Two Walls and a Roof (35 page)

As we began to walk in the starlight I felt a warm liquid trickle into my eyes and realized that I was bleeding. We finally made it to the old farmhouse
,
and before I knocked on the door I washed my face in a barrel of freezing water to wash off the blood.
Of course the opposite happened;
the water only spread it all over me, and when the woman opened the door and saw the ‘monster’ before her, she let out a screech and then she fainted at my feet. Her husband ran out and
,
seeing us, he too almost went down with t
he fright.  When they recovered
we told them what had happened. The next part is a little vague. I do remember that we got a loan of a motorbike from the farmer and drove to a pub some miles down the road. Even that had to be insane as we must have still been in shock and I had a bad gash in my forehead. At the pub we got more tea, and I remember washing mys
elf in an upstairs bathroom,
preparing for the drive home to Charleville. We took off on the bike and somehow we arrived into Charleville, where someone else later drove me on to Buttevant.

My glasses were broken, my forehead had a deep cut which took years to heal and every bit of me ached all over. During the night my forehead again started bleeding and
in the morning Nannie almost fa
inted as well when she saw the pillow covered in my blood. As if getting almost killed was a
normal occurrence, next morning
I got up
and left for work on the thumb;
no doctor’s visit, no casualty visit, no treatment for shock, and no intention of ever making an insurance claim either. That evening I was again back at O’Mallorys, this time being driven around in an old van by one of the sons. In a time of incredible health and safety regulations, what we did then was sheer madness. It had no effect on me that I know of. I never had a single nightmare about that crash. I told Larry about it and he brushed it off saying we had a lucky escape and that I had nine lives for sure. Johnno's van was totally written off due to the warped chassis and damaged engine. As in my river incident with Big Kyrl, I don’t know where exactly all of this happened, but I have always kept well away from the Maigue River ever since.

The experience I gaine
d while working for the Mallory
s was invaluable. I made a lot of money and I learned a
lot, but it could not go on forever
as I was becoming burned out. As soon as I bought my motorbike
,
I felt I had achieved my goal. I worked on for many months though, all the time telling Mary that she needed to get a ful
l-
time engineer as the business had grown and I could not keep doing the five nights a week. In the end she did and we parted great friends, and every time I pass their shop I smile and think of those happy days.

I had been working for Larry for a few y
ears
when one day a very distinguished looking man arrived in our shop.  He was tall and very well dressed, and smoked what I’m sure was an expensive cigar.

This man seemed to me to be very friendly in manner, and chatted away about some problem he was having with his television set.  I noticed Larry was being extra nice to him, and this was exceptional in itself, as he was nice to everyone.  When the man left, Larry was all smiles and says to me
,
“Do you know who that was John
?”
  I hadn’t a clue as I never saw him before in my life. I said no, and then Larry says
,
“Well you should know, as that’s the famous
Jack O’Rourke
. H
e owns the Majestic ballroom, and rumour has it that he’s a declared millionaire”.

I was immedi
ately impressed for two reasons;
first I had finally met a
n
a
ctual millionaire, and secondly
he seemed to be a very ordinary and nice man to me. This was a shock, as in my very limited experience of wealthy people, they had all seemed obnoxious to
me until then.  Larry then says
he is a new custo
mer
and we have got to look after him, so he was obviously impressed with Jack as well.

I was immediately dispatched to Jack
’
s house to examine his television and see if I co
uld sort it out. When I arrived
I was let in by a maid who didn’t seem to be very friendly, and before I actually got inside, I was nearly savaged by a couple of huge dogs. The TV set was a huge German Telefunken beast.
After a lot of poking and head-
scratching
,
I had no idea what was the matter with it. While I was thinking, Jack arrived in and welcomed
me to his home. He was all chat,
and I
was now even more amazed at him
as he wasn’t just being nice, he was actually trying to help me solve the problem.  In desperation I told him that I couldn’t fix it
,
and his answer was for me to take it back to our workshop.  We were supposed to be the best in Mallow at electronic repairs of any kind, and I should have been able to get it going,
but he saw through my bluffing
and made it easy for me.  He helped me load the huge set into the ‘bomber’, and as I drove off, I again began thinking about his manner. I liked him immensely, and f
or some unknown reason that day
I felt that he and I would somehow become friends in the future.

