College Time

1963-'67 I nterestingly, my childhood memories seem to be more recallable than my college years from 1963-1967! So I have no ability to do a chronology of the college years. I’ll try to do themes. Because of the scholarships (noted earlier) I had the option of university in Dublin or in Galway. I chose Dublin. But what this meant was that I lived at home and commuted into the city center every day. The Engineering school was in the old College of Science on Merrion Square, which the British administration had built in the early 1900s.

I believe the King of England, George V, came to Dublin in 1911 to formally open the building. Anyway, by the 1960s it was horribly dated and shabby.

There were 120 places available in First Year Engineering and at the end of the year one could seek the specialty one hoped for. I wanted Mechanical, others wanted Electrical, Civil or Chemical.

The initial impression was of freedom because nobody cared whether you attended lectures or not. This was a dramatic contrast to the firm discipline of high school. Some of the kids were outrageous, lighting paper airplanes and flying them down at the lecturer from on high in the lecture auditorium. The other aspect was that we were so well prepared that certainly for the first semester the topics were all too familiar, so I did very little work. That caught up with me in June of ‘64 when I failed one course and had to resit the course in an exam in September in order to progress into Second Year.

During the summer I fell in with a group of kids who were in the same sad boat and somehow or other we ended up renting a caravan in Kerry for the Tralee Races. That must have been where I met Jim Sheehy who became a good friend. We had a great old time at the races drinking and carrying on with other kids. No suspense, I passed the necessary exam in September and moved on to my choice of Mechanical Engineering for the next three years, which went by in a blur.

My mobility started when I went with Dermot to a motorcycle dealer and with the proceeds of a summer harvesting peas in England bought myself a brand new Honda 50 small motorcycle.

That bike was constantly being tinkered with to make it go faster and noisier. The concrete slab outside the back door of 110, our house, became motorcycle maintenance central. I had a number of falls from the bike from riding it recklessly, but only ruined clothes and ripped skin. Oliver Kavanagh had a scooter at the same time, and we also fell off that with similar results. Tony Brophy had a “real” motorbike (a Triumph brand) that I would enjoy riding pillion on. While he liked to drive fast, he was excellent and never crashed. In ‘63 or ‘64 I started agitating to learn to drive a car. Mammy persuaded Daddy to teach me, which he sort of did, much against his wishes. I think that was followed by squeamishly having to ask him to let me use his car to go to dances or on dates. He hated it and so did I.

Of course the parents were concerned for my safety and Mammy would stay awake at night until she would hear me come in. The floorboards outside her bedroom, which I had to pass to get to my room, creaked, so I had to remember which ones did and then carefully navigate around them. When that worked, I could shave a few hours off my homecoming time when asked about it the next morning.

Somehow or other I got the idea that I needed to have a car. Of course, I had no money. My “pocket money” at university was 10 shillings ($1.50) a week and we used to buy cigarettes as “singles”, i.e. one at a time! Anyway, I found an old sports car in the small ads asking £100, so Mammy loaned me the money and supported my wish for wheels. The couple who drove up with the car, a Triumph TR3, were somewhat old-fashioned Brits, but they nicely agreed to sell me the car! Yay!

All of the various university disciplines had their own scarf colors. Mine was something I really wanted and always wore out (above). The TR3 allowed for many adventures (when I could afford the petrol). I think I was the only one in my class with a car. One winter’s weekend three of us from UCD drove at high speed in the cramped two-seater to an alleged party down the country in Carlow. When we got there, we couldn’t find the party, had nowhere to spend the night, so, weirdly, broke into the Carlow mental asylum and spent the night sheltered there!

Another time I was driving with a girlfriend to a lunch reception at her relatives when a motorcyclist with a girl on the back pulled out in front of me (I was going too fast to avoid him.) I hit him and the shopping that the passenger was holding flew into the air and a can of peas hit my car and resulted in the damage you can see on the left hand side. The revenge of the peas? I don’t remember any legal consequences!

The TR3 though was sold soon after and was replaced by a white MGA. A beautiful car, which was sort of maintained with the help of Tony Brophy, who by this time had a business repairing big lawn mowers from sports clubs.

For some reason, this car was replaced by a red MGA which was the last in the line of the cheap, old but beautiful sports cars. I think the changes may have coincided with the annual 10 weeks away in England for the pea harvesting. I would leave the car each time in Tony’s care and I think they needed to be replaced when I got back!

