Two Walls and a Roof (30 page)

On my third day of work
I arrived in finding Larry sitting down at the desk quite calmly for a change. It was a Wednesday and he told me that he always had that day off, and it was also a half day in Mallow.  Now we were going to spend some time together. At first it felt very awkward as I was so shy, but I believe that he noticed this side of me and made light of it. As the
day wore on
and we chatted about what we liked to do in life, he came to the conclusion that both he and I were mad on inventions. As an aside we both also dreamed of becoming millionaires as well.

Soon I began to relax, and liked him more and more as the day wore on. He was funny, had a strange kind of moustache, jet black hair, and he laughed every chance he got. I figured too that he was a good practical joker like me, and so I felt that we had lots in common already.

We talked about energy-
saving ideas, which were his favourite
subject then, and as if on cue
he says, “Wait till I show you my latest invention”. He told me that it was a new kind of ‘heater’ based on the idea of using light as heat. I had my doubts about the concept, but before I could argue he says
,
“Watch this
,
” and then he plugged in a wire leading to a large television cabinet under the bench. That might be a normal enough event in a TV shop, but in Larry’s invention, that cabinet was fu
ll of very large 250 watt light
bulbs.

The minute
he plugged it in
there was a big bright flash, and immediately the whole of our little workshop became as bright as the sun. I was blinded by
the light, literally. He says, “
What do you think of that John, isn’t she great
? That’s our new heater. I
t
’
s made of bulbs and they give off light which is heat, as you know”.  I didn’t know what to s
ay, believing that at a minimum
I’d better be buying sunglasses, and in the worst case scenario, I would be freezing to death at work in the winter. With this kind of thinking, day three had me seriously worried, believing I might be in the wrong job with the wrong person after all.

While I’m trying to figure out what to say next, the buzzer on the counter goes
off.
Larry turns away from the light and slides the glass window across. It’s an old woman wanting to pay her rent money. As he opens the glass window, I see her stagger backwards clutching her eyes, saying
,
“Jesus Mary and Holy Saint J
oseph, what’s going on in there?
I only came in to pay me rent”. Unperturbed, Larry says, “Tis all right maam, I w
as just showing my new man here
our new heater
,
” and with that he turns back to me and says, “Plug it out there John, will you, it might stil
l need a bit of work done on it”
.

Then in the relative darkness, the old woman waril
y returns to the little counter
and gets out her money, all the time cautiously staring back in at me. As she is paying, she says to Larry, “Is he going to be in t
here all winter with that light, because if he is he’d better be getting
sunscreen
,
” and then she bursts out laughing, confirming my worst of all fears. It wasn’t just me that thought it was an insane idea.

When she’s gone Larry says, “Well what you think of it
,
” and then all excited he plugged ‘the sun’ back in again. Not wanting to be im
polite on my first real day
I say that I like the idea of saving energy,
but can we block off the light
as it was blinding everyone
,
including me. Larry looks at me in astonishment, and then says
,
“But tis the light that’s the heat, don’t you get it?
”
Our very first argument was about to begin, and after an hour or so of this debating back and fourth
,
Larry’s compromise was to point the box at the far wall, lighting it up like Big Kyrl’s cinema screen. It looked like the new ‘heater’ was staying and I better be getting a warm jumper for the winter.

The heater was a failur
e because of the blinding light
and Larry capitulated
,
but only partly. His newer version was a smaller
,
more individual heater. He decided that both of us would have our own individual ‘box heater’, as he called it. This was a strong cardboard box with holes cut in the front for our feet. We could literally stand into it, or sit with our feet going into our heater, and of course the
heating element was once again
his high power bulbs, now confined to a smaller area. This type would last us for numerous years, and though a real fire hazard,
it actually worked brilliantly because
if my feet get cold I am useless. I loved his ‘box heater’ so much so that all of my life I have made one, and as I write these words in January, my feet are stuck inside my own cardboard box, fed by an infra red chicken light. Larry’s invention still lives on.

