Two Walls and a Roof (23 page)

Michael O’Callaghan was a young boy of about sixteen then
,
and he was the newest member of Kyrl
’
s crew. He was constantly asking Kyrl to let him drive and to teach him the skills associated with it and that day he got his wish. With the truck
well
ove
rloaded with stone
,
tools
,
and
the
eight
men
,
they headed back for Buttevant. The journey was uneventful except for the odd time when the steering wheel would come loose and the truck would head for the ditch. Then Kyrl would say
”Mickey will you stick to the road and leave the fields to the horse
s” and go back to
chatting about the days events as Michael struggled with the
dodgy
steering wheel.

Just outside Buttevant
,
the Doneraile road falls very steeply
into the town, and arrives at a junction on the main street which is actually the main Cork Limerick road. As the truck came over the hill and began to descend, it got faster and faster despite Michael frantically pumping
of
the brakes. The brakes had failed, and while this came as no surprise to Kyrl, because he knew the truck wa
s of Cahill construction, it became
a great shock to the sixteen year old child who was then beginning to
really
panic. They were rapidly gaining momentum as Michael prepared for the inevitable crash into another vehicle, or if that didn’t happen, they would go
straight
through the wall of
Saddler’s
,
shop.  I
n either case the stopping was going to end badly
and he began shouting
and screaming
at Kyrl to do something
.
Kyrl just told him to “
C
op himself on and relax
,
this is a driving lesson”.  By then they were fast approaching a small bridge over the Awbeg
River
and fortunately there was a narrow gap in the wall between the road and the river. Michael said that he was terrified at that stage and quite sure
that
he was going to die, especially when he saw
some of
the men jumping out of the truck
and
rolling around
on
the road.

Cool as a breeze, and at the critical moment, K
yrl grabbed the wheel and jerked
it sharply to the right sending them all through the gap, and into the river with a huge splash.
Michael said he wa
s shaking uncontrollably and must have been
as white as a sheet as he saw the last of the men pick each other up out of the river.
Then Kyrl said “Are we staying here all day Mickey, back her out will you for Gods sake”.

He did finally get the truck out of the river and they all retired to the pub except Kyrl and Michael who retired home and made tea. It was almost a typical day in their mad lives and once again Kyrls mantra of the end always ju
stifying the means
had
paid off
.
Sadly both of them have
since
gone to their Eternal Rest and I would lay odds that during the Olympic Games they were watching Heavenly TV. In keeping with his mantra Kyrl would be insisting
to Michael
that performance enhancing drugs were perfectly necessary
,
and Michael would be playing the Irish National Anthem as our great athletes proved
that
they
at least
,
didn’t
need them.

Father told me of
yet
another
one
of Kyrl
’
s moneymaking schemes with that same truck.
The Buttevant hurling team was
playing in some very important final in Liscarroll
,
an
d the whole town wanted to go to
it. It was during a time of petrol shortages and
public
transport
was
non existent
then
. It
was
going to be
impossible to get to the match so Kyrl decided to turn his flatbed truck into a kind of bus
,
and take a load of supporters
to the game
. He added a temporary railing
to the side of the truck
,
and
he
also
added
steps
making it easier
to board it. All was ready
and on the day of the match he sta
rted selling places on his truck-bus
. To get even more
punters
on board
and
so as to
make even more money,
he insisted that they all
had to
stand for the
entire
journey
, a distance of about seven miles
.
This did not go down well,
and t
here were those who
actually
complained
very
bitterly
,
but he didn’t care a bit saying
,
“Take it or leave it
, and pay up or
shut up, your
delaying us
all
”. With no choice
,
and a line of alr
eady drunken supporters
waiting to board
,
the complainers boarded and
soon
filled
the truck to bursting point
. Kyrl sat in and
started
his
truck-bus
,
and
off they went to the match.
In order
t
o save
his
petrol
,
father told me that Kyrl seems to have taken some kind of a short cut
along the back roads
of Cork
,
and as they came close to the village
,
they went
up
over a very steep hill and began to career down the other side
,
at
an ever increasing
speed
. The
supporters
who
were
well into the singing and shouting
by then
noticed this too
,
and
all
their singing
stopped
suddenly
when the truck-bus almost turned over on a
sharp
bend
. Kyrl noticed
this
too
as the brakes were hav
ing no effect, and he quickly realized that unsurprisingly, the brakes
in his truck had
failed
yet
again
.
But n
ot alone
had the brakes failed,
so had
the steering
, as the
wheel
had co
me off in his hands
when he
struggled to guide
them
around the
sharp
bend.
Father said that they must have been going about fifty mil
es an hour at the time.
Kyrl
then
tried to use the gears to slow them down, but
that too failed and he could not get the engine
in
to
a lower gear
either, because
in his panic he
broke
the gear stick
off
as well. The supporters were now panicking and clinging
on
to the railings and each other for dear life
.  With all control lost t
he truck
tore on down the road and
went right through an old
iron
gate
and
tearing away part of the ditch
. Then it
began
crossing
a field
still at great speed
. It
finally hit
a tree
with such force that
it toppled over,
and threw
all of
his
passengers out
onto the grass
in every direction
amid screams, curses, and puke
.

