Two Walls and a Roof (27 page)

Sunday came and we headed for the river
, and l
ater that evening we were walking back down the street and saw the mother standing at the front door glaring up at us.
“What’s the matter with her
John;
she seems as mad as can be
.
S
he’s still not mad over me drinking, is she?”  We continued on down and her glaring got worse. I said
,
“Who knows why she’s mad, sure I blame
those
bloody pills
; t
hey have her driven demented
. I
t
’
s either them or the m
oon”. We both laughed out loud and that was the wrong thing to do
,
as she must have thought we were laughing at her.

“Where’s the bacon?
Y
e ate the bacon didn’t ye
? N
ow we have nothing for the tea, not a thing to eat”. I felt it might be time for a sortie across to the Nannie
’
s, but I didn’t want to leave Kyrle to face all the music on his own, so I said
,
“Mother we left the money for it under the
bowl, I swear to God we did”. “
Don’t you swear on a lie John, there was no money there, nothing”. She was still raging on as we passed her
,
going inside to the living room. There we saw the father looking rather sheepishly at the televi
sion without his headphones on;
a sure sign that he was only feigning interest in the TV. The real culprit was the father of course. He had also gotten a hankering for the bacon that morning, but finding it gone and our money in its place, he took off across the road to Kit
’
s and drank the money instead. A big row then broke out, and finally Kyrle began threatening never
to
come home again if mother didn’t stop going on about it all. That was too much for her and she was almost ready for the tears
,
so we all stopped arguing.  I may be wrong, but I think we fixed the problem by getting a few ‘chicken suppers’ later that night. Mother still goes on about it
,
and being gifted with an excellent memory, I suppose we will never be allowed to completely forget the night we raided her fridge and ate the roundel of bacon.

Kyrle went back to Dublin next day, all forgiven
,
and I got the blame as usual. Probably Hugh ratted on me to the mother
,
and for some days she was not on speaking terms with me. Her mood was noticed by Fowler and Hayes when they called for me later in the week. “Hey man, what’s up with your mother
? S
he seems pissed off at you man”.

I did not feel like reliving the bacon incident, so I said
,
“Ahh sure I blame them ould pills that the quacks keep giving her, she’s never been right since she started taking them”
. T
hen Fowler looks at me with a twinkle in his eye
and says, “I think it’s the m
oon meself”. In those days I used to blame the moon for every kind of mad event, and knowing that he had got me, we all burst into laughter.

We fou
r were getting a reputation as h
ippies, lunatics and dangerous guys to be near in those days, and mothers were always warning their daughters to avoid us at all costs.  Fowler had by far the worst reputation. He had a magnetic attraction for women and got into loads of scrapes as times went by.  The strange thing was that the more the mothers warned against going near us, the more women we seemed to get
-
well Fowler did anyway.  Music was our real love
,
and when we liked a band, we would head off to hear them in Hayes
’
dad
’
s van. Driving a great distance was no problem for Jerry, as he loved every minute of it, but he had no licence. Soon
,
being out most of the night was accepted by us all as the norm.  And even after numerous adventures all over the county,
I can say with complete honesty
that we
never harmed anybody
despite all our antics, but we often nearly killed ourselves, usually because Hayes thought he could defy the laws of physics.

At a very young age
,
Liam Fowler was to lose his mother, his dad, his grandmother, and later his young sister Marie to
leukemia
. I know of no man who has suffered as much as Liam, and as if to show just how cruel life can be, he later lost his young wife as well.  In spite of all of these tragedies, he has always had the most amazing personality, and is great fun to be with. He has
,
at long last
,
found happiness today with his childhood friend Betty who is Jerry Hayes
’
sister. But way back then in the late sixties he had become very alone almost overnight. For us his friends, his house became our meeting place, our place of planning for the future, and the place where we ‘jamm
ed’ with sweeping brush guitars
and chair drums.  We used to listen to Radio Luxembourg as i
t was the only station playing p
op and
r
ock music.  I well remember the night that Thin Lizzy became the first Irish rock band to enter the charts.  It was with their classic
‘
Whiskey in the Jar
’
, and we went wild with delight as it happened.  We used to have great jamming sessions in Fowler
’
s kitchen, each of us having his very own ‘instrument’. I had a sweeping brush guitar, Joe Moloney had a chair with rungs as his drum kit, Hayes had another guitar
(
a smaller brush modified
) and
was playing lead of course
, while
Fowler was a rock singer, complete with imitation microphone.

As the music blared
,
we imitated the movements of the super groups, often with sexual connotations for the benefit of the imaginary ‘groupies’ who frequented the front of our stage.  We pranced around the stage, which was in Fowler
’
s basement kitchen
,
and I used to also double up as roadie, turning up and down our ‘amps’.  These amps were the drawers on Fowler
’
s cabinet, complete with two broken knobs with pointy ends just like real amps would have. As we pranced around, and as the music intensified, Hayes would shout
,
“More band
,” which was my cue
to increase the volume on Fowler
’
s old radio.

