“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? Well 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 thought he was joking. He wasn’t. “Cahill, you’re the ringleader and you’re first. Get 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 great teacher of life as well as of education.
We began running. It was like the movie Chariots of Fire. All 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, warming 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 arranged for the students known as ‘ceilis’. 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 oral Irish examination. This was where Pad’s schooling would finally be of benefit to me, as I was well used to speaking and writing the Irish language in his school, so I felt I was certainly set for the Gaeltacht and the girls.
The weather was then becoming bitterly cold, but still we cycled on every day to Charleville Tech. The mornings became very dark too as we entered the winter months and, as usual, this had to be the time they decided to hold the Irish exams for the scholarship. I think Kyrle had no interest in the Gaeltacht because he would easily have walked the exams, him being a fluent Irish speaker, but he never said he wanted to go there at all. I got it into my head that I was going to the Gaeltacht come hell or high water, and as it was all free if you got the scholarship, Nannie had no problem with it either. She said, “Sure you might learn something at last, and it will surely stand to you later”. Little did she know what I was planning to learn, and ‘standing to me later’ could easily be a poor choice of words the way I was thinking.
As it came nearer to the exam time, the usual exaggerated rumours began doing the rounds, especially from some of the guys who had been there the previous year. I heard tales spoken in hushed voices that sometimes the Dublin girls were so ‘wild’ you’d never be the same after an experience with one of the hottest ones. I also noticed that my friend the Yeti was very keen on the idea of going as well, but we all mocked him because he was so useless at Irish. Nevertheless, these stories intrigued me and I discussed my upcoming adventures with Joe Hurley. He was all advice based on his imagined ‘experiences’ of sexual passion. I knew by then that he was as innocent as me, and he was a total liar as well, so I ignored his ramblings, but he did make me promise to give him all the details after I came home from the place. I had not even got to do the exam yet, and Joe was already living his amorous adventures through me.
The morning of the exam came, and in the pitch black dawn Nannie looked out into the street and saw that it was beginning to snow. She rarely left me get off school, but that day she was adamant that I was not going, exam or no exam. I was equally adamant that I was going, and I dressed and made my own sandwiches as she refused to do a thing to help. On that day mother left Kyrle stay in bed because she was sure there would be no school because of the worsening weather, so determined to get to school I head off out the door on my bike. I wore my old black leather jacket outside a warm jumper which was knitted by the Nan, a shirt and a pair of her old gloves, and rode off straight into a blizzard. It was totally insane, but I knew that nothing was going to stop me from going to the school that morning. I had no fear whatsoever, just sheer determination and a burning desire for Hurley’s ‘bitches’.
Initially I followed the tracks of some car that had passed earlier. Pretty soon the tracks vanished, but I kept going in the dark. I could barely see and clouds of snow blew across me covering my glasses. I took them off and still I kept going. To this day I have no idea how I made it. No doubt I was cold, but a strange thing happened to me after about three miles. I began to feel no cold at all. In fact I believe I actually began to get warm. I never fell off the bike either, despite the slippery road, nor did I stop on the road even once. I just pedaled slowly along. After some hours, I arrived at the gates of the school.
Bill the caretaker, who was always a cranky old geezer, saw me cycle in the gate, and by then the sun was shining. It had brightened to a beautiful but very cold morning. He got a terrible shock. I remember him just staring at me speechless while holding a shovel of snow. What I had not realized was that I had become a moving igloo. There was surely about a foot of snow caked across the whole front of my body, my head included. My legs were caked also, but not to the same extent. I think Bill just did not know how I had not died, as he knew the journey well. The poor man grabbed hold of me, shook me off, and took me straight into his boiler room. There he opened the door of the furnace where I shook off the last of the igloo. I felt no discomfort at all, not one bit. I had seen no school buses though, and no one seemed to be walking around either except me and Bill, and then he says, “Boy, why did you do it, you could have frozen to death for nothing. Sure there’s no school today boy, there’s not even a bus running, and I’m only here to keep the place warm”. I was speechless. After all that, and now no exam either, I couldn’t get over it.
He kept asking me if I was ok and was I getting warm. Then he says, “I think I should call you a doctor”. I got such a fit of laughing at that, and then the two of us just began laughing our heads off. I think it was sheer relief on his part and then I saw the insanity of it all, so I laughed even more.