No one was seriously hurt
though
,
and they all limped off to the match. Kyrl spent the
intervening
time righting his truck, and after the game was over he was
once again
waiting
with his hand out for the ‘return fare’. He tried to convince them
all
that
their ticket had always been one way,
and now they had to pay
him again for the return journey
. The situation
got
very nasty
because his truck-bus
had almost killed th
em
,
and they angrily pointed that fact out to him
.
Still he was
insistent
,
and i
n the end I believe he
just
drove off and
left them all on the road
to find their own way back
, and that
would be typical of Kyrl
. There were
a lot of
bad feelings
towards
him for a long time after that
,
but they needed him and he knew it, and all was forgiven
but not forgotten
in time.

Kyrl
,
like my dad
,
is buried in a cemetery
which is
on the road to
that same
village of
Liscar
r
oll. His unofficially adopted son and my cousin John K
.
Collins
and his wife Agnes
,
erected a
most
beautiful headstone in his memory and it bears this inscription.

We are the story tellers. We are the music makers, and we are the Dreamers of dreams.

I know of no more fitting word
s
to describe
my
amazing
uncle Kyrl
, the man we
all
knew as Big Kyrl
. 

I was about seventeen by the time we decided enough was enough with Pad
,
and Kyrle refused to go back to Pad
’
s. We still had not finished our schooling, so Kyrle and I would have to go on to Charleville Tech to do our Leaving Cert, finish formal schooling and then hopefully get a job. That was the usual plan in tho
se days. We had no chance of a u
niversity
d
egree unless we got a scholarship
,
and even though Kyrle had the brains for it
,
Pad had torpedoed his chances early on.

Uncle Michael knew the head master in Charleville Tech, a man called Dan Fleming. He had been a famous rugby player and was also very high up in the G
AA. The school was already over-
booked
,
but Dan decided that he would take us in and the few others who had also left Pad
’
s school that year.

Charleville is nine long miles north of Buttevant, with a devil of a hill at the mid
-
way point. We were going to have to cycle to school each day and back. In today’s days of busses and cars transporting the children to school, it seems now inconceivable that our parents
would let us off into the dark
o
n winter mornings and return in the dusk after school, but that’s how it was in nineteen sixty seven or eight. I know that neither I nor Kyrle had any kind of lights on the bikes, as the batteries were far too expensive and we simply could not afford them.

Four of us used to do that trip each day and we were all as tough as nails. We took our lunch in the schoolbag, ate it at dinner time, and headed back home at four in the evening without further food. I believe we used to cycle the nine miles in just under two hours. It was always faster coming home because of the big hill then in our favour.

The school was
mixed w
ith a big age range in it. It was
a c
ritical time in our development and
we were brought into close proximity with girls or ‘bitches’ as Joe Hurley always called them. Up until then we would have had the odd foray down to the castle in Buttevant
,
but it bore no comparison at all to the number of girls, and the type of girls available in the Tech. I felt this was just great. What’s more, we were all older than most of the class
,
except for the senior girls secretarial class, and because of Pad
’
s teaching
, we seemed to be geniuse
s knowing ten times more than our fellow students
.
Pad had got something right at least.

