By Jim Nolan
Let’s state the most important thing first: it was a great place to grow up. In an interview I did last year with the Evening Herald, I was asked if I had ever regretted not going to university. I told the journalist that my university was the streets where I lived and that when I left for London in October 1977, I was armed with a doctorate from the University of Brady’s Bar where I had worked for a few years in the mid-seventies. I wasn’t joking either. Any education I needed for being a playwright, I got in John’s Park and I’m proud to say it.
For all of us who were lucky enough to live there, the occasion of our fiftieth birthday (2003) brought memories, fond and sometimes painful, flooding back. As I rewind the tape, I discover that those memories are not of great events and important occasions but are rooted in the commonplace and the ordinary and they are all the more sacred for that.
In an article this size, there’s little room to do the justice to the place so just a few random images will have to do it for now. I can hear Philip Boyle shouting “Fresh Mackerel!” on Friday morning – the same Philip who, when he just got a handful of votes the year he went for the Corporation elections, said that the only thing he’d learned from the experience was that there were 496 liars in John’s Park. Piery Power is holding court with his young acolytes outside Jackie O’Regan’s shop. Jackie is inside, a Gold Flake stuck permanently to the side of his mouth as Ninny Reid tells him he’s an awful robber. Brother Ryan is getting out of the Austin Cambridge (AW1 522) outside the school – another day of terror looming.
Teddy O’Connor is charming the ladies on ‘the bus to town’; the Rag Man is trading balloons for cast off clothes; Forty Coats and his son are dining out on the grass beside The Candy Store. Brian Power, my brother, John and the rest of the John’s Park Hippies are listening to Bob Dylan in 324 (The Bull Room) and Birdy Meagher is conducting The Rose of Aranmore at the accordian band rehearsal.
Gerry Fagan is slagging Bobby Sinnott in Brady’s Bar, Nanny Rowe is looking for a Baby Power at the hatch; Mario Giuti revs up his triumph motorbike Rosa Di Fenza hangs out her washing and dreams of Naples. Father O’Gorman is saying first Mass in the Chapel of Ease; the patients are thinning turnips in the Mental Field as young lads from Father Pat’s bring home the apples from Mc Clures Orchard.
Sammy Winters puts a stray snooker ball through Brady’s window (in-off) and borrows a double decker bus to go to Katie Reilly’s. My mother, younger than I am now, is chatting to Brigid Whelan at the garden gate. Jimmy Cleary is bringing the house down at the Singing Pubs. Jimmy Reynolds is standing at his door and there are flowers and statues in every window as the May Procession winds into the Square.
The German Road are beating The Back Road 3-2 as the sun sets in the field behind Junior Dinan’s. Joe Carroll wants more milk in his brandy, Pat Walsh is homesick for Broadstone and the Rent Man’s at the door but there’s nobody home. Nancy Doyle is telling fortunes, Maureen Barry is singing Fernando, Mrs. Madigan is cleaning the school. Johnny Dunphy stands outside Doyle’s Shop waiting for the English soccer results in the late edition of The Evening Herald and the Paper Mills bus is pulling up for the last time.
And one memory burnt into the senses like no other, I am ten years old, it’s a summer evening and I stand at the end of our road, waiting for my father to come home from work. He comes round the bend on the Post Office bike and I run to meet him. He hoists me up on the bar of the bike and we head for home, happy as the day is long.
All our yesterdays. The life of a community.