The Parish (7 page)

S
elling tickets is not for the faint-hearted. The local garage gave the parish the gift of a car, and the finance committee felt that we needed to go outside the parish to sell sufficient tickets. The decision about the price of the raffle ticket led to long and protracted discussions, with some people thinking that €5 was enough and others going for €20. After much argument and counter-argument a conclusion was finally reached and it came down on the side of €20. So then began the programme of events known as “Will you buy a ticket?”

It turned out to be an experience from which I learnt many things. The first was that the media do not always represent the thinking of the ordinary people and that the chattering minority obliterates the silent majority. The country was awash with the scandal of clerical abuse and we were very apprehensive about the reception we would receive when we went out selling tickets in aid of church restoration. But we discovered that the people did not hold the majority of priests guilty for the sins of the few. They saw the church as belonging to them and many times greeted us with the comment: “Oh,
we must support the church!” That was the first surprise, and there were many more to follow.

Our first venue was the Innishannon Steam Rally, which is held every June bank holiday weekend and draws crowds from all around the country. There is a huge interest in vintage steam engines, and once a year all the faithful pour into our parish. We enthusiastically set up a table beside our shining new car at the best vantage point in the rally field; after all, it was our parish and we, of course, demanded the prime location.

Our car was surrounded by vibrant posters proclaiming the wonders of winning a brand-new model for only €20, and we waited full of happy anticipation for the eager buyers to line up. But we waited and waited and waited. Only a tiny minority of the flowing tide of people ventured in our direction. We were discovering that if you go fishing, the fish do not come looking for your bait! You have to cast your net out into the deep. So up we got up off our backsides and sallied out into the flowing throngs, offering our wares and engaging people in conversation.

The first step in selling tickets is that you have to
believe
that the populace is lucky to get this opportunity to buy your ticket and, having convinced yourself of that, you must then convince the punter. You quickly learn to read faces, but you discover as you go along that it is very easy to get it wrong and that a large, jovial talkative man does not necessarily guarantee that you will have a sale at the end of the conversation. It could be that he just likes the sound of his own voice and, having let many other potential customers pass you by, you discover that though his mouth was open, his wallet was tightly zipped. Sometimes a distracted woman dragging a shoal of children behind her might look an unlikely prospect but she could
surprise you and decide to take a sporting chance. We found out that a big heart is always more important than a big wallet. By the third day of the rally, we were no longer green beginners but learning fast the art of selling tickets.

The steam rally provided our launching pad, but it was only the beginning in a long list of venues. John was the man in charge of the entire enterprise and he proved an inspired choice because he was a hard worker who never made hard work out of anything. A day selling tickets with this
fast-thinking
and witty man was a day was full of fun and hilarity. Having been an active member of Macra na Feirme for many years, which involved chairing a debating team to great success around the country, he was also a life-long ardent member of Fine Gael, so he knew more people than Bertie Ahern, and that is a great plus when you go out selling tickets. To me John seemed to know the whole country, and if he was snookered by an approaching stranger, he would whisper under his breath, “Do you know this fella?” and if I said no, he invariable approached them with the opening salutation “And how are we now?” So whenever I heard that salute I knew that John did not have a clue who the person was, but within minutes he would have solved that problem. The ultimate networker, he invariably knew someone belonging to them or someone from their home place. Needless to mention, he knew the whole Fine Gael fraternity and if one of them did not buy, he looked askance—“And he’s one of ours,” he’d say in exasperation. But he very seldom drew a blank.

At one venue a pernickety woman challenged us as to the newness of our car, seeing as how we were parading it all around the country. She was determined to pick holes in our project. It was late in the evening and we were too tired to
argue with her so we agreed with all her arguments, which drove her mad; eventually in frustration she told us that we were “a right shower of chancers”.

As we progressed, we fine-tuned our act and instead of dragging the car around with us, we took posters, which was far easier. We also had an oil painting of the church, which we mounted on an easel, and we discovered that people are very interested in anything mounted on an easel. They regard it as a work in progress, and indeed our church was just that and we had large photographs of the scaffolded steeple to prove it. People were interested in the whole enterprise and enjoyed looking at the painting and photographs and hearing of our fundraising efforts.

The best buyers were the people who had at some point in their own lives sold tickets as a fundraiser. Many of them told us, “Oh, God, we had to do this and it was a tough project.” And indeed it was, but with a good positive crew on board we also had a lot of fun.

One of our most enjoyable outings was to Listowel Races. We had arranged with the Listowel Council that we could pitch our camp in the small square where all streets converge, and this placed us in the centre of the crowds on the way to the races. This is the square from which John B. Keane now surveys his town. A racing crowd out for the day are in a jubilant mood and most of them are by nature prepared to take a gamble, so they were our kind of people. We set up our posters, easel and photographs and got ourselves ready for the day; we were blessed with the weather, which was kind. We were in for the long haul as three of us had booked into a local guesthouse and reserve troops were to come down daily from home.