One guy asked me what Latin was
when I was describing our previous schooldays, such was the level of education we then found ourselves in. Soon
the girls picked up on this so-
called standard of genius, and we began to become a kind of magnet for them
:
mini celebrities in fact. I think at almost eighteen I would have been the olde
st in the class except
for one guy who had
failed his exams so many times
that his parents may as well have abandoned him. He was a farmer’s son and almost bald because diesel fuel had fallen
on his head when he was younger
and it never grew back. He was big and burly
, and after the diesel spill
all he had left on his head was
a wild tuft of discoloured hair
which stuck out in all directions, but mostly from his left side with the right side being almost bald. He really did look like a Yeti and I christened him that privately
. For some reason he took to me
as his only friend and I liked him a lot, but I just can’t remember his name which is a pity. This friendship resulted in a rather ‘odd couple’ moving togeth
er through that school.  A four-eyed
Magoo
-like genius
and a Yeti figure tagging along beside him
, hunched over like Quasi Modo
and
hanging on every word the Magoo-
like figure spoke. I’m sure we were the butt of many a joke as we moved among the throng
,
and Kyrle avoided us completely out of sheer embarrassment.

Looking
back on those days, I know now that our class was a bunch of misfit
s, failures and delinquents in every sense of the word, and in Pad
’
s view, a new pack of ‘donkeys’ had joined the student fraternity in Charleville. We were all ‘strange’ in some way or other and Dan had no classroom for us, so he made one out of the foyer in the school entrance. When you came in the front door, there we all sat in our temporary classroom, and no matter what business you had in the school, you went right through our class. It was so funny to see us all fol
d our chairs during lunch break and stack them away
, and then
when lunch was over, we had to
redo the whole seats again and sit for the next class. There seemed to be some kind of store where we kept the seats and this was always a good spot for a bit of fun with the ‘bitches’
. T
hat’s all I can say on that matter.

Dan Fleming seemed to like us from the very start. He was a great teacher and while he shouted and roared a lot, you always got the impression it was only an act on his part. Ou
r first test of his acting came
when
,
after some weeks of being late for school, he called the four of us into his office which was in the small corridor behind our makeshift classroom. We marched in full of confidence and bravado, and I being the ringleader walked in first. He was sitting at his desk writing. I was just about to sit down when he shouts up at me
,
“Cahill who told you to sit down”
.
I was a bit taken aback by this and I say
, “No one sir”.
“Correct, so keep standing
”
. He then tells us that he is sick and tired of watching us arrive in at any time of the mornings and it
’
s going to stop. “It’s to stop, or there will be hell to pay. Get it in yer heads, it’s to stop
. N
ow be off out of me sight and don’t be late tomorrow”
.

We left sniggering
,
and already I had decided he was just bluffing as I don’t think I ever saw a stick or anyone use a stick in that school so far. Besides
,
I was feeling like a man by then having survived Pad,
and could now take on the world
sure that I had no more Pads to deal with.

Next morning we were late again. Dan comes out of his office right into our classroom
and as we are opening the bags
he says
, “What did I tell ye yesterday?”
glaring directly at me. I say it was the wind sir, the North wind held us back. Dan looks out and says
,
“Tis a sunny day
. A
re you trying to cod me Cahill
?
” I say
, “The wind came up and went down;
that’s what winds do,
”
my cheek being obvious to all. He made a drive for me and I thought I was back in Pad’s school, but he stopped
short saying,
“Ye are all on yer last warning”. On the way home we decided that we better get up earlier and not tempt fate and Dan
, s
o for the next few weeks we are on time and things settled back to normal. We would still miss the odd day but always got away with it until much later in the year when it was biting cold and every extra second in bed counted greatly.