Going to England each summer had a definite cultural impact which was broadening in many dimensions. This was the era of Carnaby Street, Mods & Rockers and new fashions. I desperately (for some unknown reason) wanted stylish clothes and finally got the bell-bottom pants and tight-waisted jacket that were my heart’s desire. We were all into music, of course, and I remember going to one of those major outdoor festival events somewhere in England with John Sheridan, who was a dental student. I believe that was in 1966.

In the mid-60s traditional ballad singing suddenly became popular in Ireland. Initially the Clancy Brothers led the charge, to be followed by The Dubliners. The Dubliners’ home base was O’Donoghues pub on Merrion Row which was right beside the university. Very convenient! In addition to playing in pubs the group also played concerts. One of the venues was the Gate Theater, small and intimate, where I saw them with Mammy.

Another was a theater on Stephen’s Green, which was much larger, where I went with Cathal O’Luain. The performance was somewhat disrupted when a drunk Brendan Behan came in and started yelling at the group, demanding they play a particular ballad. They didn’t. Brendan’s brother Dominic actually authored some good ballads.

One of the developments that flowed from the revived interest in Irish music was the establishment of the Fleadh Cheoil. These were multi-day performances by traditional musicians held in country towns. During this time they were massively attended, mainly by youngish people who slept in tents and in the fields if they slept at all. Massive amounts of drink were consumed and a good time was had by all. The one I remember best was in Clones. I think the excesses over that long weekend were such that the future Fleadhs were toned down and, I think, were ultimately abandoned. Pity!

A major influence on the youth in the mid-60s was the advent of Radio Caroline, a pirate broadcaster based on a variety of installations in the North Sea which played all sorts of music which could not get airplay on government broadcasters such as the BBC. Started by an Irishman, Ronan O’Rahilly, it played high jinks with the “powers that be,” and was a real poke in the eye for the Establishment. Interestingly, one of the people who funded the station was an Englishman, Jimmy Ross, who was the owner of Ross Foods where we did the pea harvesting! The station was named after Caroline, the daughter of JFK.

Like most people, I still remember where I was when we got the news of the President’s assassination in November 1963. I was walking from The Brazen Head pub up the hill to Christchurch Cathedral with Cathal O’Luain. We were stunned.

Some other memories from the college years: the increasingly civilized family Sunday lunches thanks to the provision of greater amounts of wine. The “Battle of the Boyne” staged on the River Boyne outside Drogheda, between students from UCD and students from Queen’s, Belfast with a variety of large “Romanesque” catapults used to pelt the Belfast kids on the other side of the river with large bags of flour (an all-day event and great fun); on the social conscience side Jim Sheehy and I organized support for the Travellers (poor itinerant Irish families) through a number of events for which we scrounged support from every single business in Dublin; and then there were weekly dances organized under the auspices of the Mech/Elec engineers held every Saturday night in the Four P’s ballroom in central Dublin. I think I usually went with Oliver Kavanagh or John Sheridan after a few pints in one of the city pubs. The pub scene was very varied and very pleasant. People had their favourite destinations. Mine were all city center and quite plush and still bring back pleasant memories.

Sheridan graduated as a dentist, and celebrated by getting so drunk he had to throw up and out, from the upstairs window of his house, so that the next morning, he found his false teeth on the pavement below. As I said earlier, his father was a renowned published writer and when I graduated and he heard I was going abroad he told me “Ah, bás in Eireann”, meaning, I’ll come home to Dublin to die! Sheridan actually became a family friend, with my siblings becoming his patients at his practice on Sundrive Road. I have seen him occasionally over the years.

Oliver Kavanagh wanted to be a ship’s radio operator, and sort of studied for it. He wasn’t much of a student and he never did finish the course. He was charming though, and no doubt made something of himself. I have not heard of him since I left Ireland.

Tony Brophy and I were very close for a while, bound up in our love of motorbikes and cars. Jim Sheehy we’ll hear more of and Cathal O’Luain I have seen at a class reunion.

At dizzying speed it was final year, 1967.

I spent a lot of time cramming for final exams to make up for all the misspent years. Got through, surprised myself by getting an honors degree, and the day after the results came out I flew to the US with Jim Sheehy. And so, to my everlasting shame, I missed giving my parents the satisfaction and pleasure of seeing their firstborn being conferred in cap and gown. Definitely a boo-hoo.