On how a pub sing-song created unforgettable memories of time spent with his father, and an acknowledgement of love... For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to Drinking With My Father, by Joe Whelan above.
I drank my first pint with my father, on the day before I emigrated to New York. He used to say I was too sensible to drink, and I thought he drank himself senseless. However, he told me he'd stand me a pint, as "it might be a while before I buy you another one". While it would be our first drink together, I had a premonition, it might also, be our last.
We went to Cooney’s, The Main Guard, one of his many locals. And while there, bizarrely, the proprietor, slapped my father’s face, because of a disagreement over the song, The Galtee Mountain Boy.
Cooney’s pub was once a seventeenth century courthouse, sitting imposingly at the top of O’Connell Street in Clonmel, but now was beginning to look all its 400 years. It had a pale green timber front, badly in need of a lick of paint. The inside was dark, the only light coming in from the opaque windows facing O’Connell Street. A mix of accoutrements hung from the ceiling and walls. Old muskets and cannon balls, from when Cromwell laid siege to the town, blended with smoky black and white photographs, of everyone from Dan Breen to JFK. Behind the bar was a picture of the 1959 Waterford, all-Ireland winning hurling team. A permanent fixture in every house in Co Waterford.
Cooney’s was a Waterford pub in a Tipperary town, and my father was a Deise exile. He felt behind enemy lines in Clonmel and raised his pint to the 'men of 59’ and suggested I do the same. A scattering of old men nursed pints and smoked un-tipped cigarettes. These were men from the Nire and the Commeraghs, just like him, and despite my apprehension, I felt very much at home amongst them. John Ahern, the proprietor, was a small wiry man around sixty-five years old. He had slight stoop and a tuft of white curls at the back of a balding head. His wore a grey polyester shop coat, but underneath he looked dressed for mass. He was also a man of the hill and he gave us a great welcome. My father paraded me like I was a prized hogget at the fair. I soaked up all the praise, I met hill farmers and relations, and the pints kept coming.
Soon enough a sing-song started, and through the fog of smoke, an old farmer stood up to sing. He wore a peeked cap, shiny with the dirt and a blue pullover, with loose threads that looked like it snagged too much barbed wire. He sang The Galtee Mountain Boy. A great Tipperary song, much to my father’s disgust. He always saw red when he heard that song, and made a beeline for the singer as soon as he finished...
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
