Two Walls and a Roof
Ireland born America bound
A book about Hope and Adventure
By John Michael Cahill
Published by Rivermistmedia
29 Avondale Pk. Mallow. Cork. Ireland.
Email: [email protected]
Blog: http://johnmichaelcahill.com/wordpress/
Website: http://johnmichaelcahill.com/
Website: http://www.twowallsandaroof.com/
http://www.facebook.com/john.m.cahill.9
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 John Michael Cahill
Cover drawing © 2012 Kyrle Cahill
Cover design © Rivermistmedia
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems – except in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews – without the permission in writing from it’s publisher,. Rivermistmedia or John Michael Cahill.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. We are not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Table of Contents
Two Walls and a Roof 1
Copyright 4
Table of Contents 5
Dedication 7
Forward 8
Introduction 9
The beginning. 10
My Nannie. 16
Three blind children. 21
Becoming a young salesman. 24
Christmas times 30
House fire. 33
The lost train set. 36
Our mother, none like her. 41
Two walls and a roof. 47
Lill’s eel snake 52
Joe Hurley my best friend 57
Fort Apache and other wars. 60
Our father, a gentle Soul. 67
Pad Keely’s school days. 76
Big Kyrl adventures. 85
The road to Charleville 100
Mad friends Disco days. 108
He better get sunscreen. 121
Blessings upon you. 129
My Mallory days 138
Etta’s years and our children. 145
Bobo 151
North Cork Local Radio. 165
Local Television. 175
Legal radio the fun ends. 179
JoAnn. Dream Maker. 184
The long lonely years. 193
Seville 201
Ireland. A new beginning 203
Dreams do come true. 213
Miracles we are…. 224
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my mother, Belenda Cahill, whose humour and optimism has always inspired me and gifted me with a great memory. My mother is one in a million.
It is especially dedicated to my American wife JoAnn whose chance remark on the internet began this work twelve years ago.
I am also indebted to my very good friend Laurie O’Flynn Rickard, who has helped me to turn my misspelled rambling notes into a book that I hope you will enjoy, one that offers you my belief in a very bright future for you and those that you love.
Finally it is also dedicated to my three wonderful children Lynda, Adrian, and Kyrl, and to all those others who have entered my life in a good way, I thank you all.
John Michael Cahill.
March 31 2012
Forward
I have written this book for one reason only and that was to get it out of me. For most of my life I have been involved in the media in some form or other, ending in radio broadcasting as well as owning my own video production company, Rivermist Media. However I have been primarily a storyteller for as long as I can remember. I have always loved talking to people and have no fears at all of speaking in public. This comes naturally to me because I came from the era of no television, no video games, and little radio; where your imagination was your real entertainment. They were times where you told numerous stories and listened to others telling theirs back to you, and it was all free.
My uncle Michael was also a writer, spending most of his spare time writing articles for the newspapers. He lived off his writing for much of his life. Michael loved his writing; I believe it relaxed him and, unknown to me at the time, I seem to have inherited his love for the written word and the magic of making pictures come alive from my mind to a page or a screen. I am sure that my sister Eunice has the same love and ability too, and it’s as if Michael’s writing till all hours of the night has infected the both of us, and why not, as we lived in the same house with him and his mother, my Nannie.
This book has come from my aging memory and the truth is everything to me, but I do not wish to offend or hurt anyone living or dead by my words. To this end I have done my best to disguise all those mentioned by changing their names and sometimes their places as well. Some people who have read the draft have been brought to tears, but most have been overcome with laughter and could see the funny side of our mad lives, especially mine, and I ask that you do just the same. Above all strive to be happy because I truly believe that…
“You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars,
You have a right to be here”.
John Michael Cahill
Introduction
Our house was an alleyway that had once been walled up front and back, and then roofed, probably in the late eighteen hundreds. It was a tiny house in a tiny town called Buttevant on the tiny island of Ireland, five thousand miles away from Missouri in the United States of America, and my life would bridge that gap in a truly miraculous way.
Inside that house, almost on a daily basis, an extraordinary drama was played out between a father too fond of the drink, an inspiring mother, and their six ordinary scrawny children. Like numerous others of that time, those six children were destined for a big fat nothing, but, that was not how it turned out. All six of them amounted to a wonderful something, and while each of the others have their own story to tell, this story is primarily mine. My brother Kyrle and I were our mother’s Devils, who constantly got her and us into all kinds of trouble, while our father, a gentle soul, took to his bed or hid in a bottle of Guinness when trouble or work came knocking at his door, leaving our mother to face it all alone.
This book has been trying to come out of me for over ten years. I honestly believe that there is a book in each one of us because we all have our own individual story to tell, and it should be told, even if it’s only to provide entertainment for those who come after us. This book was not written so as to hurt anyone, and I am thankful for all those who have touched my life this far, even if some of their actions brought me sorrow at the time. It was all worth it in the end.
