A Wide Awake…..
(Wishing you all,
wherever you are, a Peaceful and happy Christmas
and a wonderful New Year)…
Alcohol
and ‘hod-carrying’ have
never mixed and the two should be kept miles and miles apart. Just in case
anyone does not know what a hod-carrier is, well let me put it this way. When a
bricklayer is building a high wall someone has to carry the bricks up the
ladder. The faster the bricklayer is, the faster the carrier has to run up and
down the ladder. It is not a job for the faint-hearted.
My
Uncle Tim was an expert in both fields. He was one of the best hod-carriers in
all of Dublin and one of the best pint drinkers in all the Dublin pubs. He
loved his Guinness and now and again a drop of the ‘hard
stuff’ – that’s Irish whiskey, be it the real McCoy or
the illegal, home-made, type known as 'potteen'.
He
could carry more bricks in a day than most good bricklayers could lay in two
days and the site foremen on the building sites were only too willing to pay
Tim the ‘double-bubble’, or double time, in order to get the job
done when time was of the essence. He could keep two, or if hard pushed, three
bricklayers busy all day from eight in the morning until six at night. Then it
was straight home for his only meal of the day followed by two or three hours
in a pub. Any pub would do.
He was
what is known in Dublin circles as a ‘dacent man’ who would
never see anyone go without when he had money in his pocket. Auntie
Betty didn’t mind what he did with his money provided she was first in
the queue on a Friday night for the housekeeping money. They had lived in 22 Walkin’s
Street, off the Rotunda for all his twenty-eight years of marriage. He was
a ‘Jackeen’, or as they are called more often nowadays, a ‘Dubb’,
through and through.
The
worst day of the week for Uncle Tim was always the Mondays. You see, he would
have been drinking all day Sunday and always had a fierce hangover. When it got
too bad for him, he would have a couple of swigs of the ‘creature’,
(that’s another nickname for the whiskey), to get himself started.
"Be
Jazus" said Tim, one cold Monday morning as he stood
in the March frost on the building site, "but the shakes has got
me to-day". He slipped around the back of the building they were
working on and had an extra large swig from his half-bottle of whiskey. He was
beginning to feel a little better when the two bricklayers climbed the ladder
to the second floor scaffolding. Tim stuck a dozen bricks on the hod and
gingerly began to climb the ladder. He was shaking and although it was bitterly
cold, he began to sweat like a pig. "Bloody hell" he
exclaimed as his foot slipped off the rung of the ladder causing him almost
to drop the hod and bricks.
No
sooner had he deposited the bricks with the bricklayers, he was down again to
refill the hod. His second trip up the ladder was worse than the first but he made
it. The sweat was rolling down his face despite the frost in the air. He
continued working for the next hour or so.
It
must have been about half-past nine when the bricklayers were having their
first mugs of tea in the old hut that Tim decided to get well ahead of himself.
If he continued working the hod, he could have a few hundred bricks up on top
before they restarted working.
He was
all alone with no one in sight and had just got to the top of the ladder when
his foot slipped. Rather than drop the hod and bricks he held on tightly but
without warning, the rung of the ladder he was standing on snapped. Poor Tim
sailed through the air, landed on the hard ground amongst some rubble quickly
followed by the hod and bricks. He lay there with several large cuts and
bruises to his head.
On
hearing the racket outside, two of the bricklayers and the site foreman came
running out where they found poor old Tim. They checked for signs of breathing
but found none and likewise for a pulse of which there was no trace. Poor old
UncleTim was dead.
Arrangements
were made to have his body taken home and all Auntie Betty said on seeing him
was "Sure he asked for it. He was begging the good Lord to bring
his punishment down on him, with his swearing and drinking and gambling". Without
any further ado, one of the neighbours was sent to O’Neill’s Pub to
get Dr. O’Grady to sign the death certificate.
Now
Dr. O’Grady was also an Olympic Drinker but always ended up
with only a Silver medal against Uncle Tim’s first prize Gold. This
morning was no exception. He too had been drinking all day Sunday with Uncle
Tim and had merely ‘topped-up’ with four or five pints of
Guinness already. He also liked his whiskey ‘chasers’. To put it
mildly, he was at least half-blind drunk when he arrived in Uncle Tim’s
bedroom.
"Arra
now" he cried with his bowler hat in his hands "sure
don’t go crying tears all over the place Betty. Get the neighbours and we will
give auld Tim a wake that would indeed wake the bloody devil
himself". I stood in the corner and was only a little surprised
that he did not lay a finger on poor Tim. Instead he went into the kitchen,
took a book of forms out of his leather Gladstone bag and
immediately signed a death certificate. He spoke as he wrote. "Cause
of death: multiple traumas to the skull resulting in at least two
fractures". "There you are Betty,that should be good enough for you to
get the insurance" he said as he handed Auntie Betty the slip of
paper.
Literally
within a couple of hours, poor Tim was laid out on the bed in a beautiful new
white sheet. The neighbours had arrived with different things to eat. There
were cakes, which were being saved for Easter. There were all sorts of cold
meats – most likely leftovers from Sunday’s dinner. A large punchbowl had been
borrowed from O’Neill’s pub, which only ever saw the light of day after
funerals, weddings and Christenings. It’s contents were almost ninety-nine
percent pure whiskey, with just a drop of lemonade added as an excuse.
