultaneously, with a comb in each hand, starting above the ears, then backwards and downwards until the combs met precisely and centrally at the back of the poll, thus forming the perfect and greasily gleaming ‘duck’s arse’.

  Narrow-legged trousers were all the rage, ‘drainpipes’ they were called. Nobody would be seen dead in anything wider than seven inches. It was almost a science; tailors were given strict instructions – ‘legs of maximum circumference of fourteen inches’ – so that when pressed, the width was the magic seven. Tight black jeans were the real business. The only problem with them was that they could not, under any circumstances, be allowed to look new. In fact, very few items got as much abuse as a new, unworn pair of jeans. They would be washed three or four times before being worn. Some people even took to having hot baths while wearing the new jeans in order to age them, and to achieve the essential skintight shape.

  The shoes that were the required accessory to the drainpipes and the hair-do were called ‘winklepickers’. They were low-slung and came to a most unnatural point at the toe. According to fishermen, they were so pointed that you could pick the periwinkles out of their shells with them, hence the name.

  The auld fellas on the bridge in Dingle were earthier in their suggested use of the new footwear: ‘Jesus Christ, you could try a hen with those shoes.’ We ignored the comments. We were in fashion and that was what mattered, never mind that no normal foot could ever be comfortable in them. We didn’t complain about the budding corns and calluses. The shoes were the nearest thing in torture to Chinese foot-binding, and must in later years have created mighty business for a whole generation of chiropodists. Apart from the pain factor, they were also no good in the wet; kicking ball was impossible with them and, despite the name, they could n
ot pick a periwinkle out of his shell. They were perfectly useless. But we went mad for them – the narrower, the more pointed and uncomfortable, the better. Victims of fashion? You bet we were. And it happens again and again and again, because every generation of teenagers does exactly the same with the fashion fads of the day.

  Summer in Dublin was my freedom from jobs, the shop and my parents. The next year I stayed for a while with Myko’s first cousin, Max Webster and his wife, Phil; it was the first of a number of holidays there. They made me one of the family. Max and Phil were a married couple in their twenties, with three children under five. They lived in Garda Terrace, just inside the North Circular Road gate to the Phoenix Park. All my memories of my times there are happy ones. There was fun, banter and adventure. The number 10 bus terminus was just outside the gate, and a bus departed every few minutes, so access to the city was simple and convenient.

  Garda Terrace was adjacent to the Garda Depot in the Phoenix Park and was occupied by families of gardaí based in the Depot. As in Dingle, everyone knew everyone and they looked out for each other. It was a supportive and cooperative community of people. At that time the Depot was still the training school for gardaí.

  Phil was determined to get me fixed up with a girl. That was her project for the summer and she worked hard at it.

  ‘We have just the girl for you here next week, Joseph: Joan O’Brien, the right age, curves in all the right places, and a lovely girl. She’s Tim’s youngest sister, and sure she’s from Kerry as well. You can’t go wrong!’