This particular morning we were seriously late, by about half an hour or so. Dan is waiting in the yard for us to arrive. It had frosted real bad and I was frozen
,
as were the lads. I used to wear an old leather jacket with just a jumper and shirt, never a vest, as I always believed the body can correct for extremes of temperature. Dan is standing glaring at us all as we come flying in the gate. He says
, “Pu
t yer bikes in the shed and come out here to the yard
”
. I thought,
‘
he’s up to something for sure and I don’t like the sound of it at all
’
. We trail back out and by then the sun is shining brightly.  “Take off yer clothes, ye can leave yer trousers on  ... for now”.  What could this be
,
I thought
,
as he yells his words at us with apparent anger.  “I said take off yer clothes”. The frost is turning his words into smoke and I don’t get what he’s up to. We all look at each other and he draws a kic
k at my arse and misses;
I believe deliberately so. We start to strip off.  I get to my shirt and he shouts
,
“Take it off Cahill
,
”
s
o I do
.
Kyrle has an old vest with holes in it, and he really does look like a street urchin
. M
aybe Pad, who used to call him that, had a point after all. Dan shouts at him
,
“You too, take that strainer off”. The other two boys were now down to bare skin also and all of us began shivering with the cold. He says
, “S
tand there like men, I’ll be back
”. I thought this wa
s going to be like
Mutiny on the Bounty
and
he’s gone for the whip or the c
at
o’n
ine
t
ails to flog us all. Pretty soon we see heads appearing at the school windows
: s
enior girls
’ heads and tall boy
s
‘heads; teacher
s
’
heads
and
even the caretaker Bill came out to watch. This was serious I thought. Kyrle is looking at me and the shed and I thought he was going to make a burst for his bike, not wanting a repeat of Pad
’
s days, but Dan comes out without a whip.

“What did I tell ye about being late”, he is marching up and down
our line.
“Stand up
like men, and stop yer shaking. Yer not in the Arctic.
I told ye there would be trouble didn’t I
? W
ell now ye’ll get a taste of it. Ye are now going to do fifty laps of the school, and every time ye are late, ye will all do the same thing even if only one of ye is late, get it….”

I t
hought he was joking. He wasn’t.
“Cahill, you’re the ringleader and you
’
r
e
first
. G
et running, ye can race if ye want
,
” he says with a smirk. I knew then that I was in the presence of a very smart man, and a gr
eat teacher of life
as well as of education.

We began running. It was like the movie
Chariots of Fire
. A
ll we needed was the music and the sea. We circled round and round the school yard.  The school’s pupils were in hysterics, pointing and laughing at us through the windows. Bill was leaning on his sweeping brush and as we passed Dan grabs the brush and chased after us lashing out as he went. Even I began to laugh, wa
rming up then, and so did Kyrle and the other two lads who
could see the funny side as well. Pretty soon it seemed like great fun, but after about thirty laps we were wrecked and struggling. Dan had by then left again, a ploy on his part, as no one was counting the laps, and he wanted a graceful end to our running. We stopped at the door and gathered the clothes
,
donned them
,
and went inside. It had wasted about an hour of schoolwork, but it gave immense entertainment to all of the
school, and embarrassment to us with a lesson to all
that you don’t ignore Dan. However
,
we were still troublemakers and remained a thorn in his side for a little while more.

I was to have a real Arctic experience soon after though. It was known then that one of the best ways to meet ‘hot’ girls
,
especially ‘foreign’ girls from Dublin
,
was to get to the Irish Colleges in Cork’s Gaeltacht. Here you were taught to speak the Irish language for a few hours each day and later you had the evenings off to do the bitch chasing. Dances were also arra
nged for the students known as ‘c
eilis
’
.  I was far more interested in the girls than any of the old Irish dancing because Nannie
’
s concert days in Gortnabearna were still fresh in my mind. There she used to try to have my cousin Brid Ann teach me Irish dancing and I hated it, but dancing with ‘hot foreign bitches’ was another matter entirely. However
,
all of this fantasizing depended on me getting to the Gaeltacht, and
the only way for that to happen
was for me to get a scholarship
by passing both a written and an
o
ral Irish
e
xamination. This was where Pad
’
s schooling would finally be of benefit to me, as I was well used to speaking and writing t
he Irish language in his school, s
o I felt I was certainly set for the Gaeltacht and the girls.