The
kitchen was packed with people smoking their pipes, cigars that had also been
saved for such special occasions, and some strange smelling tobacco cigarettes.
There were as many strangers as there were friends and it seemed that all you
needed to attend was to have once met someone who had once met Uncle Tim.
Auntie Betty didn’t mind as she had drunk a large glass of whiskey when Tim had
first been brought home. There was some dancing, singing and storytelling. I
heard things about Uncle Tim that were so far-fetched that even if the storyteller
had sworn on a stack of bibles, I still would not have believed them. According
to one fellow, Tim had been a hod-carrier on the Empire State Building
in New York City and had carried bricks for ten different bricklayers
at the same time – and that included, according to his story (or
should I say lies), he had to climb fifty stories to get to where they
were working.
As
soon as lunch was over and even more bowls of punch had been made and drunk by
especially the women, the sounds of crying could be heard from several
directions. The men were pouring themselves pints of Guinness from a couple of
barrels in the corner but they were not making a good job of it. The ‘heads’,
that’s the top white portion, were what was known in the trade as ‘Archbishops
hats’ – four times bigger than a priests were.
Mrs.
O’Brien from next door suddenly began sobbing as if it were her own husband
that had died. She began to mutter something about ‘love for Tim’.
Mrs. McGee from across the road knew only too well what she was on about and
shouted to her "Will you not be holding your gob Biddy".
Biddy, without any warning, threw herself on the bed beside Uncle Tim and
everything went as silent as the tomb. Mrs. McGee jumped and I really believe
she meant just to slap Biddy on the face to get her out of her condition. In
fact she hit her so hard that Biddy’s nose started to bleed.
"Be
Jazus" screamed Mickey O’Brien, Biddy’s
husband "sure now yez are both out of order. Get back here
Biddy". Biddy walked over to Mickey and hit him such a wallop as I
have never seen before or since in my life. Mickey fell like a sack of coal
onto the floor unconscious. With that all hell broke loose. Every neighbourly
or family feud that ever existed came to the fore with women fighting like
Kilkenny cats and men using their walking sticks or anything else that came to hand. It was as good a ruction as I have ever seen in my life.
As
with all ‘good’ Dublin fights, soon the bottles and glasses
began to fly about the room. Mickey O’Brien got up off the floor and realised
what was going on. He saw his chance to get his own back on Mickey Maloney who
he had always suspected was ‘at it’ with his wife Biddy. He
threw a full glass of whiskey across the room at the other Mickey.
The
glass and its contents hit the wall above the bed and nearly knocked the
picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus off it. The whiskey flew
around the place with most of it landing on poor old Uncle Tim’s face.
"Mother
of Jezus" a chorus rang out and at the same time, total
silence followed. There he was, Uncle Tim sitting up in bed and looking around
the place. "What the bloody hell is going on here?" he
croaked "sure it looks like a wake yez are having. Did yez all
think I was bloody dead?"
With
that he was handed a pint of Guinness and a glass of whiskey as some of the men
told him that the reason they were celebrating was the good fortune that Tim
had at work when he ‘should have been killed from that big fall’.
Meanwhile,
in the kitchen, Dr. O’Grady was searching Mrs. Finnigan’s purse for the Death
Certificate. If the Irish Medical Council discovered his
mistake, sure he would definitely have been ‘struck off’ again
- - - - - - for the fourth time.
-------------------------
Suggested
by an old Irish song:
TIM FINNIGANS WAKE:
Tim Finnigan lived in
Walkins Street, a decent Irishman, mighty odd,
He had a brogue so rich
and sweet, and to raise in the world, he carried a hod.
You see, he’d a sort of
a tippling way, with a love for the liqueur poor Tim was born,
So to help him on with his
work each day, he had a drop of the creature every morn.
Whack fal a toura loora
laddie, whack fal a toura loora lay,
Whack fal a toura loora
laddie, whack fal a toura loora lie.
One morning Tim was
rather full, his head felt heavy which made him shake.
He fell from the ladder
and he broke his skull, so they carried him home, his corpse to wake.
They rolled him up in a
nice clean sheet, and laid him out upon the bed,
With a barrel of porter
at his feet, and a gallon of whisky at his head.
Whack.........................................................................
His friends assembled at
the wake, and Mrs. Finnegan called for lunch,
They first brought in
tea and cake, then pipes, tobacco and whisky punch.
Then Biddy O’Brien,
began to cry, such a nice clean corpse did you ever see,
Ah Tim movourneen, why
did you die, arra hold your gob said Mrs. McGee.
Whack........................................................................
Then Mickey O’Brien
takes up the job, he says now Biddy, you’re wrong I’m sure,
Biddy hits him a skelp
in the gob, and laid him out upon the floor.
Now soon the war, it did
engage, ‘twas woman to woman, and man to man,
Shillelagh law was all
the rage, and a row and a ruction soon began.
Whack.......................................................................
Then Mickey Maloney
ducked his head, when a naggin of whisky flew at him,
The whisky landed on the
bed, the liqueur scattered all over Tim.
Now Tim revives, see how
he rises, Timothy rising from the dead,
Said whirl me whisky
round like blazes, thundering Jazus do you think I’m dead.
Whack..........................................................................
----------Mike-------------
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