While I was initially getting a drive to work on a temporary basis, I used to have to hitch a spin home every evening. I hated doing this hitching even though it was quite common then.  Since that time I have always hated to pass anyone who is hitching
,
and invariably I
’
ll stop and offer a spin. It always amazed me how so many people would pass you
,
especially when it rained.  I discovered years later they were afraid to get their cars wet.  My temporary morning drive soon stopped after some time, and then I was on the road full
-time with
thumb out both morning and evening all through that winter. It was very hard going
,
and then my determination to get some form of transport set in
. T
hough it would take a miracle with what I was earning, I believed I would soon get wheels.

I remember giving my first week’s wages to my Nannie with a great joy in my heart. It was the large sum of t
hirty shillings;
the equivalent of one Euro fifty
today.  She took it all from me
as if to test me, and when I said nothing and began to leave, she gave it all back to me again. Then she asked me how much I wanted to keep. I clearly remember just wanting to buy my own lunch in the town, and not have to eat her inedible sandwiches, though I didn’t put it like that to her.

We agre
ed a deal, and from that day on
I always gave up my money to the Nan. I felt real good about doing so too, as it was the first time that Nannie had some stable money, aside from her little pension. The very first thing I did the following Monday at lunchtime was to skimp on my lunch money, and open an account in the Mallow Credit Union. I
planned to save up for a second-
hand motor bike and get me out of the thumbing business once and f
or all.  Over the coming months
Larry began to teach me about television and how it all worked. We argued incessantly about electronics and inventions
,
and laughed every day we were together.

Larry and
I had so many things in common:
we both loved science with a passion, electronics was a form of religion for us, and with the march of technology we were always presented with new challenges, not to mention our love of inventions.  Larry also had a drive for millions like me, but his method was to get them by cracking the ‘perpetual motion dilemma’. This was a life long dream of his and I’m sure he is still thinking of cracking it today.  Perpetual motion was the
search for some method of self-
generating and perpetuating a movement of any kind, but this
movement would have to be self-
sustaining and continue for ever.  There are very good scientific
reasons why this is impossible;
for example the laws of friction, or the law of the conservation of energy.  These laws never deterred Larry.  He and I came to believe that together we would crack it eventually, and we came up with many schemes to test the theory.  All failed in one way or another
. I
f they had ever succeeded, I would most likely be writing a book about how to suntan safely in Spain.

My days with Larry were the happiest ones ever. We learned to face every kind of technology with a love of the challenge rather than a fear of it, as some do today.  We saw the advent of the transistor, the large chip, and in latter years the microchip. Larry was constantly on at me, as was my Nan
, to do my
exams or
‘
get my papers
’
, as they called them.  I had no interest at all as I was so happy fixing and learning new things, so why bother I asked them often, but always I was hassled by both of them.  I decided in the end to give in and do th
e bloody exams.  I had no money
and no transport to go to Cork to study, so I decided to do a correspondence course as the study part
,
and then sit the exams as an external student in Cork.

From my schooldays with Pad Keely I had developed such a terrible phobia about maths that I could not do any kind of maths at all, and in electronics they were a vital part of the study.  When my first course papers arrived I discovered that I had to take on an additional study programme for maths because of my terrible fear. I would have to teach myself the subject from the start
,
and this I did. After I cracked the maths, the electronics exams came very easy to me as I loved what I was d
oing. I
n the end I got exceptionally good results and even surprised myself with the level of knowledge that I seemed to have.

There was a nice twist to the day when I finally showed Nannie the many electronics exam results I had achieved.  She didn’t understand the significance of the results
,
especially the City and Guilds ones, but the Diplomas she did understand, and knew they seemed to be very good.  She was sitting in her old chair by the fire as I showed the certificates to her, and when I was finished she says
,
“John, I suppose it’s time I gave you this other certificate too”.  With that she reached up to the mantelpiece
,
and from behind her large plate that she used to cook the Christmas turkey, she took down my famous disaster of an Intermediate Cert from Pad
’
s school.  It was a watershed for
me, and taking it from her, without reading it
I opened the top of her range and stuffed my Inter Cert into the fire.  As we saw the paper burn up, Nannie just smiled that knowing smile, and we never spoke of exams again.

