David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "niall-kavanagh"
Laughter, Tears & Wonders
Niall Kavanagh describes the years 1942-66 in Dublin, Ireland as “Childhood and Coming of Age.” The book consists of mostly anecdotes Kavanagh describes as “yarns”.
He loses his father, Gerry, when he was 49, and Niall is forced to quit school and go to work at the press where his father worked.
Some of the yarns are rather pedestrian, but there's one where Niall and a friend decide to climb to the roof of what looks like a local cathedral (Kavanagh includes pictures throughout the memoir). He and his friend get stuck up there, and they have to scream for help. Firemen come to get them down. This only adds to his street cred, and soon, he's doing initiation tasks to join a local gang (They're just a bunch of kids who hang together). One of his tasks is to let a train pass over him.
The occasional yarn can be somewhat scatological. There's a bathroom monitor at the printing press who takes his job a little too seriously. Niall and a friend leave him a little message atop the stools in the commodes. They use their own body waste to do it. Of course, the manager doesn't think this is very funny and they end up doing three-hour Sunday night duty cleaning the John for three months.
If you read this memoir you will learn something about Ireland. Did you know for instance that the three Catholic provinces of Ireland don't allow condoms? Niall and a friend go on a road trip to buy some in Ulster. We also learn how the fracas between the Protestants and the Catholics came about. It all started with Henry VIII breaking away from the Catholic church and trying to colonize Ireland with Protestants. The Catholic element put up a fight, and Henry and later kings, plus Oliver Cromwell, took away most of the privately owned land in Ireland, giving it to landlords. When the potato famine came along, the English exported wheat rather than feed their starving populace. Kavanagh goes on to explain how an eventual treaty came to be, but he doesn't mention the woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for facilitating such.
Another entertaining yarn occurs when Niall and his friends decide to climb a cliff to get to a famous pub. An old codger had given them deceptive directions. Niall is a good climber but he gets stuck twenty feet short of the top. The others make it back down, but Niall slips and falls, saved by a giant rock that impedes the slide. In the process Niall loses control of his bladder. His friends go to find a rope, but ants are attracted to the urine. When they finally pull him up, he must disrobe and shake his clothes free of the pesky ants in his birthday suit.
Apparently this is only the first of Niall's planned memoirs. In a forward, he tells us he emigrated to the United States (illegally) to find work. This is not discussed in the memoir. This is a quick read as most of the yarns are only a few pages long. Very few are continued in a following yarn.
He loses his father, Gerry, when he was 49, and Niall is forced to quit school and go to work at the press where his father worked.
Some of the yarns are rather pedestrian, but there's one where Niall and a friend decide to climb to the roof of what looks like a local cathedral (Kavanagh includes pictures throughout the memoir). He and his friend get stuck up there, and they have to scream for help. Firemen come to get them down. This only adds to his street cred, and soon, he's doing initiation tasks to join a local gang (They're just a bunch of kids who hang together). One of his tasks is to let a train pass over him.
The occasional yarn can be somewhat scatological. There's a bathroom monitor at the printing press who takes his job a little too seriously. Niall and a friend leave him a little message atop the stools in the commodes. They use their own body waste to do it. Of course, the manager doesn't think this is very funny and they end up doing three-hour Sunday night duty cleaning the John for three months.
If you read this memoir you will learn something about Ireland. Did you know for instance that the three Catholic provinces of Ireland don't allow condoms? Niall and a friend go on a road trip to buy some in Ulster. We also learn how the fracas between the Protestants and the Catholics came about. It all started with Henry VIII breaking away from the Catholic church and trying to colonize Ireland with Protestants. The Catholic element put up a fight, and Henry and later kings, plus Oliver Cromwell, took away most of the privately owned land in Ireland, giving it to landlords. When the potato famine came along, the English exported wheat rather than feed their starving populace. Kavanagh goes on to explain how an eventual treaty came to be, but he doesn't mention the woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for facilitating such.
Another entertaining yarn occurs when Niall and his friends decide to climb a cliff to get to a famous pub. An old codger had given them deceptive directions. Niall is a good climber but he gets stuck twenty feet short of the top. The others make it back down, but Niall slips and falls, saved by a giant rock that impedes the slide. In the process Niall loses control of his bladder. His friends go to find a rope, but ants are attracted to the urine. When they finally pull him up, he must disrobe and shake his clothes free of the pesky ants in his birthday suit.
Apparently this is only the first of Niall's planned memoirs. In a forward, he tells us he emigrated to the United States (illegally) to find work. This is not discussed in the memoir. This is a quick read as most of the yarns are only a few pages long. Very few are continued in a following yarn.
