In the catalogue of Irish dance music there’s a rince foirne or team dance titled ‘The Walls of Limerick’ and you’d want a fair number of people to execute it properly – a bit like the Siege of Ennis – so beloved of wedding parties and socials and that class of fling.
In recent days we, here in Castleisland, have been nearly obsessed by the Walls of Limerick Road and what was happening to them and why. However, there’s a simple explanation.
The walls in question represent the very last vestige of the road’s extremely busy commercial and industrial past. As such, and with no traceable owner for a while, they had been allowed to fall into disrepair – until last week that is.
Ahern’s Garage showroom and offices were housed comfortably behind those walls for a generation or more up to the company’s move to its new greenfield base on Tralee Road on the eve of Christmas Eve in 2005; Ahern’s no longer own the shell that remains on Limerick Road. But the area has a longer and deeper history than just that.
Quite an Eyesore
It had become quite the eyesore and a matter of annoyance and embarrassment to those involved in the constant struggle known locally as the Tidy Towns campaign.
Back to the Walls of Limerick Road and their partial rehabilitation over the past week or so.
The reasons for the work are so deeply set in our psyche that it can be traced all the way back to ‘The Stations’ in Rural Ireland or ‘The Yanks’ coming home on holiday.
White-washing walls and table leg cleaning and chair re-roping and painting, banishing generations of cobwebs and sticking fresh branches of laurel or rhododendron behind pictures of the Pope of the day, the Kennedys and deValera or Collins – depending….
Put to Right
All had to be put to right before those big stations days on which the parish priest and the neighbours, who knew they’d be welcome, landed in on top of you – or the filthy rich relatives finally arrived back to the ancestral home.
There was a time when ‘The Yanks’ became a by-word in rural Ireland for returning, long departed family members no matter what part of the world they went to or came back from.
These Yanks, you see, would have been sending ‘home’ money and parcels down through all the intervening years and they had high expectations for their home-coming. These expectations weren’t always met and often the money would have been drank – as we used to say.
A man I worked with on building sites years ago came in a bit late and bleary-eyed one morning. By way of an unsolicited explanation he offered: “Our Yanks only went back to England this morning.”
Fact Behind the Face-lift
Back again to the Walls of Limerick Road and the reason for their face-lift, is that, this Friday is Stephen’s Day in Castleisland and Listowel.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, TD is to visit Castleisland Primary Care Centre – across the road from the ‘The Walls’ – which are, in turn, cheek by jowl with the facility’s car park.
Minister Donnelly, on his way home from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation conference in Killarney, will be cast, unwittingly, in the role of the returning Yank on Friday.
He will be taken through the repurposed building at Kaelgorm House accompanied by the top brass of the HSE Cork / Kerry Community Healthcare.
Minister Donnelly’s department would have funded the refurbishments and re-purposing of the building and, just like the returning ‘Yanks’ he’ll want to see how ‘his’ money was spent.
A visit to Listowel Primary Care Centre is also part of Minister Donnell’s itinerary for tomorrow’s visit.
Will he look Across the Road?
Minister Donnelly probably won’t even look across the road at the spruced up walls and won’t appreciate the level of tidying and repainting work that went into the weeks or so before his visit.
Because ministers, like the returning Yanks of yore, always expect that kind of thing anyway.
They’re never allowed see behind the paint and the plaster with which rural Ireland has always been camouflaged when they come visiting to see how their money has been spent.
You can contact The Maine Valley Post on… Anyone in The Maine Valley Post catchment area who would like to send us news and captioned photographs for inclusion can send them to: jreidy@mainevalleypost.com Queries about advertising and any other matters regarding The Maine Valley Post can also be sent to that address or just ring: 087 23 59 467.
