Two Walls and a Roof (41 page)

As the years passed us by, Etta and I would go off on vacation abroad
,
usually to London for a week or less. Initially Etta
’
s sister Helen was kind enough to take care of our children, and later still my mother and father stayed with them for the week that we were away. Then when Adrian became a teenager
,
we often took off leaving him to mind the other two all by himself. He did this with no bother at all and no disaster that we knew of ever happened. Helen was great and would still keep an eye on them
,
but he managed admirably, and despite how it might appear, I truly believe it made him a responsible adult and caused the other two to treat him with the respect an elder brother deserved
.
I’m very glad to say that that is how it has remained to this day.

On one of those trip
s we managed to get to the Costa
d
el Sol and from there
,
in the company of a large group of other tourists, we took a day trip to Africa. I’ll
never forget the feeling I got
as our ferry crossed over the Straits of Gibraltar coming in sight of the Atlas Mountains on the African coast.  We landed in Tangiers where the police took all of our passports for safe keeping and soon we began a bus tour taking us all over northern Morocco. The heat was unreal, registering 40 degrees in our air-conditioned bus
,
and I loved it. We had dinner in the Kasbah in a clean but very old version of a restaurant. I had a belly dancer gyrating beside me for most of the meal
,
which put me off it completely. T
hen, during the meal, a real mean-looking photographer arrived
carrying all of our pictures that he had secretly taken w
hile our guide had made us go
up a stone staircase passing a window and then down the other side for no reason. I soon realized that he had been hiding inside the window and snapped us all as we passed
,
and it was now time for us to pay for our unwanted photos. In his broken English he started pressing us to buy as he moved down the long table we all sat at.  An American lady sat by us and felt intimidated by his looks. Very few bought the photos and he was getting madder and more desperate as he came to a German couple sitting beside the American. They flatly refused his demands
,
and as if to teach the
rest of us a lesson
he held up their photo
,
waved it around and then tore it to ribbons in front of us all
,
throwing the bits up in the air. The American lady was so scared that she bought hers immediately and I bought one too because I wanted it as a souvenir. Later still we were taken to a so
-
called ‘shop of many floors’ with each floor specializing in rugs and leather goods as well as brass ornaments
. A
ll the time we looked
,
but didn’t buy. We all began to feel intimidated and the shop staff began to become worried too because we were not buyers. At about that time a large gathering of local sellers became convinced tha
t our group must carry all the g
old of China be
cause they tried to invade the
shop and get us to buy fake Rolex watches
,
hats and every other kind of portable jun
k imaginable. This annoyed the
shop people so much that they threw out the locals
,
causing a mini riot at the front door before they slammed it shut, trapping us all inside. Our sit
uation had become quite serious
because we then had no passports and no idea where we were in the large Moslem city. We had no mobile phones either in those days, and our guide had also disappeared
,
leaving us to face the angry mob outside all alone. The hammering on the front doors scared the women even worse, and the shouts in Arabic from the insiders added to the increasing unease that we were all feeling. I knew that our ferry would leave on time
,
as we had been warned of that fact many times by the now vanished guide
,
and the time was passing too fast for my liking.   With no more purchases likely and just before I myself was about to start panicking, the guide magically appeared from inside the shop and told us that we would have to make a run for the bus, which was parked some distance away in the middle of the square. We were warned sternly not to lose sight of him at any cost, and at that, the shop people flung open the door and the guide rushed out into the waiting throng of angry desperate locals. We followed quickly and then began a hilarious though very frightening event. Here were about fifty tourists of all ages and nationalities running through the streets of Tangier trying to avoid being robbed by the hundred or so local
sellers brandishing their wares
as well as their fists. It was both scary and exhilarating at the same time and I can see it all so clear
ly
still. Etta ran along beside me
,
fighting off the hat and scarf sellers, while I kept refusing ‘genuine Rolex’ watches at
a, “Good price for you kind sir”
. There were shouts of great bargains mixed with screams of insults in Arabic when we ignored the salesmen, and a kind of mad chaos reigned as we ran along faster and faster, all the time trying to keep the guide
’
s f
ez in sight. When the bus came into sight we all redoubled our running so that it became a race to get inside the bus at all costs. We had no idea what would happen to any stragglers, but it would not be good, and none of us wanted to be left outside to the mob
’
s anger. When the bus took off for the boat we all left out a huge cheer of relief a
nd the guide even took off his f
ez and waved it about for us, but I think
myself that
he was in on it all
and it may well have
been a staged event. As the boat returned across the Straits
,
I sat on the upper deck bathed in the beautiful golden sunshine from a setting African
sun and thanked God for the day
while Etta calmed her nerves with some foreign liqueur mixed with coffee in the b
ar below me. The day was not
over
yet
though, as when we final
ly arrived back at Torremolinos
and went out for a very late dinner, the staff of the restaurant brought out a beautiful candle and placed it on our table along with the food. Etta said
,
“Isn’t that the most romantic thing they just did
,
be sure to give them a big tip”. I was about to agree with her when the whole candle literally exploded and splattered our food with all kinds of material. It was some kind of trick candle and our dinner was ruined.  I nearly go
t a bloody heart attack as well
while the waiters fe
ll around the place laughing their heads off, b
ut being Irish did we complain? N
o of course not, I just paid the bill and left, and the next day I believe the place was closed down for good. I think we were their last customers ever
. They knew it
and wanted to go out with a bang, or a tourist medical emergency. It had been a day to remember and I have never forgotten it
.
I’m sure neither has Etta. Years later
,
both Lill an
d Eunice went on that same trip.
Lill hated it while Eunice loved it
. P
robably Nannie
’
s rearing made us two impervious to the extremes of culture in that amazing place called Africa.

