With St Patrick’s Day quickly approaching, I’ve been listening to more Irish music than usual this year. The music always reminds me of this trip my nephew Chris and I took to Ireland in September 2008. We talked about going for years and finally decided 2008 had to be the year. We debated how we’d get around once we got there. I drove with a specially equipped car here so rather than making Chris do all the driving there, we opted for a tour bus. Some friends of mine had done this a few years earlier and had a great time. The itinerary was already set up by the bus company. The flight and hotels were part of the package plus they’d take care of the driving. All we had to do was show up.
Ireland turned out to be ten days of absolute heaven! It was a trip I’ve always wanted to write about!
The flight over
The pilot informed us we were “traveling at 39,000 feet at 650 mph with a 120 mph tail wind.” The flight that was supposed to take six hours had, in fact, taken five. Neither of us had really slept well in the tiny seats during the red eye over so we thrilled to get there early. Instead of arriving at 6 am when we were scheduled to land, we landed before 5 am at the Dublin Airport and they were not prepared for us. So we sat for an hour on the tarmac in the dark and the line from the song “That’s Entertainment” by the Jam about “sticky black tarmac” rang through my exhausted mind.
We grabbed a cab to our hotel, which was about a half hour outside of Dublin. It was 7 am when the cab dropped us off and the front desk informed us that our room wouldn’t be ready until noon. We killed an hour or so with breakfast and intentionally camped out to nap on the couches across from the front desk in the hotel lobby. We figured it might inspire them to find a room for us a little faster if they had two smelly, exhausted Americans passed out in their lobby. It did.
There has been this long-running theory in my family about powering through exhaustion after traveling across multiple time zones, which has never made any sense to me. It’s like not napping on a Saturday afternoon. Why? On vacation, no less! After a few hours of napping, we were good to go.
Our first pint
Okay, I didn’t really fall off the bar stool my first night in Dublin. I swear! I sat half on the seat while being serenaded by Jimmy, a 70-year old singing troubadour.
The pub in our hotel had quite the local following. The locals spotted us immediately and sent Jim Duffy over to investigate. Everyone in the place seemed to be named Jim or Chris so we fit right in.
“Has Jimmy gotten a hold of ya yet?” was the first question Jim Duffy asked.
“No,” we said in unison.
“Oh, he will!” He assured us.
Jim Duffy was happy to see two Americans in his bar and was absolutely thrilled to find we were from Boston. So thrilled, in fact, he had to buy us a round. When he found out we were Kennedys from Boston, he insisted on buying us another round. Being new to the country and unfamiliar with local customs we thought it would be rude to say no.
Jim Duffy then introduced us to Irish Chris and his five-year old son, Roland. (He didn’t really call himself Irish Chris but there were three Chris’s within a five foot radius so I dubbed him Irish Chris for the sake of this story.)
Irish Chris, also, insisted on buying us a round. Irish Chris and Roland had been in the pub for quite a while now and a few minutes before we were introduced to him I saw Irish Chris belt down a pint of Guinness in three gulps. Later in the week, I’d learn how to do the same but I didn’t have my Irish legs under me yet so I was impressed.
“Has Jimmy gotten a hold of ya yet?” Irish Chris asked.
Chris and I looked at one another a bit nervously.
“Um,” I said. “No.”
“Oh,” Irish Chris said. “Wait till he gets a holda ya!”
Irish Chris couldn’t stop staring at my hands.
“I know some handicapped people, ya know,” he nodded. “I worked with them. We were friends, even.”
“Ah,” I said. How lucky for them.
“This is my son, Roland,” he said.
Roland was definitely not comfortable with the situation.
“Hi Roland,” I smiled and tried to put him at ease.
“Could you tell my son your story?” he asked. “I think it would be a good lesson for him.”
For a second I hoped an anvil would fall from the sky and flatten his head. Splat!
I looked down at Roland who’d grown even more uncomfortable.