The first day would tell a lot. We had a bonanza! One of the reserves who came down that day was Jane who is a race-goer, and when the punters wanted to know if we had a winner, Jane gave one man Monty’s Pass who went on to win. When this man came back that evening, he handed us his betting slip to draw the winnings. It was a magnanimous gesture and we were delighted, but he was gone in the crowd before we could thank him properly. Later that night, he passed on his way to the pub and we asked him about his generosity. “I was born outside this town,” he said, “and my family hadn’t much but when I got to Dublin I did law at night and now I have my own law firm. This town was good to me and it’s good to be good to where you came from. As well as that, it’s great to see people going out and making an effort for their own place.” That man made my day.

The following morning, Hazel and I were manning the corner when a miserable-looking man approached us and I murmured under my breath to Hazel, “Nothing doing there anyway.” But Hazel, the eternal optimist, approached him and in her lilting accent softly introduced the subject—“Would you like to buy a ticket?”—and much to my amazement his hand slowly made its way into a deep inside pocket where a note detached itself from a wad of its companions; having told Hazel that she was a grand girl, he went on his way, and I learned the lesson that you can never predict a buyer!

As well as races, we attended shows, horse fairs and shopping centres. We covered the Prize Cattle Show in the Green Glens in Millstreet where Noel C. Duggan gave us a prime location and bought our first two tickets. It was a great experience to view those perfectly groomed highly bred cattle that are the models of the bovine world. One normally
associates the Green Glens with beautiful horses but there we saw that a well-groomed cow is as elegant as any top-class hunter. Politicians came there to strut their stuff because this is the
crème de la crème
of the dairying industry.

We had a great day at Skibbereen Show and there we had the additional advantage that our parish priest, Fr John, had come to us from Skibbereen. It soon became obvious that he had left good memories behind him in the town as the people were delighted to welcome him back and were generous in their support. It was a lovely sunny day and our site under the shelter of an overhanging hedge had a good view of the entire field.

A cattle show must surely be one of the most deeply satisfying and entertaining ways to spend a day in rural Ireland; its title is actually misleading because it encompasses a flower show, art and crafts display, farm-produce competition and a display of the best farm animals, as well as all the up-to-date farm machinery. People wander around and look at all that is on view and in the process meet the neighbours and old friends whom they may not have seen since the last show. In previous years, every fair-sized town had a cattle show which was referred to simply as “the show”, but with the decline in agriculture they have dwindled and with them one of the most welcome social aspects of rural Ireland.

On one of our many outings, we visited a horse fair which necessitated a drive of many miles. On arrival, we experienced quite a culture shock. Horses trotted up and down the street, rearing up in protest at approaching traffic. It was like a scene from the Wild West, and if some of the horses were wild, they were no more so than the people who traversed the town. Tanned, tough-looking men in black vests, with tattoos in
all visible areas, led prancing ponies and piebald horses up and down the town, accompanied by women in knee-high white plastic boots, wearing skirts up as far as possible and overflowing tops down as far as possible and brassy blonde hair piled high. They formed a volcanic collection, and it was no surprise to see police on horseback patrolling the streets. You felt that a confrontation could erupt at a moment’s notice, and not necessarily with the police.

The fact that we were there selling tickets for church restoration brought amazed looks to many faces, and as the day progressed we could understand their amazement. When we went for a meal, we had to pay at the door before entering the premises, which told a lot about the owner’s opinion of the clientele. Three of us joined a bleary-eyed drunk who was already sprawled across the table and, in the process of gathering himself together to make room for us, must have made out through a drunken haze the outline of one man and two women.

“How come,” he challenged Fr John in a slurred voice, “you have two women and I can’t even get one. Is one the wife and if ’tis, can I have the other one?”

I happened to be the other one, and after I had assured him that I was available and willing to be his he rolled over and dozed off and we had our questionable lunch to the background music of his occasional snore. The takings that day were not great but we had seen a slice of Irish life that had come as a big surprise to me.

All our outings were different and some days people were generous and the selling was easy and other days it was tough going and we came home exhausted. But we met a varied selection of people. One pot-bellied balding man well past
his sell-by date wanted our car to do more than just transport him around. He wanted to know if it was a “babe magnet”. I did not have the heart to tell him that if that was his line of appeal, he should probably be looking at a Jaguar. One woman took it upon herself to tell us that we had no shame in us to be dragging a car around the country selling tickets. But I was glad to have done it and one thing that I discovered while selling tickets was that a sense of humour was a vital necessity. During the entire proceedings Gabriel was our financial controller who kept track of tickets and returns and before each outing provided change and balanced the books when we returned.

The raffle brought in the princely sum of €98,000, so with a total like that we felt it had been worth our while to have dragged ourselves around the country asking all conditions of men and women “Will you buy a ticket?”