We went on numerous other trips to London as well
,
and on one of those I brought home one of the first computers ever made. It used to play a game where little alien ships were attacking you and Adrian
,
who was then about twelve
,
became so fascinated with it that I knew it was only a matter of time before he would want to programme his own game
. T
hat’s exactly what happened, ultimately setting him on his own software career and taking him to Australia too. 

Around nine
teen eighty or so, an old class
mate of Kyrle from Pad
’
s days walked into our shop in O’Brien Street. His name was Maurice Brosnan and he was working locally in the
i
nsurance business
, and still does
today
as I write
.  M
aurice and three other business
men had decided to s
et up a radio station in Mallow
after RTE, the national broadcaster
,
had done a very successful week’s broadcasting,
t
hen left the area, leaving a radio entertainment vacuum behind them.

The group had decided to call their service NCLR or North Cork Local Radio. They had the right idea but lacked the technical expertise necessary to make it all happen.  I found out l
ater that they had a small home
made transmitter and were trying to make it heard all over the town, without any luck. Then I believe Mau
rice remembered ‘the mad Cahill
s’ blotting out Buttevant’s radio service many ye
ars earlier with their own home
made transmitter, and he arrived in the shop to meet me and chat about their problems.  He had been in the same class as Kyrle and I didn’t recognise him at first, but
when he mentioned Pad’s school
days
,
all the memories returned and we talked for a long time. In the end
,
Maurice told me of their predicament and asked if I would just ‘look’ at their setup.  Kyrle was by then working for RTE
,
who hated the idea of any kind of illegal pirate radio service
,
primarily because they had a monopoly on the audience and did not want any form of competition.  Obviously because of Kyrle
’
s position, I knew that he would not be in favour of me going anywhere near such an illegal operation, and I told this to Maurice. Being the great salesman that he is, he convinced me to ‘just have a look’ anyway and maybe advise them on what they needed to do next. In the end I agreed to look
. What was the harm in that? A
nd besides
,
Kyrle was ‘way up’ in Dublin and would never find out about it.

