Will had some money because he worked the devil shifts at a chemical plant. He made mud for 12 hours, four days a week. Mud that was used as lubricant for massive machinery as I understood it. They manufactured paint also. Stuff that makes the world turn like a color wheel of capitalism and a progress that seems to deplete us.
I was on the dole and in a crap rock band and writing nonsense. We all played football together and went to gigs and wore similar clothes, so me and Will drank in the pubs and had girlfriends who were friends and other friends etc.
When Will got a week off in summer in 1990 he was a little lost. I had never known anyone with such a work ethic before. I certainly didn’t have it. I hid under my bed once because I didn’t want to go out in the rain and do my paper round. My dad was more diligent and found me before he had to start his shift at the factory. His tsks worked better than a shaking that day so I was always on time after that, if I had somewhere to be.
Anyway. I had another non-working friend, an O’Connor, whose uncle had a dairy farm in County Kerry that was a viable getaway. I hadn’t been but I knew the area a little and was excited to get back to the West. As far West as I could get. All we needed were some funds.
Will was very English and had never been to Ireland, but we figured that family over there were friendly enough and not bothered what Lancashire lads got up to on their days off. Will was in! And he bought all the fares.
The train to Holyhead used to be an easy, beautiful journey. I haven’t been on it in years. I have memories of Colwyn and did we go through a mountain on a train track?
The ferry was a trip. It is where the drinking starts or continues and has been the cause of a lot of trouble to the infrastructure. We were not contributing to that, but we did get langers and flirted terribly with everyone in range. Or at least I did. O’Connor was a bit shy, and Will didn’t know how to talk to novitiates. Stella Artois only helps so much, the saint.
When we got off the ferry it was late and there were no trains West until the morning. This was something we did not plan for. We walked about for a while and it being warm out we found a patch of grass and nestled in to wait for daylight.
We were woken by a strong smell of what I thought was coffee. I didn’t drink coffee, but I knew what it was instantly. As the sun caused us to be more self-aware of our surroundings, and our predicament, we realized that we were outside the gates of the Guinness brewery. Beer for breakfast wasn’t an option. We headed back to Heuston Station.
The train cut across the peat and middling fields. We spewed out in a town called Castlemaine, where the Australian name came from. But we had to get to a tiny village named Boolteens. Hitching seemed the only option.
Will was knackered and very annoyed. He had the wrong clothes on and wasn’t used to creatures without comfort. O’Connor was, though, and I suddenly felt like I was home.
The air, the color of the place. I know it isn’t our home, and it never was, but I was just happy to arrive again.
Out on the road a fella stopped for us almost as soon as we waggled our thumbs.
Kevin’s car was red, old and had a shattered windscreen.
He held it with his left thumb to stop the vibration when we went over 40 and got us there.
O’Connor’s uncle was called Joe, he was out in the fields with his two dogs called Young Joe and Old Joe, and they were doing cow stuff. I don’t know. I did meet them, but I didn’t know how to interact. I have a hard time with animals that are as tall as me. Horses eat my buttons and cows butt me and god knows what I would do if I ever met a giraffe face to knee.
The farm was in a good spot. There was a brook with a big rock so you could sit in the midst of the flow.
We ate sausage sandwiches every day as Will refused to spend any more on me and O’Connor, and Joe only ate sausages. Maybe it was out of respect for his cows.
The fields have everything.
There was some fun with cousins that stopped by and a pub in town called Murphy’s that also sold only sausages. That was where we met the sole taxi driver in town that had to get us on the road home again. Kevin.
Anthony C. Murphy is a regular host of the Irish American Writers & Artists Salon. “The House of Murph” is his most recent book.
