Echoes of Christmases past in Cavan
John McEntee was a columnist with the Celt for many years - his popular Cavanman in London column widely read. He was back in his native Cavan for Christmas and penned this piece in which he wishes 'a very grand new year to everyone, not only in Killygarry and Cullies but also in the damp streets of Cavan Town'...
Returning for Christmas for the first time in 40 years to Cavan was a curious experience. Nudging seventy, so many of my friends are no longer alive. My home town is the same. But nearly everyone I grew up alongside is gone, resting in Killygarry or Cullies cemeteries whose serried boulevards replicate the streets where I grew up. Paddy Elliott, John Sullivan, Baby Whelan, Margaret English, Molie Soden, Tommy Brides...
There are too many memories. Church Street where I was raised, still in my memory, retains the Surgical Hospital, Paddy Maloney’s palatial house, Geoghans, Goughs, Phil Gargan’s Ritz Bar, the Post Office, Whelans. Venturing further the old Market in the Square, Fosters’ newsagents, Murrays’ garage, Mrs Cullen atop the Town Hall, Woolworths, The Ulster Arms, the County Hotel on the corner opposite McDonald Hub Bar.
Down Bridge Street long dead soldiers still chuckle over Fanta and chips with girlfriends in Sean McManus’s Central Café; The Congo, the Blue Moon, Mick Crosby’s butcher shop astride the Cavan River; Phelim Coffey in River Street hiding after breaking Tilson’s window and blaming Mickey Breslin.
Onwards to the Railway Road’s Rivals Inn, later The Lakeland, within earshot of phantom steam trains departing for Clones... And the long gone wall opposite where Edward English showed me the finger indention in wet cement where his sister recorded her finger shortly before she drowned in the adjoining river.
Swerve to upper main street: Houricans, Edward O’Gormons, Smyths’ pub turned electrical shop opposite Fays, Cookes and Eugene Monaghans, long closed when my uncle Frank Conlan recorded the visit of two Fair Day Farmers who were told by Eugene: “We’re stock taking, come back tomorrow.” And painter Dinny Brennan perched at Tommy Brides’ bar on the Pound Archway. When Tommy told him he and the lovely Betty were moving from upstairs to a new house on the Cathedral Road, Dinny swerved his hand eastwards; “You mean the County Home Road.”
My head fills with the laughter of growing up. Stealing golf caddies for Cock Hill trollies and discovering that the buckled wheels at the bottom of the hill belonged to Surgeon Maloney. My mother adopting Mixer the dog... Double F. Donohue trying to sell an Austin A 40 farting oil as my cousin Michael and I tried to buy a staff car for our dance hall empire (neither of us had a licence); auditioning for ‘Go Go’ dancers for our disco in a hall behind the Rivals Inn.
This was the haunted town I nudged my Avis down a rainswept College Street to meet my sisters Ann and Grainne, brother Desmond in the Abbey Bar. Out on the wet street, by 8.10pm, I pointed the hired motor towards Main Street and a still open kebab shop adjacent to the roadway leading to the peak of the Cock Hill and the reservation housing Ireland’s dispossessed travellers in what we call, euphemistically Halts.
Wishing the Turkish and Croatian kebab providers a ‘Merry Christmas’ I clambered into the car. Suddenly the passenger door opened and a young man clambered in offering money to take him up the hill. “My mother is sick. In tandem, the back doors opened. Two easy on the eye girls and two teenager boys piled in. My travel bag was perched behind the passenger’s seat. My new female traveller simply lifted her elegant legs and placed them either side of the head rest.
Fait accompli. I started the car and turned left onwards to the home of the brave. “Left, right, left again,” declared my navigator. “Pull up here!” He offered euros. I declined. As they evacuated the car, I declared: “Consider this a festive gift from the McEntees of Church Street!”
Finally arrived at the family home, purchased by my Boston-based sister Ann, she asked: “What took you so long?” I explained. Telling her about my parting exhortation. “Thanks John,” she replied drily. “Now they know where we live!”