When I looked out my bedroom window the other morning to assess the general autumnal climate, I was greatly surprised to see what appeared to be two very large mushrooms at the edge of the compost heap in the garden below. On later inspection in the garden itself, I found that two mushrooms had appeared magically overnight. This you might think is hardly surprising for this time of year but in fact we have never had such mushrooms growing in our garden before and these ones proved a catalyst for the lifting of a ‘mushroom cloud’ from my earliest childhood memories. You see gathering mushrooms was a particular focus of my family’s adventures during the Autumn months of early childhood and in so doing marked a significant shift in the perception of our father’s status in our family life. However, in an attempt to explain this change in the family, I first need to refer to the ‘western’ context which imbued the pastimes of teenage boys at that time.
In the absence of our own television in the home, the greatest treat that my twin brother and I could be offered was a visit to the Cinema to see a Western, with John Wayne movies being a particular favourite. My earliest childhood cinematic memory though was ‘High Noon’ and although I considered at that time that the film itself had not enough gunfights and Indians in it, nevertheless for some time after I thought of my father as a kind of Garry Cooper figure who would protect us from all harm. This western role for our father was soon surmounted however by a radically different perspective in the next few years when, as in his attempts to ‘keep the law’ as we grew older, we began see him more as a cowboy Marshall than a benign life saver. More disturbing to us was my father’s inclination to live out the Marshall’s role by barking orders at us. Such behaviour always came to a head during a fishing trip or indeed mushroom hunt with him.
Thus, each autumn he would organise a special day out to collect mushrooms in the countryside near Greenore on the shores of Carlingford lock. Bicycles would be hauled out of the shed and quick repairs and cleaning executed while my father hurried around us complaining about the way we kept the bikes and why we could never locate a simple bicycle ‘pump’ when needed. My mother, as in all good westerns of the time, fulfilled the female ‘interest’ role in this soap opera, by making us sandwiches and hot drinks, locating coats and endeavouring to cool my father’s iridescent temper. My youngest brother, aged about three at the time, was given an opportunity of riding ‘shotgun’ on my fathers bike where he was perched precariously on a small saddle on the cross bar with his feet on metal shoes just below the handle bars. After my father deemed that our bicycles were suitably loaded like ‘pack mules’ for the journey ahead, he would roar out the order to proceed and we would set off on our 18 mile round trip journey on the Greenore trail with John Wayne leading from the front.
For the most part these trips were actually good fun for us as we had long become adept at reading the Marshall’s moods and we were careful to avoid a ‘shoot out’ with him. However, there were also some times when our cherished inclination to mimic what we considered ‘Apache whoops’ would drive him to distraction and he would threaten to see us in ‘Boot Hill’. Nevertheless, we had some sympathy with his predicament as we were all well versed in the John Wayne dictum that ‘a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do’.
When we reached the pasture fields near Greenore, we would tie up our bicycles to a fence like horses to a coral. Then, we would scour the fields for mushrooms and set out eagerly into the chosen one despite risking life and limb from bulls, goats or potentially wild horses. When we asked our father what was ‘magic’ about such small white mushrooms, he explained that they would appear magically overnight and hence that you had to be up early to collect them before they ‘disappeared’ again. No wonder some people in Ireland still believe in fairies!
We always made time to visit the old Greenore railway station and the derelict old red brick hotel which now seemed so incongruous as it was surrounded by industrial port machinery and product and its heyday was only a distant memory. My father told us how we had once travelled to Greenore from Dundalk on the now abandoned railway but he never shared a secret memory which we only learned after his death. Seemingly, his own father had been employed on the old West Clare Railway and had been killed in a shunting carriage accident. This had resulted in his family having to leave their small railway cottage and had made their lives greatly impoverished thereafter.
As I recall, on our way back from one such a trip, we were almost killed by a Morris Minor car speeding on the wrong side of the road and driven by a local priest. Our father luckily called upon his John Wayne persona and waved us to turn off into the grass verge quickly. We ended up in a state of some distress wedged up against a rusty garage door but otherwise unharmed. My father though let out a stream of abuse at the ‘heavenly’ driver which you would be unlikely to hear even in the most violent ‘spaghetti’ western and did not let up even when explaining the incident to my mother on our return home. When my mother tut tutted his language and suggested that the ‘poor man’ may have been on an urgent sick call, this simply added to my fathers ire and he added that he would certainly be in need of a ‘sick call’ if he had got hold of him. As you can see being a ‘ranch hand’ on the family homestead was no easy task.
When we grew older and left the ranch for good as it were, we would visit our small terrace house on occasion and reminisce about such mushroom trips. At that time my brothers and I had grown so much that we resembled the ‘Sons of Katie Elder’ in that we seemed too big for the roles allocated to us and our aged father had assumed a new air more reminiscent of Ben Cartwright of Bonanza than any previous gunslinger role. However, though our memories seemed carefully screened to edit out any previous discordant note, they were nevertheless vividly embraced by all.