As you read on you will surely see parallels between my life and yours, and if so, I ask that my story inspires you to believe in yourself, your Inner Self, the Real you, because after more than twelve years of study while writing this book, I have learned a great secret and it’s this: Whatever you truly long for is supposed to appear in your life because it is not you that is doing the longing at all, it is the Inner you, the Real you, and It can and does work miracles, as this book will show you.
I earnestly hope that, after reading this book, you will believe in your own ability to create a magical life for yourself, and not do like I did, which was to wait for sixty years to find proof that it’s possible.
John Michael Cahill.
Mallow, Cork, Ireland and Steelville, Missouri, USA. February 14 2012
The beginning.
The madness began on a cold March day in 1950. I came into the world some weeks late I believe, and actually arrived on the thirty first, barely ahead of fool’s day. I used to think my mothe
r held a great secret from me all my life and that I arrived after midnight, but of late she swears it was not so and she should know I suppose.
I was the result of a marriage a year earlier between a young woman of nineteen years, and a much older man who was thirteen years her senior. My mother had been ‘matched’ to my dad because her mother, the Nan, felt that ‘he had prospects’ and would take a useless fun-loving girl off her hands, such was the Nan’s opinion of her own daughter. On the other hand, my paternal grandmother known as Gracie was dead against the match. She saw her favourite son as a businessman with great prospects, soon to be lumbered with a useless fun-loving girl, a description of my mother held in common by both of my grandmothers. Gracie only finally consented to the marriage after being convinced that my mother had a large dowry which she would bring to the marriage table, and which would later enhance both families. So Gracie agreed to hide her doubts inside a future bag of O’Mahony money. She was to be sadly mistaken on that account, as my Nannie was stone broke at the time, and the penny only dropped after the honeymoon was over, when Gracie began asking for her share of the loot. My Nannie had conned her counterpart, getting her son to take a useless daughter off her hands, and from that day on, they became black enemies, with my mother and us in the middle.
When it was my time to be born, my father Hugh Cahill had a dance band and he had become very successful both as a musician and as a band leader. His band used to play music all over the country in the style of the great Glenn Miller. In fact he called his band The Hugh Cahill Orchestra, mimicking his idol from America. Because of his profession, it was quite likely that when it came for my time to be born, he would probably be en route to a dance hall or to a pub, though he was anything but a drinker at that time. In either case it was unlikely that he would be at home for my birth, and so the matchmaker, my maternal grandmother, took charge, and Gracie wanted nothing to do with my birth whatsoever.
My Nannie was one hell of a tough woman, and you did not cross her ever. When she made up her mind about something that was it she would not change it, and in her mind, mother would need her and she would take care of the new child, because in her mind a useless funloving daughter obviously could not take care of it. My parents lived just across the road from my Nannie’s house on the eastern side of the town on the main street. Their little home was originally an alleyway to the Awbeg River, where coach horses used to be sheltered before someone decided to turn it into a house in the late eighteen hundreds. I believe this happened around 1890 and the people were called Coughlans. To turn an alleyway into a house, they added a front wall and a back wall and later a roof, and in so doing they turned this right of way to the river into the smallest house in Buttevant. I call it ‘Two Walls and a Roof’, because that’s what it was, with the other two walls being the gable ends of our neighbours’ houses. The gable end on the church side was owned by our very good neighbour Eily Paddy Murphy, and on the other side the gable end was from a parish house where various Catholic priests lived over the years.
Some time later in my life, this little house would become my magic place. It would be an escape from the Nan - the matchmaker, and her black moods, a place of fun, madness, great discussions, chess games, a workshop for inventions, numerous chemical experiments and also home to most of the rest of our family. Above all though, it was a place where I could always count on a smile from my mother and a gentle feeling coming from both her and my father. In still later years, it was my place of chips fried in dripping with an egg, or French toast on a good day, but those good days were few and far between.
When I finally did arrive into this world, I was quite delicate, being two weeks late, underweight and miserable. My most striking features were a squint in my left eye, and a tongue which stuck out like a small snake, not the very best way to start off in life, but I had arrived at last, even if it was barely ahead of the fool’s day. My long tongue, with its snake-like properties, was a great cause for concern and embarrassment to everyone, especially my Nannie, who spent all of her time trying to get it back in my mouth, and more importantly, keeping it there. It was a terrible battle and she only won in the end by dipping my dummy, known as a ‘gollie’, into some kind of sugary stuff which I loved, and this kept my snake inside. I’m quite sure that this concoction was very bad for my teeth, but it was either that or I’d never be shown off in public. The Nan did finally succeed, and at long last I could be displayed to the world, albeit at the Nan’s whims, and that was where the first troubles began.