We did manage to fix the Telefunken, and when I delivered it back, I was again met by the maid and the savage dogs. This time there was no Jack to help me lift the monster inside.  I struggled to get it out of the car
,
and even this was taxing all of my strength.  That television was so big that I couldn’t even see over it. I had to walk in a kind of sideways movement, trying to see around it. My arms were spread in a bear hug a
nd the sweat was falling off me
as I tried to ring the bell w
ith my knuckles. As it happened, I didn’t need a bell
as the barking and growlin
g
told all inside that a stranger was at the door. The same maid let me in, and as she did so I heard a low growling from somewhere in front of me. In seconds I became petrified, as I was totally helpless at that stage. Suddenly I felt what could only ha
ve been a dog’s snout
shove right into my crotch. I got such a fright that I almost fainted and barely held onto the set. I let out a huge shout to the maid, who I couldn’t even see. “Will you call off them bloody dogs for God
’
s sake, can’t you see I’m scared of dogs”. I’m frozen in terror on the spot, and there’s no answer from the maid. I believe she had scurried off, just in case she might have had to help me. Jack
’
s wife Mary heard all the commotion and arrived in the hallway.  She was just as nice as Jack and tried to help me lift the set, but she didn’t get rid of the dogs either. After a struggle we managed to get the monster up on the table, and then I suppose Mary realized my predicament and offered me tea, which I politely refused, both from my fear of the dogs, and more especially from the way they still kept sniffing my crotch. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. When I got back, I told Larry all about my adventure and he just burst out laughing, praising me for not dropping the set in the panic. After he calmed down from his mirth, we agreed
that any future visits to Jack would have to be two-
man calls.

Over the next few years we did a lot of work for Jack. I got to know him a lot better, and it became quite clear to me that he was a very private and gentle man with a great charity in him, though he never preached it. Many people felt that he was a mean man, but I never saw that side of him at all
. I
n fact he was just a very honest and honourable man, believing that when you made a deal, you stuck to it
. He was a tough business
man though, well prepared to bargain and tangle
for the last penny. In the end
a
handshake
sealed the de
al, and you could be quite sure
tha
t you would be paid on time, and
get
the
exact amount you had agreed on;
not a penny more or less.

For many years my only dealings with Jack were through Larry, but one day he arrived into our shop and started to chat to me about the new phenomenon called ‘disco’.  It was late summer and I wasn’t busy, so we chatted away for a long while. Unknown to Jack, and by sheer coincidence, I was at that time developing an electronic form of light contr
ol which later became known as
‘
s
ound to
l
ight’.  I know too that this work was quite unique at that time.  My ideas had come from Kyrle, who had sourced a new device known as a
‘
thyristor
’ which I had managed to doctor in such a way
as to make the light intensity follow the volume of
the music. This was an unheard-
of concept at the time, and I was within months of having a prototype working
.
I
did get it working later,
when it became known as The Liberat
ion Mobile
Disco
.  As we chatted
I began telling Jack about this new idea of mine
. H
e be
came totally fascinated with it and
encouraged
me to continue at speed and at all costs.  A month or two
later he arrived back in again
and asked me if I could help him get some new disco equipment working in the Majestic. He had bought this equipment from an operation in Dublin that had failed to make a go if it and he felt that it would work in Mallow, but unfortunately no one had been able to get it working.

I was over the moon with delight at this offer, as his dancehall was a Mecca for all young people
(
myself included
)
, and by then I had gone there many times with Hayes and Fowler. Now to be doing s
ome actual work in the Majestic
was an incredible honour altogether. I felt
that I was surely on the way up
because I was actually working for a ‘millionaire’.

I arrived at the Majestic on a Thu
rsday evening in late September
on my motorbike, and met Jack and his entourage. Very soon I was shown the huge array
of equipment
recently bought by
him. It was space age in design
and I was blown away by
it all.  There were large boat-shaped speaker systems
and a horizontal boat
-
shaped control unit for the DJ
’
s t
o sit in.  Equally amazing boat-
shaped light units were spread all over the stage, and even though it was not working, I
could imagine how it might look
when it did work, and that was to be my challenge.  Above all, the light units looked utterly fantastic
.
I doubted whether I could figure out how they worked, but I longed to see them going primarily because of my own light work at home, and secondly I was anxious to see my competition
. I
couldn’t wait to get at it.

Jack carefully explained the problems to me. The sound section was working, but
not the boat lights, and so far
no one seemed able to find the p
roblem. I said I would fix them
no matter how long it took,
or I
would re-design the whole thing
because I wanted to see this system working for myself
. T
hat seemed to really satisfy Jac
k. Then I asked him and his men
to leave me alone as I needed to think.  After a few ho
urs I had the measure of it all,
and realized that these lights were driven by simple relays in a huge box. I was on a cloud and waited for Jack to return as I had no music to play, and that would be the real test.

When he came back
I said I was ready, and to just get me some music. I chose
‘
Cecilia
’
by Simon and Garfunkel and pressed play. The very first beat of the drums caused the whole stage to explode
into light
of all colours and intensitie
s. It looked absolutely amazing
and the hair actually stood up on the back of my neck as I watched this happen. I was seeing the future and I had cracked it. Jack was beaming. He shook hands with me over and over and said
,
“Well done John, I never doubted you”. Obviously he had bought this system as a gamble, which for a time looked
doomed, but now it was working
and we all loved it.

He was so excited that I just didn’t have the heart to tell him that my electronic system had already made his relay driven lights totally obsolete. It would take me a year,
but it was inevitable
as I had seen and understood the relay design. Later that night too as I looked on at Jack
’s units, which were
then ‘state of the art’, I became convinced that I should redouble my efforts on my own light unit, which I did. Pretty soon my lights were pulsing far better than Jack
’
s
,
and me and my mad friends would soon be testing in Big Kyrl
’
s hall, but that tale you already know.