Two Walls and a Roof

by John Michael Cahill

  After we built many sound amplifiers I got tired of it. I wanted to build an oscillator, which is the heart of a radio transmitter, but I could never get one to work. I tried and tried for weeks with no success. My building method was the problem of course. In the end, and close to desperation, I convinced Kyrle that we should do a joint effort, with me promising to do it his way. He agreed and our parts collecting began again. We both knew the circuit inside out, especially me after my numerous failures, so it was down to getting every component correct, and winding the coils properly and exactly. Eventually he got it made, despite our many rows in between, but when he powered it up I was sure it would work. What we had finally made was an oscillator which was in effect a low power radio transmitter. When it was powered up, I tore down the stairs from our attic to the radio below in the kitchen to see if it worked and it did, as Kyrle had managed to wipe out Radio Eireann, our national station. I let out a huge yell. “It works, it works, Kyrle it works”, I shouted wildly as I ran back up the stairs, bringing the father’s radio with me as proof.

  Kyrle had this strange look of disbelief as I plugged in our radio and waited for the valves to warm up. We stuck in a bit of wire as an aerial and blotted out Radio Eireann once again. Both of us shook hands, and it reminds me of Harry Potter and their code of honour. Now that we had a transmitter, what would we do with it next?

  Father was called immediately. We knew it was a waste of time showing mother, as she had no idea what we had done, and father says, “Boys o’boys, that’s great. Now bring the radio back down, I want to hear the news”. I looked at Kyrle in disbelief because I saw the significance of the device, and Kyrle said, “Sure he’s sozzled, he don’t get it at all. Better take down the ould radio though”. I went home to Nannie’s that night with my head spinning again. I felt deep inside me that an extraordinary event had taken place; that we had done something truly amazing which would have a bearing on my future, but I couldn’t fully grasp what that might be. I know that I couldn’t sleep when I was in bed. I spent most of the time going over and over just one question. How far would this radio wave travel? Next day in Pad’s school I could not concentrate at all: a dangerous game in that place. All I could think about was how could we make it work better.

  In those days we used to have our hair cut by the local barber, a man called Batt Thornhill. He was a very famous sportsman in Buttevant and was a good friend of our family. I suppose every month or so we had to get our hair cut and I know we never paid him for it. I know too that neither of us had a clue about sports, and no matter how Batt tried to get us interested, it never worked. In the end he just gave up, and no doubt from then on saw us as two non-paying customers wasting his time on a busy Saturday. I think he could never get rid of us fast enough, and would chop like mad; dragging and tearing at our heads just to see the back of us faster. Beggars can’t be choosers, and we were often the laughing stock of school friends after such a cutting, but I’m sure there were other reasons for their mirth besides our hair, such as my round glasses making me resemble the cartoon character Magoo. In any case we both decided that we needed to get even with Batt whose Sunday games were his weak point. To a lesser extent we felt that the evening news was also a weak point, and that turned out to be far more serious for us. We decided to silence both the news and the games on Batt’s radio. The fact that it would also silence father’s radio downstairs was of no concern to either of us at the time.

  A debate began about how long the aerial wire should be for the radio signal to cross the street to Batt’s house, and to be sure of success I insisted that we run a wire all the way out to the aerial pole on the priest’s shed next door: an easy task for us who were like two cats at the climbing. We did this work and all was soon ready. News time came around and we had the kitchen radio turned on, tuned to Radio Eireann as usual. Kyrle powers up the oscillator and sure enough the news disappeared from the radio in the kitchen; just a swishing silence remained. We left our oscillator on and went across the street to Nannie’s house, passing Batt’s shop on the way. As cool as a breeze we wander in to Nannie’s, and there is Michael in a panic tuning the radio like mad. He had no news either, and he was a good distance further away from our attic. I gave Kyrle the knowing look, and Michael says to me, “ Chicken, any idea what is wrong with the ould radio? T’was working grand a few minutes ago, and I want to hear the news”. Nannie pipes up immediately and says, “Yer not touchin that radio, I forbid it, leave it as it is”. She knew that we were well known electronic experimenters by then and didn’t want her radio broken. I feign a bit of knob twiddling and says, “Tis probably the valves are gone,” hoping she might still say to take it away and we would have even more parts to play with, but no, she just told me to leave it alone. We left and headed for Batt’s shop to see if we could hear the news there, but he’s standing at the door looking up and down the street and seems a bit perplexed. So now we are sure that our plan was working and we have taken our first steps at revenge on Batt for his rough scalping. About a half hour passed by and we turned it off; then Radio Eireann mysteriously returned to all. We sat in the attic just giggling and talking low and looking forward to Sunday’s match. I don’t think it was an All Ireland Final, but we silenced it just the same, as well as knocking out the odd news bulletin for the next few days. Over the next three weeks or so we just enjoyed the whole thing and blotted out programmes at random. I suppose initially people just felt it was that the radio service had gone off, but when it became a bit too regular, people complained to the Department of Post and Telegraphs and they sent out two tracking vans with rotating aerials to investigate the problems unique to Buttevant.