From the moment of my birth I was being held captive by my Nannie. My father only saw me at her behest, and mother saw me just a little bit more. Nannie got away with this by using the excuse that, “Sure he’s delicate and ye can’t mind him anyway. He’s out all the time (referring to my dad), and you’re useless Belenda”. The Nan would refer to my father as ‘he’ in her way of demeaning the man, and she called my mother Belenda whenever she was angry with her. Most other times she would not use her name at all, preferring to imply my mother’s existence rather than acknowledge that she might have borne a ‘useless’ daughter called Belenda.
I’m quite certain that my captivity in the Nan’s abode continued for some months, probably two or three. Of course this soon became intolerable, and my father demanded me back from the Nan, telling my mother to do the actual demanding. He was much too afraid of her himself to do any such demanding and I suppose he pressed mother to ‘take her on’. When she did ask for me back, Nannie flatly refused to give me up, telling mother to, “Clear out of my house and don’t darken my door again”. Mother left Nannie’s and reported back to her husband, and who knows what they planned to do next. It’s likely that they decided to just sleep on it, both being really afraid of the Nan because of her terrible temper.
Somehow the mother’s demanding must have been playing on the Nan’s mind, and in a fit of rage which was typical of the woman, she wrapped me up in a blanket, took me across the road in my basket, and then she left me on the street outside their door. There was no knocking or calling out, she just dropped me at the door and walked off across the street to her home. At the best of times this act would be a strange kind of thing to do to a baby, but considering I was only a few months old, it was three am in the morning and there were no street lights, it was quite insane and showed her raging temper. At that moment she didn’t care if the rats or the roaming dogs got me. As far as she was concerned, they could have me back.
My screaming must have woken my parents from their sleep of decision-making, and I was saved from the dogs, the rats, or the cold. I do know that both my parents were truly happy to have me home at long last. I would also guess that at some deeper level, even as a baby, I too felt very glad to be home with my real parents. Next day my father rose early, hell-bent on proving to his mother-in-law that he was a good father and could earn lots of money for his new son. Unfortunately, while he was gone and while mother was washing my one and only napkin, she saw from the corner of her eye, a dark figure glide up her stairs, come back down and then disappear out the front door. It was my Nannie of course, with me under her black shawl, stolen by sheer bravado from under her daughter’s nose, and I would never return as their firstborn again.
Later that evening father arrived home with his money, full of joy, clutching his first ten shilling note for his boy. Straight up to my cot he went, but no John was inside it. He got a terrible fright and ran down the stairs shouting, “Belenda, Belenda, he’s gone, he’s gone. Our child is gone, where is he gone”. Of course mother had to tell him where I was gone and how, and there and then their marriage seems to have ended. I feel he gave up on it all, not being man enough to go after his child because he was never a fighter, and my mother having being reared by this tough woman had no chance at all of ever getting me back, and so they resigned themselves to losing me forever. Father, not a drinking man in those days, took consolation in Arthur Guinness, and mother, always the optimist, felt sooner or later maybe her
mother would give me up, but she never did. I was destined to be reared by my tough grandmother while my real mother only lived a few yards across the street, but she may as well have been living on the Moon.
For my part I became conditioned into believing that this woman across the street was a stranger, and that Nannie was my real mother, though I knew instinctively she was not. Nannie was a master at mind games and from the beginning she tried to alienate me from my real mother, though I have no doubt that it was done because she loved me herself. Pretty soon Nannie began to treat me as if I was her own child, and I accepted this. I slept in her bed, was fed by her and adored by both her and her son Michael, my uncle. He used to call me ‘chicken’ and I have incredibly fond memories of him lifting me up high and taking me round on his shoulders, while Nannie would be roaring at him to, “Put the child down, don’t you let him fall”. Like my mother, poor Michael was also considered by Nannie to be worse than useless, a favourite word of hers in those days. But today I know that her ‘useless’ son Michael had sacrificed his life and his dreams so that she would have a roof over her head and food on the table in her old age, and few sons will do that today.
More than anyone else, I believe Nannie truly loved me. She did this loving with a kind of jealousy that’s dangerous. She did her best to alienate me from my father also: not in a direct way, but subtle and crafty. She was a terrible woman for holding a grudge and would plot and scheme for years if necessary to get even with any wrongdoer, and she used this psychology on me and later on my sister Eunice who would also begin living with us. I suppose, considering what we know today about psychology, it’s not surprising she acted like she did, as she herself had lost a child earlier in life and I was to be his replacement. I’m sure too that my mother, who was always a giver, even gave up her own firstborn out of sheer love for her own mother, and that takes some doing, but that is my mother.
Two Walls and a Roof Page 1