None of us smoked, drank or took drugs, though I suspect we were supposed to be into all three at various times according to the do-gooders of Buttevant.  We were just crazy young fellas mad into music, women and the explosion of life known as the sixties.  The
neighbours
often complained to Fowler tha
t we were way too loud at one a.m.
in the morning, but it did no good at all.  I would be instructed to turn up the amps even louder if I could manage it at all.  I would do as instructed
,
so we just got even louder till they stopped complaining
. T
hen I just turned down the amps again to a nominal loud level and peace was restored to the street.

Fowler
’
s only worldly possession when his Nan died was a television set.  We used to watch a series of four short horror stories each Monday night on Radio Te
i
l
i
fis Eireann.  Hayes and I were terrible practical jokers
,
and as ever we would be gearing up to scare Fowler
,
who was a real nervous type.  We would wait for a real good scary part when he would
be really into the terror
and glued to the screen in a trance. Then at the appropriate moment we would leap at him simultaneously in the dark.  It always bro
ught the same reaction from him;
initially total terror, then shrieking, and then roars
at us
to
,
“Get out, get out now, and don’t come back, ever”.  He always calmed down after our begging for forgiveness and promises to be better in the future, which we never were.

We played all kinds of tricks over the years, but not just on Fowler.  Hayes
’
sisters and their friends used to walk home from the pictures in Kyrl
’
s hall, and as they would be coming up the long dark hill we would be waiting inside the wall with our four flash lamps at the ready.  When they got really close, we would leap up in the air making the worst possible faces, which were not difficult for us, and scream at them.  They woul
d go into total shock, and then
take off running and screaming like mad women as we fell around the field laughing.  We did this for a while till the effect wore off, but then we decided to try the same trick on some ducks that frequented a lake near Hayes
’s house.  He hated these ducks
as they were squeaking all night
long and used to keep him awake, s
o one night we crept up on them in the dark, and m
ade a run at the lake
with our lights blazing
,
leering and shouting like mad men. The poor ducks took off in terror and for months didn’t return.  Hayes was ecstatic and wanted a renewed attack when they finally began drifting back in one
’
s and two’s.  However we declined, as there was no more fun to be had from it by then, and besides
,
a lot of the locals were missing the ducks.

One of the funniest thing
s we did during those mad years
was to become involved in what I believe was Buttevant’s one and only
‘s
treak’ event. This came about when another Buttevant lad decided he wanted to join our ‘gang’. His name was Anthony and he was a good bit younger than us
. W
e really did not know what he could bring to our level of insanity, so we tried our best to put him off the idea. This didn’t work so we then told him that he would have to do a test in order to qualify for membership. Anthony was up for any kind of test we might give him, and
after considerable discussions
we felt that if we gave him an impossible task then he co
uld not be expected to do it;
no face would be lost by anyone, Anthony included. With that
agreed, the task chosen was a ‘s
treak’ through the town in broad daylight, and it had to be done from the bottom of the town up to Fowler
’
s door and inside
. S
ur
ely this was an impossible task
given the bad publicity streaking was having in those days. We felt sure he would never do this, especially when he might end up before the courts, but not so our Anthony
. H
e was all for it. Still we thought he might be bluffing and planned the run with him for the following Saturday. Jerry Hayes had agreed to use his van as the base for the streak and would be located at the bottom of the town with Anthony getting ready inside it for his run.  Anthony was supposed to race up the street, passing the mother
’
s house
,
and
on past the Catholic Church on the way to Fowler
’
s door where he would fly inside to safety. I was to run alongside him taking pictures with my Polaroid as proof of the great event.

The Stre
ak Saturday came round, and Hayes,
Fowler
and I
arrived
at Anthony’s house where he was
waiting fully dressed, but wearing a very long heavy black overcoat. It was a very cold day, but somehow I felt that this coat did not seem to be for protection from the elements. He jumped into the back of the van and actually started stripping off immediately
,
becoming stark naked within minutes
. T
hen
he
wrapp
ed himself in the coat and
waited for me to leave with my camera so as to get ahead of him for the photos. All three of us looked at each other in disbelief as Anthony crouched down in the back of the
van and began visibly shivering
while waiting for the proceedings to begin. We three then got scared and felt a rethink was needed because he was obviously going to do the impossible after all.  A rethink was indeed needed
,
so we drove up the street and parked outside the mother’s house while we discussed our next plan of action.  Anthony flatly refused to put his clothes back on and just waited behind us in the van while we argued back and fort
h about the merits or not of a s
treak. While this was going on
,
my mother came out the front door
,
and seeing us parked and talking
,
she pokes her head in through the open window. She says
,
“What are ye up to lads
?
” I think she could see naked Anthony in the back
,
but I’m not sure
. In any case
I say with a smirk, “Well, we are
seriously thinking of doing a s
treak mother”, and at that she goes completely mad. Jerry
,
knowing her temper and fearing trouble, had already got the van started and was heading for the top of the town
. A
s we drive we see the mother heading for Nannie
’
s, no doubt to complain me to her. All of us enter Fowler
’
s house skitting and laughing our heads off
,
and once inside we try to get warm by all four of us standing around Fowler
’
s one and only means of heat
; a small little two-
bar electric heater. I just fell about laughing as I saw Anthony open the front of his coat and take over the whole heater saying
, “Lads me bollix is frozen, and when am I s
treaking anyway
?
”