  Unknown to us they were zeroing in on our transmission, and by the luck of God Kyrle spotted one of them slowly driving up the main street as he got fags for the mother. He ran in and tore upstairs shouting all the time, “Turn off, turn off!” He was as red as a tomato as he pulled out all the plugs, shaking like a leaf. “We’re caught, we’re caught, the van, the van’s on the street…tracking” I ran over and looked out the attic window and there it was, stopped right outside Batt’s shop where we can see Batt chatting to the engineer about some match, or his lack of a radio service.

  Of course that ended our silencing days. What we did not know at the time, but heard much later, was that our little oscillator on its very big aerial had not just silenced Batt’s radio, but it had in fact also wiped out every radio for about a mile around. Basically the whole of Buttevant had no radio service when we were ‘on the air’. Fortunately for us we were never actually caught, as the father would have been taken to court and fined. We were too young to be prosecuted, but after a while the word leaked out that it was ‘them mad Cahills’ that had wiped out the radios in the town. Many years later that local story was to be remembered by one of four businessmen who were starting a pirate radio station in Mallow, and who were having no luck technically: until they called on me. That call would change my life, but first I had a lot of living still to do.

  Even though I loved electronics, it was not my only pastime. I also loved films, playing hurling and handball, but from an early age I think I loved playing practical jokes on people, and hated being the butt of such jokes played back on me. I almost always got into some kind of trouble over these jokes as well, but it never stopped me from taking an opportunity when it arose. On one occasion while on a visit to my Aunt May’s house in Waterford, and being about fourteen years old then, my practical joking got a bit out of hand. That incident was the cause of me being violently thrown out of the cinema in Waterford city. I think it was called the Ritz and I’m sure it is now probably long gone. It happened to be showing a horror film about some kind of a hand that was choking people to death. I can’t remember the name of it right now, but this was supposed to be a great horror film and I wanted to see it for weeks. I got to go see it on a Sunday matinee, but I had the great misfortune of sitting behind two girls who never stopped talking all through the f
ilm. I was sick of telling them to shut up, but I was getting nowhere with them. Worse still for me was the fact that one of them had already seen the film, and she kept telling her friend of all the good scary parts coming up. I was livid by the time the intermission came round, and so I decided action was needed. I went out to the shop and bought two ‘iced lollypops’ and held them in my hands so as to freeze my hands and turn them into iced claws. Even though in pain, I was waiting patiently for an appropriate ‘good part’ to arrive. It was summertime and the girls were wearing dresses with low cut backs: sitting ducks for my master plan. During a scene where the hero was driving through a forest in a thunderstorm, and where the claw was making its way across the seat and about to choke him; I suddenly dropped my lollies and ‘clawed’ both of the girls on the back of the neck. The shock they got was incredible. One of them literally leaped about two foot clean out of her seat and into the air. The other girl almost fainted. Then the screaming started. It was way beyond what I could have expected. A panic took over the crowd, and it got so bad that all the lights soon came on. The girls were shaking and clutching each other, trembling all the time. They were so scared that those beside them became frightened too. Some people were trying to console them and some were leaving the cinema in terror. It was mayhem and I had caused all of this. By then it was damage limitation time for me, and as I was trying to look innocent. I kept trying to kick the damn lollies down under the seats in front; hiding the evidence so to speak. At the same time some fucker kept pointing at me and shouting, “He did it, he did it, I saw him”. The bouncers were very mad and roughly dragged me by the scruff of the neck clean out of my seat and kicked my arse all the way out to the front door. There they literally threw me out onto the street. As I pulled myself up from the pavement I was cheeky enough to go back into the ticket office and demand a refund, saying I had only seen half the film. The ticket seller shouted back in to the bouncers, “He’s back, he’s back,” and when they made a drive for me, I felt I’d forget the refund and took off running. I could see from the expression on their faces that I was in for a real hiding if they caught me, as by then loads of people were leaving and demanding their money back. I had managed to ruin the film for all concerned, but I still blame the girls for it.