After work on a Friday night I went down the street in Mallow and was taken in to see their little makeshift studio. What
I saw there astounded me
because they had an old ‘disco deck’ with a cheap microphone driving the transmitter, and that was basically it.  The signal was then fed along a length of televisio
n aerial cable to a copper pole
mounted on a chimney out the back of the building, and that was their entire radio station. It was no wonder the signal only went about a hundred yards before fading out.  I examined the operation and discovered two major flaws which I doctored easily and quickly, and in less than fifte
en minutes
the signal suddenly covered most of the town
. T
hen their phone started ringing with the good news. The radio group had been so impressed with my few minutes
’
work that they wanted me on board at almost any cost. As far as I was concerned I had done what they n
eeded and I was about to leave
when they asked me to come to a meeting
the following morning at ten a.m
.

Little did I know how my whole life w
ould change as a result of that
meeting. They told me that they had four thousand pounds to i
nvest
and were ready to spend all of it in any way I needed, if I took on the job of making them a ‘proper’ radio station. I had never even seen a ‘proper’ radio station by then
,
but I knew that Kyrle had, and my mind began to race at the challenge and excitement of a project like this
. T
he fact that I would be paid only added to the excitement.

In nineteen eighty, four thousand pounds was a huge amount of money, and by way of comparison, I was earning about thirty pounds a week at that time. They had only one con
dition for the job;
that I had to have the radio station on the air by the following Saturday
. Yes,
I had only one week to completely purchase all the equipment, get the desks made, install a transmitter on a new aerial system in a new location, cure any problems and be ready at ten
a.m.
the following Saturday. I asked for a fee of one thousand
pounds
of their four with half up front, and they agreed immediately on the condition that I could make it happen from the balance. Michael O’Sullivan
,
who was one of the four
,
said that the papers would carry the launch story on the coming Thursday and the whole town would be expecting it on air as agreed. Within minutes I proved just how insane I was then, as I took the job
, accepting
the conditions and the insane challeng
e involved. By Sunday afternoon
I was on the train to Kyrle in Dublin, and designed the whole system on a notepad while on the journey
. No laptops, smart phones or i
Pads then
;
the design would come out of my head and that alone. When I told Kyrle what I was doing and the timescale I had to do it, he actually fell off his couch laughing at the sheer impossibility of it all. Then as I told him about my commitment, true to form, and even though he hated the illegality of it all, he agreed to help me buy the gear in Dublin
. B
y Tuesday I was on the way back to Mallow with a goods wagon quarter full of boxes of electronic equipment.

By Wednesday
I had convinced Etta to leave me for some days so that I could have the whole house to myself. I had taken a week off work from Larry so that I could construct the studio, first in my kitchen, and if it worked, we would then transport it all to a place called ‘The Willows’
,
an area that is high above Mallow town. I got it all going
, and on the Thursday night
we were the talk of the town as we had to lift the finished desk in through the upper window in number four The Willows. It was a sight to see
. E
ven the fire brigade people helped us, and there was a huge air of excitement and expectancy beginning. That day the local papers all carried the story of Mallow
’
s impending new radio station and the pressure on me became immense. I had the studio done, but now the transmission had to be done in just one day.

I could easily write a book on the beginnings of that radio service, but it’s true to say that it went right down to the
wire for me, as by Friday night
the transmission was still not working properly. Around ten
p.m.
that night, the four directors met in the room next door to our studio and obviously were very concerned that this might all fail, yet not one of the four ever said to me
,
“John will it be on air Saturday
?
” Noel O’Connor and Pat O’Brien
,
who were the other two directors
,
ac
tually tried to encourage me on by saying with big smiles
that they had their speeches read
y
and were going home to be up early for the first broadcast in the morning. Michael O’Sullivan also said the same thing
,
coming in to encourage me with kind words and then leaving Maurice Brosnan and I alone to deal with the technical problem I was still having.  It was a serious problem as when someone spoke into a microphone, a huge hum came across their voice and ruined it
. U
nfortunately this hum was intermittent, making it impossible for me to trace it. Numerous times I thought it was fixed but randomly it would reoccur. That night by eleven
p.m.
it seemed to be gone for good, and Maurice pressed me to go home and get some sleep. What he didn’t know was that I had not slept for almost thirty six hours, surviving on coffee, catnaps, and buns.  Today I believe that I was mentally cracking up under the strain of it all, but didn’t see it myself at the time. Etta had called to see me and was also worried sick, as I wouldn’t speak to her, but yet I seemed to be always talking to myself. In actual fact, that was my way of going over the problem in my mind, and all I wanted was for the radio to be perfect in the morning, and not let any of the four directors down.

