Two Walls and a Roof (28 page)

The day wore on with tea being made by boiling the kettle on the same heater
,
and soon it got dark. We continued to chat about the
s
treak and eventually one of us ca
me up with the next bright idea;
that we would modify the long s
treak to a shorter and much more exciting one. Anthony would now have to begin his run in a laneway right in front of the Catholic Church
t
hen run diagonally across the street into the relative safety of Fowler
’
s house. I was again to act as official photographer, and the only other condition was that the run ha
d to be timed to take place when the church
goers
were
leaving the evening religious service. Again
,
to our surprise
,
Anthony agreed to do it while still shivering naked in Fowler
’
s kitchen. It was pitch black as Hayes drove Anthony around the back lanes of Buttevant
,
ending up on the one right ac
ross from the church as planned
while Fowler and I waited for a signal across the street. Jerry Hayes was to flash the lights on his van when Anthony would make the run and I would run to him to take the picture. They waited for the people to pile out from the
c
hurch and then the signal came as the first of the congregation passed us on the street. Anthony let out a wild Tarz
a
nian yell, threw off the coat, and with arms spread he began dashing across the road for Fowler
’
s door as I dashed towards him with my camera at the ready. There was a traffic island in the street in those days and Anthony
and
I
reached it at the same time
as a car
. I took the picture and a big bright flash lit us all up, with Anthony’s nakedness being the main attraction. The approaching car almost crashed into the island as the driver
’
s head shot around in amazement and disbelief at what he saw. There was also consternation among the old women on the street. In my run I saw hands fly up to mouths, hands pointing at us and others were just frozen in shock at what they were seeing. We ran in slamming the door behind us
,
leaving poor Anthony outside banging on the door and jumping up and down with both cold and fear. We soon let him in
,
and after Hayes arrived we began the congratulations with lots of handshakes and praise being heaped upon him. Then we waited for the ‘proof’ of his run to develop before our
eyes, and it did. There he was:
Buttevant
’
s one and only
s
treaker, complete in all his nakedness with arms outstretched,
whizzing by the traffic island
to the amazement of the people of his hometown, and all this was happening in front of the Holy Catholic Church. A hero was born that night, but he never joined our gang, and all his great run achieved was to finally convince everyone that we were definitely all on drugs of the worst kind.

Anthony used his photo to create a mystique about himself which he well deserved. I know that he was not shy about showing off his physique as one day when I got on a bus
,
he arrived on his motorbike and parked it by the side of the bus. The bus was loading its passengers and I had sat down on the outside of a very nice quiet local girl. As we chatted I heard his motorbike race its engine again and again. Looking out the window I saw his
(
or should I say my
)
picture slowly creep up the window just inches from the head of the shy girl. He had seen me get on the bus and was up for devilment
. F
ortunately the girl didn’t look round and soon the bus took off
,
being chased up the street by Anthony still waving his photo. The girl didn’t see it, but almost everyone else on the bus did, and I saw a lot of smirking and pointing going on as I tried to pretend I didn’t know him. Over the years I have met him on and off and he is still as charismatic as ever, but I have never enquired about the famous picture
. F
or all I know it’s been framed on his bedside table.

Probably about nineteen seventy three or so the four of us decided that we should make our own entertainment based on a new phenomenon called Disco
.
I’m sure it was Hayes
’
idea, and how it actually came about is now a mystery to me. I would have been about twenty three then and had been working for a few years in a television shop in Mallow with a man called Larry Anderson
,
of which more anon.

Our disco would be called ‘The Liberation Disco’
;
a name I disliked
,
but that was what we were going to be known as. Hayes would do any art work needed, and basically he drew everything, including our handmade posters
.
I would build all the electronic gear, the amps and the lighting control units. The other two lads would build all the woodwork needed to contain our ‘equipment’. I had by then developed a sound to light electronics system, the first of its kind in the world I believe, and I think it was while showing this to Hayes and Fowler that they got the idea of making ‘the world
’
s first real’ disco. Without a single penny of capital
,
we borrow
ed or stole the wood from Hayes’
father and I was to convince Big Kyrl to let us use his dance hall for our testing. He reluctantly agreed
,
asking me how much electricity it would use
.
I said
,
“Sure tis only a few flashing bulbs Kyrl, how much could that use”. It was much more like a few hundred bulbs though, but I felt it was wiser to keep that fact to myself
,
for a while at least.

We began building away goodo, but we needed a wooden base to hold the turntables and the amps
,
and that was becoming our biggest problem. Hayes
’
dad Kieran had nothing that we could steal that would do the job
,
so we were at a standstill. Fortunately my mother had persua
ded Nannie to get Tadgh Hurley (
Joe Hurley
’
s dad and owner of the furniture store
)
to sell her a new table. This was delivered and was stored in the front of our house
,
waiting for a decision on
the best place to put it.
I noticed that it would be a perfect fit for what we needed, so we stole it and carried it up the street to Fowler
’
s shed, which was our ‘factory’ for gear building.