Thus, even now when I see a humble mushroom in a compost heap, I cannot but recall the distant memories of the Greenore Train run and although some of these memories may in reality represent more of a toadstool than a genuine mushroom sentiment, the value of their recall is always MAGIC to me!
PS: visited Greenore on 12th Oct 2010 and the the Hotel is gone!!!!!!
Written as a humorous part fictional memory only!
All comments and musings welcome!
In the absence of our own television in the home, the greatest treat that my twin brother and I could be offered was a visit to the Cinema to see a Western, with John Wayne movies being a particular favourite. My earliest childhood cinematic memory though was ‘High Noon’ and although I considered at that time that the film itself had not enough gunfights and Indians in it, nevertheless for some time after I thought of my father as a kind of Garry Cooper figure who would protect us from all harm. This western role for our father was soon surmounted however by a radically different perspective in the next few years when, as in his attempts to ‘keep the law’ as we grew older, we began see him more as a cowboy Marshall than a benign life saver. More disturbing to us was my father’s inclination to live out the Marshall’s role by barking orders at us. Such behaviour always came to a head during a fishing trip or indeed mushroom hunt with him.
Thus, each autumn he would organise a special day out to collect mushrooms in the countryside near Greenore on the shores of Carlingford lock. Bicycles would be hauled out of the shed and quick repairs and cleaning executed while my father hurried around us complaining about the way we kept the bikes and why we could never locate a simple bicycle ‘pump’ when needed. My mother, as in all good westerns of the time, fulfilled the female ‘interest’ role in this soap opera, by making us sandwiches and hot drinks, locating coats and endeavouring to cool my father’s iridescent temper. My youngest brother, aged about three at the time, was given an opportunity of riding ‘shotgun’ on my fathers bike where he was perched precariously on a small saddle on the cross bar with his feet on metal shoes just below the handle bars. After my father deemed that our bicycles were suitably loaded like ‘pack mules’ for the journey ahead, he would roar out the order to proceed and we would set off on our 18 mile round trip journey on the Greenore trail with John Wayne leading from the front.
For the most part these trips were actually good fun for us as we had long become adept at reading the Marshall’s moods and we were careful to avoid a ‘shoot out’ with him. However, there were also some times when our cherished inclination to mimic what we considered ‘Apache whoops’ would drive him to distraction and he would threaten to see us in ‘Boot Hill’. Nevertheless, we had some sympathy with his predicament as we were all well versed in the John Wayne dictum that ‘a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do’.
When we reached the pasture fields near Greenore, we would tie up our bicycles to a fence like horses to a coral. Then, we would scour the fields for mushrooms and set out eagerly into the chosen one despite risking life and limb from bulls, goats or potentially wild horses. When we asked our father what was ‘magic’ about such small white mushrooms, he explained that they would appear magically overnight and hence that you had to be up early to collect them before they ‘disappeared’ again. No wonder some people in Ireland still believe in fairies!
We always made time to visit the old Greenore railway station and the derelict old red brick hotel which now seemed so incongruous as it was surrounded by industrial port machinery and product and its heyday was only a distant memory. My father told us how we had once travelled to Greenore from Dundalk on the now abandoned railway but he never shared a secret memory which we only learned after his death. Seemingly, his own father had been employed on the old West Clare Railway and had been killed in a shunting carriage accident. This had resulted in his family having to leave their small railway cottage and had made their lives greatly impoverished thereafter.
As I recall, on our way back from one such a trip, we were almost killed by a Morris Minor car speeding on the wrong side of the road and driven by a local priest. Our father luckily called upon his John Wayne persona and waved us to turn off into the grass verge quickly. We ended up in a state of some distress wedged up against a rusty garage door but otherwise unharmed. My father though let out a stream of abuse at the ‘heavenly’ driver which you would be unlikely to hear even in the most violent ‘spaghetti’ western and did not let up even when explaining the incident to my mother on our return home. When my mother tut tutted his language and suggested that the ‘poor man’ may have been on an urgent sick call, this simply added to my fathers ire and he added that he would certainly be in need of a ‘sick call’ if he had got hold of him. As you can see being a ‘ranch hand’ on the family homestead was no easy task.
When we grew older and left the ranch for good as it were, we would visit our small terrace house on occasion and reminisce about such mushroom trips. At that time my brothers and I had grown so much that we resembled the ‘Sons of Katie Elder’ in that we seemed too big for the roles allocated to us and our aged father had assumed a new air more reminiscent of Ben Cartwright of Bonanza than any previous gunslinger role. However, though our memories seemed carefully screened to edit out any previous discordant note, they were nevertheless vividly embraced by all.
Thus, even now when I see a humble mushroom in a compost heap, I cannot but recall the distant memories of the Greenore Train run and although some of these memories may in reality represent more of a toadstool than a genuine mushroom sentiment, the value of their recall is always MAGIC to me!
PS: visited Greenore on 12th Oct 2010 and the the Hotel is gone!!!!!!
Written as a humorous part fictional memory only!
All comments and musings welcome!
Oh I love mushroom so much and the way you prepared these sounds so delicious!
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