After being with Larry for a year or so, he felt that I should now learn to drive as I needed to be out doing house calls. By then we had become fast friends and all shyness had vanished. I loved the idea of learning to drive and becoming a real service engineer, and out of th
e shop at last.  He had a red Mini Minor
car. It was a real crock of an affair, held together by his mechanical ingenuity as he was as good as my uncle Kyrl with fixing cars. The gear stick had a heavy weight taped to it, preventing it from hopping back out of fourth gear. The wipers didn’t work, and the starter used to stick, so it had to be pushed often.

It had a suitcase full of valves and parts laid out across the back seat, and if you couldn’t fix the TV, it was carried back to base in the passe
nger seat.  On a bad fixing day
there would often be as many as three televis
ion sets in this little jalopy.  That M
ini
,
which was affectionately known as ‘the bomber’
,
was a real fast car though. It could almost fly, passing out Mercs and Jaguars easily, and later I would drive it to its limits, getting numerous frights in the process.  When Larry began teaching me to drive, we had a real close call because of my addiction to speed.  Larry and I had been out doing TV calls for a few hours and it was getting late.  We were also arguing about how some circuit worked
w
hile I was driving like a madman.  I was really into the speed then, being fully infected by Hayes who was driving us around to dances at that time. Larry was constantly telling me to slow down, but he was equally engrossed in our argument.  As we approached Doneraile town, I came upon a
very unexpected bend of
almost ninety degrees sharp. By then Lar
ry was hawing on the windscreen
so as to draw the circuit with his finger.  I took my eyes off the road to see his drawing, and when I looked back up, the car was heading for a wall and very quickly too.  Instinctively I s
harply swung the steering wheel as Larry let out a yell
and pulled on the handbrake so hard that it snapped clean off in his hand.  I am certain that the car went up on two wheels as it sped all over the road. It was exhilarating and so ex
citing, and as it was happening
I thought I should do this again, if we survived.  All too soon it was all over though and it flipped back on the road with Larry cursing and calling me a ‘bloody’ lunatic, and worse things too. We soon recovered our composure and arrived into Doneraile. I tried to make him laugh by telling him that it was his fault for arguing with me, but he was quite shaken at our close call. We drove on to Buttevant in silence, and next day he told
me to get a provisional licence
as he had no intention of getting killed with me so e
arly in his life. Up until then
I had been driving with no licence at all, and no insurance either
. I
t wouldn’t happen today though.  When I did get my first provisional licence, he gave me
the keys and said to get going
as the only way for me to learn
was to either drive properly or get killed trying
;
the choice was mine, but he was not teaching me  anymore.  Soon I was whizzing around at breakneck speeds every day
. L
ater on each evening
,
with great sadness,
I would have to return the car
and go back to hitching home.  Sometimes as a curtsey, Larry would ask me to give a customer a spin home in the car if we had just sold them a new television
. T
hat way I could install it and show them the workings. I remember one time I had to take a particularly prudish and posh woman home with her set. The new TV set was put in the back and she sat into the passenger seat as I got into the driver
’
s side.  Our
M
ini had been through the wars by then and the bottom of the driver’s seat had a large hole with the springs showing through it. Larry and I were well used to this and didn’t care
,
but as we drove away the w
oman says to me all of a sudden,
“Do you have teeth in your arse
?
” I thought I was hearing things and said back
,
“Excuse me
?
” She repeated her question
,
looking all serious and I answered
,
“No, not at all, why do you ask
?”
me turning bright red in the face by then.  She says with a big smile, “Well I think you do, because your arse has eaten a hole in the car seat”. I didn’t know what to say then, and felt like telling her that Larry’s arse had been eating it far longer than mine, but I just went silent instead and stayed that way till I got to her house. I would never have guessed such an expression would have come out of the mouth of that woman, and later when I told Larry, he got such a fit of laughing
and told
me that he thought it was her way of wanting to see if she was right.