Rather than have a big row over the theft, I told mother that evening that we just needed to borrow it for a few days to try out our new moneymaking idea, and
that
she would get it back perfect with a financial bonus as well. This pleased her at the time and the next thing we did was cut two huge holes in the table
so that we could sink
the disco decks and the amps into it. As we sawed through the new table
,
Hayes was having some doubts
,
fea
ring a backlash from the mother. W
e all agreed to buy her a new table from the first money we made, and because that made us all feel better, we then sawed off the legs as well and put the table on top of a tar barrel as a kind of plinth for good effect.  Hayes later painted this barrel black and white in a zebra style. There was no going back then, and she was never getting that particular table back.

Next we built the light boxes which were made of a wooden frame containing bulbs placed inside car headlamp reflectors. The front of the light box was covered in a plastic that Hayes had also painted in a psychedelic pattern. Jerry Hayes really was a great artist.

Our speaker columns were also made of wood
,
and initially
these had just two big speakers;
one that we bought and the other we stole from Big Kyrl
’s hall
and replaced with a radio speaker so he wouldn’t cop it. Later still I began to rob speakers from old radios at work and soon we were ready for our first tests in Kyrl
’
s hall.

The night he gave me the keys, he told me not to burn the place down and wished us luck. We excitedly began to set up our gear on his stage; we were in the entertainment business at last. It was all so very exciting as it came together and I think the first record played was Dearg Doom by Horslips
,
an Irish Celtic rock band that we loved. The hall exploded into coloured light which exactly followed the music. It was awesome to see and we stared at it in awe as the music blared into the empty hall. The flashing lights began to attract the teenagers outside
,
as by then the whole town knew that we were about to launch a whole new idea in Buttevant. Soon a few people arrived in for a look
,
and later a lot more arrived and we had to shut the show down or ruin it as a surprise for our debut. We reluctantly turned it all off and cleared the hall, but the word spread. Over the next few weeks we refined the play list and the lighting and I added a series of switches th
at I would play like a piano to
turn the lights full on
,
overriding the electronics. This was a great addition to the show
,
a
nd later the lads would mock me
becau
se of the way I would go insane
with my fingers flying across the switches following the music to a
tee
.  It’s important to also
add a point of information here
because when I was sixteen, I used to wire houses illegally. I had no qualifications then, but I worked cheap and had a vague idea of what I was doing. I had covertly be
gun a small electrical business
in which customers asked me to add on an extra socket or light bulb here and there in their house or farm. I made a nice bit of money doing that work, but the wire was costing me a fortune. When Big Kyrl found out about it
,
he asked Kyrle and me to rewire his dance hall for him, and we agreed as long as he bought the wire. I felt that we could save a lot of his heavy wire by putting the chea
p light stuff above the ceiling
and not tell him about
it, and we did just that. T
o fool him, we would run some heavy wire up the wall to a junction box hidden above the ceiling and then run the cheap flex across the roof until the cable came down the wall to the fuse board. Our view was that anywhere he could see the wire, we would use good wire, but for all else we ran the cheap stuff. He examined the work and passed it all and paid us. I believed that he would never go up into the ceiling area, nor would he suspect that we would cheat him either, but he was wrong on the cheating. Later I wired many a house using Big Kyrl
’
s good wire and did it without
a smidgeon of guilt. In my mind
I was following his mantra that the end always justified the means, and I was just getting even with him for paying us pittance over the years.

Returning to the disco days, our first disco night wa
s announced with a flood of Hay
es
’
posters being placed all over the town. We knew that we were going to have a packed hall full of teenagers and even adults looking on to see this new light phenomenon. Big Kyrl had officially hired the hall to us
,
and at about midnight I took his rent down the town to his house and paid him proudly. He was genuinely delighted with his nephew’s success and wished us well
while also agreeing
to keep renting his hall to us at a cheap rate. Then as was his cu
stom, when I was about to leave,
he walked me to the front door for the ‘final chat’, and we looked up the town to se
e his hall. We could see it al
right and he saw it in a new way too
,
as did I. He always had a few rows of bulbs running up the front walls and around a kind of overhang that he had built across the main door. It was a nice feature
,
and because one could see it from the entire main street, when it was lit up, it signalled that a function was taking place in Kyrl Cahill’s hall. That was how it normally worked, but on our disco night all of those outside lights were also flashing in time to the music. Even I knew that the only way that could happen was because the wiring was completely overloaded and the wires, especially those above the ceiling, had to be getting red hot. Big Kyrl spotted it too and went into an immediate panic, demanding to know just how much electricity I was using. I had no i
dea, but calmly I told him that
I had made those outside lights flash on purpose so as to attract in even more people to the hall, and that seemed to calm him down. I was dreading that he might suggest a visit up to check, but he didn’t. I could not wait for him to go inside so that I could  run back up to the hall and turn off half the lights, preventing yet another fi
re in the history of the Cahill
s.