When we finally calmed down, he says, “Have you any food boy”, and I produced my lunch. He made tea for both of us and we talked about my wanting to go to the Gaeltacht so badly. I left out the part about the girls. He kept shaking his head saying, “Jazus, I never seen the like of it boy. Who let you out in that blizzard? Sure I never seen the like of it”. He became human in my eyes after that day because he was genuinely concerned about me, and from that day on he would always address me as the ‘Snowman’. As I’d arrive into school, or if he saw me in the yard he would go, “How’s the Snowman doing today boy”, with a wry smirk on his face, and I’d reply, “Still freezing Bill”. No one even knew why we played this game, and it only added to the mystery surrounding the mad man from Buttevant. After my rest and our chat I ate my food, got back on my bike and cycled home. I never did the exam. It was cancelled till later and by then we had left the school. No one only Bill knew of my igloo, and while I suspect he told some people about it, I never once heard a soul ask me about it later on and few would bel
ieve it anyway. I was destined never to meet with the ‘hot women’ of Dublin, and Joe Hurley was disappointed more than me.
Around the late sixties, the country was beginning to prosper a little and the government brought out a scheme for giving out free books to the needy, provided your income was low. Our income at home was so low then that it was below the floor line, despite the growing economy. Dan arrived into the class with a paper describing the scheme and telling us all that to qualify, all we had to do was bring him in a letter describing the home circumstances. Pride is a terrible curse and after telling Nannie all about it she decided we were not beggars, and she refused to give me the letter. Neither did mother. The deadline for the books approached and Dan made this clear in a speech a few days before it closed. Still we had no letter. It was clear that anyone who went into Dan's office uninvited was carrying this ‘letter of shame’ as Nannie saw it. A few did go in at the start and a few more went in closer to the deadline, but not us of course, and we were probably the most deserving of any of them.
I think the deadline had passed when one day Dan comes out of his office and interrupted our class in the hallway, and says to me and Kyrle, “You two are trouble and I want you in my office at four sharp”. He was glaring at us in front of everyone. I thought he was joking as we were then well accepted at the school. He doubles back as if hearing my thoughts and says, “I mean it, troublemakers. Four sharp”. At four the class was breaking up, tidying back the chairs, and we knocked at the door and he calls out to come in. As we enter, Dan shouts out real loud that he is tired of us disrupting the school, causing trouble and still being late and it’s going to stop, but he is smiling at us as he’s shouting. I didn’t get it and neither did Kyrle. Then he says, much quieter, “Sit down there lads. That’s for the benefit of outside ears”. He asks us why he has not got the letter he wanted for the books. I say because my Nan won’t give it to me. Kyrle stays silent. Dan says, “But I'm sure ye qualify and tis a shame to waste these books, so I’m going to deal with it myself and get ye the books. No one need know, alright?” This was just the kind of man he was, and I’m sure we were not the only ones he helped with that scheme. Then he says, “Be off now”. As we leave, he is back shouting at us again, “And if ye don’t cop on, yer out of this school. I’ll expel the both of ye and good riddance, Buttevant tulls”.
He had used the expel word - the worst threat, and as all heard it, we rose even higher in stature. Dan got us the books and no one ever knew the how of it. I don’t know what he did. I suspected he wrote two imaginary letters describing the situation which he knew must be the case, because I am sure that Michael had filled him in on it all at enrolment time. Dan Fleming was one of a kind and I could never praise him enough.
I have to say that I loved that school. It had a totally different teaching ethic to Pad Keely’s place. In the Tech, the teachers did not care if you learned or not, but they did try their best to teach you. Dan had a saying that I never forgot. On the day that we joined, he came around to our class and said, “Now listen to this boys. Ye are here to work. This school has girls, and if they interfere with the work, give up the work,” and he marched out. I was in a place where I could learn at last. We were both to bring great honours to that school later on in one extraordinary day.
The school had organised a writing competition in the school. There was no prize, just a competition where the best composition would be read to all the classes. By then I was well into my Communism phase and also into the belief that God was not necessary for life to begin on Earth. I had studied this and read of the famous Miller experiment, showing that amino acids would form in a flask if the right conditions were there, and these amino acids were the building blocks of life. I was trying to decide which I would write about when it dawned on me that I knew more about Communism than the Miller experiment, so I went for that.