“What can I tell you, Roland?” I asked. “These were the hands I was born with and those are the hands you were born with. Pretty cool, eh?” I winked.
Roland smiled for the first time.
“Yes,” he said.
“Tell him about your troubles,” Irish Chris said to me.
Was that a second anvil I saw falling? No? Damn!
“There’s not much to tell, Roland,” I said. “I’ve been able to do most things in life that I’ve wanted to. I just do them differently. What are some of the things you like to do?”
“Roland,” Irish Chris interrupted. “Tell him how lucky you are. Tell him you’re lucky to have hands like yours and not like his.”
Roland shook his head no.
“Tell him!” Irish Chris insisted.
Poor Roland. At five-years old he could tell how wrong this was. I winked at him again.
“I’m lucky,” he smiled.
“Why?” Irish Chris asked. “Why are you lucky?”
“To have these kinds of hands and not yours,” he said. He looked down at his feet.
“That’s right!” Irish Chris said and proudly rubbed the back of Roland’s head.
Out of nowhere the skinniest 70-year old man I’d ever seen appeared. He couldn’t have been more than five-feet tall and weighed about 85 pounds. He hopped into the conversation.
“What do we have here?” the old man asked.
“Oh,” Irish Chris said. “Now yer in trouble! This is Jimmy!”
Now we’re in trouble? Great!
Jimmy sized me up and asked if he could try to heal me.
“Sure,” I laughed. Why not? This night couldn’t get much stranger.
“Can you take off your watch?” he asked.
“Okay,” I smiled. It was a cheap Casio watch so I’d only be out $20 if it disappeared. I tossed it next to me on the bar. Chris shot me a look as if to ask what I was doing? I shrugged my shoulders and grinned.
With furrowed brow, he rubbed his hands together. If he told me to wax on/wax off, I was out of there!
“Can you hold your arms out?” he asked.
I obliged.
He closed his eyes and rubbed all around my arms without actually touching them, faster and faster with each pass. He worked himself into a sweaty frenzy. He smiled and looked me in the eyes the way I’d imagine five-year old Roland might have done after building something with his legos.
“Do you really think I need healing?” I smiled.
I’m not sure what confused him more, that my arms weren’t actually healed or my question.
“Do you guys like music?” He decided to change the subject.
My nephew, Chris, was a musician and I was a former radio DJ. We loved music!
“Yes!” My nephew replied.
Jimmy broke into some Irish reel about Galway Bay and we were shocked to discover he was a much better singer than healer. In fact, he was pitch perfect and had one of the most beautiful voices I’d ever heard! The tone and range and emotion that came out of this tiny, wonderful old man were spot on! He shouldn’t have been singing in some bar a half hour outside of Dublin to the two of us, he should have been singingin front of 20,000 at the O2! Our jaws were on the floor.
He sang another one.
“Do you like dirty jokes?” he asked after finishing his third song.
Before we could reply, he told us one and broke into song again. Then another joke followed by another song and more dirty jokes. He charmed us with Irish reels and songs by Elvis and Nat King Cole but it was his version of Patsy Cline’s Crazy that knocked me off my stool!
Jimmy grabbed my watch, quickly looked at it and tossed it back on the bar.
“Oops!” he said. “Gotta run! Can’t keep the missus waiting!”
A chorus of goodbyes followed him as he waved to everyone, laughed and ran out the door.
“You know,” a woman who sat next to us the whole time chimed in. “His wife drops him off after dinner and picks him up every night at 11 sharp. She calls it her quiet time. Can you imagine living with that all day? Can you blame her?
“Jimmy used to be a vaudeville singer,” she continued. “He used to travel all over Europe doing pretty much the same act you guys just saw. People paid a lot of money to hear him sing. He’s quite the legend around here!”
We had been in Ireland for less than 24 hours and we’d already had more than our share of Guinness, most of which we didn’t pay for, plus we had been serenaded by the legendary Jimmy! This trip hadn’t even begun yet and it was already off to a fascinating start.
Duke of Dead Air 