Human memory is a bewildering marvel. Isn’t it strange how certain experiences can lodge in one’s memory and surface regularly when something triggers that memory? The emotional effects of some memories are stored in the brain forever. We are not talking here of life-changing or momentous events, but of something so inconsequential that it should have been deleted to ‘thrash’ a week after the happening.
Mrs Youcantbeserious is in Spain as we speak. She is over there herding the Spanish half of the grandchildren stock for a week. With three storms chasing each other across Ireland, Pamela picked a good week to escape. And before you ask, Girls, I am faring out OK on my onio – albeit if all the time struggling to maintain a brave face on my loneliness!
I do receive a morning and evening call from my dutiful wife enquiring after my wellbeing. This concern probably dates back some years to when I phoned her three times, country to country, just to guide me to an item I needed from the hot-press.
‘How is the weather’, she asked by way of small talk on Saturday night, around the time I feared the roof would take off at any second as the rain belted against the kitchen window. Courageously carrying on despite my burdens, I was in the process of grilling myself a toasted cheese and onion sandwich. (Now, Girls, what do you think of that!?)
Where was I …? Oh yes, ‘what is the weather like?’ If any of you overheard my reply, you wouldn’t make head nor tail of my answer – but Mrs Youcantbeserious needed no further elaboration. ‘It would be a bad night for crossing the railroad on a bicycle’, was all I needed to say – before I scurried off the line to deal with the smoke emulating from the grill.
‘A bad night for crossing the Railroad on a bicycle’, is how I describe atrocious wind and rain going back nearly sixty years. I’ll tell you how this saying came about in the first instance.
First of all, I need to tell you about ‘The Railroad’. I’d love to know how it got its name – and I never thought of asking down through the years.
‘The Railroad’, now practically overgrown and disused, was a half mile gravel boreen stretching across Glaxtown Bog and linking the Mooretown road with the Drumcree/Glaxtown road.
In my young days the railroad was so busy that not a blade of grass ever grew on it. We all used it as a short cut when going to Delvin. It was an especially busy stretch during the turf season, but it was well used by the locals all year round – whether walking, cycling or even driving. Everybody in the locality made good use of ‘The Railroad.’
There was a dance in Delvin. Neighbours Mick Forde, Paddy Reilly (God rest them both) and myself, headed off on three bicycles, full of the joys of – well actually, it was Winter. Going to a dance in those days, we never gave much thought to coming home.
The weather was fair enough when we left home around nine o’clock. I don’t know about the other two, but the one certainty is that I didn’t have an overcoat. An overcoat was little more than a nuisance to hot-blooded bucks heading off for a night on the town. Nice dark suit, white shirt, V-neck pullover, shoes dazzling and the split in the hair as straight as a hay-knife blade on a head saturated with Brylcreem.
I can’t tell you much about the dance itself, other than that it finished at 2am. I’m sure it was a great night – as there never was a bad dance in St Patrick’s Hall. Neither can I recall the first half of the ride home, other than the howling wind had risen to gale-force and we had it straight in our face. Like I say, I don’t remember anything extraordinary until we arrived at the far end of The Railroad and faced into the eye of a storm. The heavens opened.
I have never experienced anything as bad as that pelting rain as we ‘stood on the pedals’ in our struggle to navigate the Railroad – a yard at a time. There is a forest there now, but at that time was no protection from the elements. There wasn’t as much as a solitary bush anywhere along that boreen.
I peeled off the suit in the kitchen. It dried by the ‘Stanley 9’ over the following few days – but it was never the same again and it was some time before I had the price of a replacement.
So now you all know: If I ever tell you that it would be ‘a bad night for crossing The Railroad on a bicycle’ … just duck and head straight for bed!
Don’t Forget
It is memory that enables us to smell the roses in January