I woke at eight
a.m.
and the transmitter was humming as bad as ever. I rushed back to the studio, locked the door, and be
gan an emergency doctoring plan
where
I replaced a vital bit of gear
as I prayed most sincerely for success. I was in uncharted waters now
,
and if this plan didn’t work then all was lost for everyone. By nine fifty five, with five minutes t
o go, the signal became perfect
and a huge cheer erupted from the room next door when I announced the good news. I think I went home and collapsed out of sheer exhaustion, but Cork, especially North Cork, would never again be without its own local radio service. I had pulled it off, and in my own little way, made history that
morning.  For as long as I live
I will always be thankful to those four directors who
,
like Jack
,
never lost faith in me. Even when it looked like all had failed, they still believed in me and were sure I would make it all happen for them. I can thank my mother too for a philosophy that encouraged us to believe in ourselves, but the person who really kept me going was Big Kyrl with his philosophy of ‘failure is not an option John’, and
‘
the end always justifies the means
’
.

NCLR, the pirate radio station
, began to take off
and because it was local
,
carrying local news made by local people, the number of listeners began to grow very rapidly. We did many novel broadcasts in those days
,
and on one occasion it was decided to broadcast a special mass for the sick. This was to come from Saint Mary’s Church in the middle of the town. Even though I was still working for Larry, he was good enough to let me troubleshoot the station in lieu of advertising, so I was
dispatched
to the church to scout out how this could be done. I saw a major problem for us, as our a
erial cable for the second home
made transmitter was too short and there was no way to get another one in the time we had. While I’m wracking my brains as to what kind of miracle might be needed, in arrives the newly appointed Parish Priest
, Father De
nis O’Callaghan, and when he saw my gear he immediately christened it ‘Steam Radio’.

I told him of the problem and without a moment
’
s hesitation he says
,
“Sure can’t you bore a hole in the window and get the wire out that
way”. These were beautiful new-
looking windows and I just didn’t feel right about it, so I asked him again if he was sure it was ok. “God save us man, sure I’m the Parish Priest
. N
o one will say a word to you”. I got my drill and bored a huge hole for the thick cable. The broadcast was a great success and we used that hole many times in later years for many a Mass. The shee
r practical ‘go do it’ attitude
of the Parish Priest was amazing to me and I loved it.  I liked him imm
ediately, and like Jack O’Rourke
,
we became great friends over the following amazing years.  A few weeks later it was decided to broadcast the Angelus Bells at midday and I felt that recording a real bell would be the
nicest way to do it. I asked De
nis if it was ok to record the bells in the bell tower in Mallow
’
s Catholic
c
hurch
,
and he was so happy that he volunteered to help me with the job. We arrived just before midday and I climbed up the ladder with my equipment. He said he would pull the rope and ring the bell. Bong
!
Bong
!
Bong
! A
fter a large number of bongs I signalled to stop and he asked if I had been counting. I had not, and neither had he. This was a disaster as now we would have to return tomorrow, but Dennis would have none of it. He says
,
“We’ll do it again”. This time we both counted so intently that I had forgotten to press the record button, and once again we had messed it all up. “We’ll do it again
,
” was his mantra and so we did. This time we were almost done when the bloody rope broke
.
I was getting real embarras
sed as well.  By then the towns
people must have thought that some fiends had got at th
e bell, and it’s a wonder the G
ardai were not called
. Not to be defeated though, De
nis made off to the local hardware shop and arrived back with a new rope, and soon we were ready to try again. Bong
,
Bong
,
Bong, and that time we got it right. That sound used to ring out all over North Cork for years and years until
,
in the end
,
it too wore itself out and became just a memory of an
earlier wonderful era. Later on
that amazing priest
,
as Chairman of our company
,
would guide us on to legality
and ultimately ensure the radio se
rvice, which began in my kitchen,
would become one of the most successful ones in Ireland
,
but that was still some years away.