It took me two days of writing and re-writing, and in the end I had a great account of Communism and compared it to the Christianity Christ taught before the Catholic Church got at his teachings. Michael read it and was amazed at it. Nannie refused to read it when I told her Christ was the first Communist. She said the Russians would love to have me, and the Devil was still stuck inside me, brought in by Joe Hurley, and the both of us were Hellbound. I don’t know who else read it, but when it got to the school judging panel, it won hands down. I was asked to read it at all the classes, even the senior girl’s class, and this was for me the greatest thrill. I believed totally in all that I had written, so I was good at answering any questions that came from those listening.
Somehow the subject matter was brought to the attention of the local Catholic priest. He was an old stager and hated me already because I was clearly a rebel and troublemaker in the religious class. By then we were after coming up in the world and a bus used to take us about half way to the school, but we still had to cycle the other half. Later on, in a vindictive act, Pad had our bus stopped, and we were soon back to cycling all the way, but at that time we used to wait for our bus at a stop just across the road from the Catholic church where this old priest had his house. This area was, and still is, the main Limerick road, and is on a gentle bend, so I suppose it is a dangerous place to be at the best of times. I had always loved handball and one day, to kill time, I started playing ball up against the wall right on the bend. Pretty soon it became the place to play. There was little traffic in those days and we were not fools. If a car was coming it would be driving slowly as it was entering the town and obviously our game would be suspended till it passed. The old priest sees this going on and arrived across to me telling me to clear off with that ball or he will call the Guards. By then I didn’t give a damn about the Catholic Church or their priests either, so I tell him no, I won’t stop playing and he can do what he likes about it. I’m real happy with the cheek I’m giving him too. He demands that we do stop, glaring at us, but we all stand our ground. Then beaten as the bully he was, he backed off shouting that, “There will be trouble,” and as he leaves I shout after him, “Fuck off to your ould Church, you ould bollix”. He swung round glaring at me and we went back to the game, ignoring him. He had done his worst and got nowhere with it. Next day he complained me to Dan Fleming I’m sure, but that did him no good either. However, after I wrote about the Communism and showed how Christ was the first Communist, he went ballistic. He arrived at the school raging and demanding my head. I was ‘openly’ preaching Communism and I was to be expelled immediately. Dan called me into his office and told me all about the priest’s threats and his demand that I be expelled. Dan said, “Of course I’ll not expel you. What you wrote was brilliant, keep on writing. You do have a gift for it. But John, try not to play any more handball on the road. I’m responsible if anything happens to ye”. He told me that there was a proper ball alley in the town and to use that. I didn’t have the heart to say that it was always locked and we would probably miss the bus if we used it. Every time I pass that spot today, which has changed little, I remember those days, but we did stop the playing there, not out of fear from the priest, but out of respect for Dan.
By the time we went to Charleville Tech both Kyrle and I were after becoming real good at electronics, and this knowledge was to bring us a huge element of fame on one amazing day. It brought great honour to the school as well. There was an annual countywide school competition being held, with the Lord Mayor of Cork presiding and handing out the prizes. Cash no doubt I hoped, and a certificate. Our school used to enter it every year and never get anywhere. The competition was held in the Munster Institute in Cork city, and as well as a projects event, there were also a question time competition and a public speaking competition.
We decided to enter all three. Kyrle would build a complete reel to reel tape recorder and I would build the test box I had designed in my head a hundred times. The school also had other boys entering, but all the hope was riding on the two of us as the devices we were making looked amazing to the school. In our school, we w
ere up against guys who were entering projects such as ‘measuring the temperature of eggs in a cock of hay, or where does rainfall come from’, so I thought if that’s the best they can do, then it’s no wonder that they never win anything. I think it took us probably two weeks to make our projects. Kyrle built the whole machine and also the amplifier from scratch and it looked amazing. He needed a speaker and this he made in the woodwork class. I made my test box there as well. So as to cover the cone of his speaker and make it look nice, he cut a square out of the silk lining from inside the mother’s only good coat. Of course he hung it back up, and as she was always saving it, she didn’t notice her loss for months. I made my test box with ease and loved looking at it. It had a series of switches which would allow me to substitute different values of capacitors or coils or resistors into a circuit via two wire probes. I was also using a compass sitting inside a coil of wire, which was a crude form of voltmeter, and this alone was a genius of an idea if I may say so myself. It was not the most practical thing, but by using my box I could tell if there was a voltage in a circuit by how much the compass needle moved off North. I also had a bulb and a battery in the box to act a as continuity tester. All of these ideas are used today in professional versions of my box, but way back then, nothing like it even existed.
Two Walls and a Roof Page 19