  It was also during one of my many trips to Aunt May’s in Waterford that I had another one of my many near death escapes. Aunt May lived in Sallypark, a housing area on the northern side of the River Suir. The main road into Waterford ran along in front of the houses and then crossed over a railway bridge going into Waterford’s railway station. This bridge was very dangerous as it was very steep and the road made a sharp zig zag as it crossed over it. Each Sunday my cousin Michael and I would be despatched off to Mass, crossing this bridge via the narrow footpath. On this particular Sunday, Michael and I were walking alone to Mass and had got to the middle of the zig zag part of the bridge when an old-style milk tanker came rapidly around behind us. It was closely followed by a small car full of Mass goers. The tanker had its tanks arranged in rows, unlike how it’s done today, and the speed of the truck and the zig zag pattern of the road caused the rear tank to roll off the back of the truck. It missed me by literally a foot and then it squashed four of the five people in the car travelling close behind it. They were probably killed instantly, and the milk and blood washed over my legs as I was that close to it all. I’ll never forget the screams of agony of the old lady I saw crushed before me that day. In shock, we just continued on to Mass and thought no more about it until later that day at dinner time when Aunt May said, ”Did you lads hear of the terrible accident on the bridge?” I piped up and said, “Yeah sure we were there right when it happened, we saw it all happen,” and I went back to eating my dinner. Silence descended on Aunt May and her husband Barry. My Aunt May then looked across at Barry and then slowly and gently they began to ask us about it, but they did not pursue it too much. Later that day Barry said he would take Michael and me for a drive, and as he did so, in a very gentle way, he wormed out of us all that had happened. I believe Barry is the reason I don’t have nightmares from that terrible tragedy, as I was only about fourteen years old then and I had seen four people die violently just feet from me. I never forgot the scene as I glanced back at it. Almost all the car was squashed flat and was under the tank with milk still pouring out and running down the road under my feet. Fortunately, to my knowledge at least, that incident never affected me traumatically and shows that we are all surely protected throughout our lives. It was one of my early escapes from passing over, but by no means my last, and my next one would be caused by my Uncle Kyrl.

  Both Kyrle and I worked for him for long periods at various times in our early years, and on one occasion his work was almost the death of me.

  He was in his monumental works phase and had been given the job of removing a huge headstone to have it sanded down, re-lettered and new names added. This idea of removing a stone was very unusual for him, as most of the times he would letter a new headstone in the workshop, or have it lettered locally in the graveyard using the father as letterer ‘on contract’. Payment would amount to a few pints for my dad.

  On this particular occasion though, we were taking the stone back to some isolated cemetery deep in County Limerick and it was wintertime.

  I know that it had been raining for days because we were supposed to return the stone some time earlier, and he could not do it because of the rain. Kyrl had a lot of handymen available as casual labourers and one incredibly good friend of his called John O’Brien, affectionately known to us all as ‘Black John’. He got this name because he had jet black hair, looked scruffy always, and was as strong as a black stallion. On the day in question, Kyrl called in all his crew; myself included, though Kyrle was not around for some reason. Black John was there, as were two other men; one called Buddo Reilly and I think his son also, or it might have been Black John’s son. So in the rapidly failing light, we five set off for the wilds of Limerick.

  Kyrl drove a big horse of an old car which was attached to a huge trailer by a makeshift hitch. The massive stone and all our tools, plus a few bags of cement had filled the trailer to bursting point, and I had a bad feeling about the whole trip. We set off heading north to Charleville. I was in the back, wedged tightly between Buddo and the other lad, and both of them were smoking like chimneys. According to Kyrl, my job was to keep the World War Two jerrycan, which was filled to the brim with petrol, from spilling out and being ‘wasted’. He did not seem to feel a cover was needed because he had me acting as a human cork, with my hand permanently jammed across the top of the jerrycan. The fumes were almost making me giddy, but I was scared to death that a stray spark from a cigarette or ‘fag’ would set us all alight. Every so often Nannie’s words about ‘fire following them Cahills’ would surface and scare me to death. This almost happened when Buddo’s companion, trying to look cool, flicked his cigarette butt at the open window. Even though I saw it go out, it flew back in again and landed on his lap. He started panicking and began kicking at the can, trying to prevent his mickey from burning. I too began panicking and screaming that he was going to knock it over if we didn’t stop. Of course Kyrl just kept on driving, and both he and Black John exploded laughing at my panic. Black John then says, “Hey lad, your uncle Michael named you well, sure your notten but an ould chicken, bawk bawk,” and more laughter ensued from all the gang. I got so red in the face that I almost set the damn petrol on fire by myself, and I still have no idea where the flying cigarette went. Kyrl never slowed down either, or seemed to care that we might all burn; me being the first.

  The journey went downhill fast from then on, and we soon got totally lost. Kyrl never once used a map in his life. I don’t think he could read one, and we drove round in circles, by then in the pitch black of a November evening. No one seemed to care about time though, as we were set on the idea that the stone had to be erected before more rain hit.

  On we went, all the time discussing where we m
ight be. Suddenly, out of the foggy gloom, I saw what looked like an old castle on our left with our road travelling on up over a large steep humpy bridge. I remember seeing the headlights shine like two searchlights going straight up into the fog as Kyrle drove on up the bridge. Almost immediately, and with total shock, I saw the lights dip right down into a huge fast flowing river straight in front of us. We were going to drown for sure. “Fuck, Fuck, Fuck,” shouts Kyrl as he slams on the brakes, but the sheer weight of the big stone pushed us forward into the river, and with a huge splash, the front of the car went completely underwater with the lights remaining on. The whole scene felt very eerie as I could see steam mix with the lights in the fast-flowing muddy water which was fast entering the front of the car. In total panic we all scrambled to escape our impending death while Kyrl kept shouting, “Out, out will ye”.