A Memoir of the Summer of 1987 with James Reddiough
Patrick was in the park Paddy Hillary that is and Charles Haughey was in the Dail as Taoiseach having taken power from Garrett Fitzgerald earlier in the year and he was leading a minority government then. The Irish national lottery had been launched and the first scratch cards went on sale too. Johnny Logan was doing us proud by winning the Eurovision with Hold Me Now and yet there was the pain and shame of Loughall and Enniskillen north of the border as Eamon Andrews of RTE passed away and in the better side of the news Stephen Roche won the Tour de France in what was a big year for him on the cycling front at world championship level. In other sports fields Ireland or the Republic of Ireland qualified for the European championship in West Germany and Meath won the All-Ireland Football Final and Galway won the Hurling final, had their footballers beaten Cork then they would have appeared in both finals representing the west.
While all these major events were taking place I was studying for the Leaving Cert in St. Muredach’s College Ballina in Co. Mayo and it was a worrying and stressful year with all the study and not being that bright I had to work harder than most but it was worth it in the end as I got my place in college and was awarded Student of the Year for 1987 in Muredach’s something that surprised me greatly at the time but there you are. In any event the leaving came and went and then we had to go to Sligo to Summerhill College to sit the matriculation exams for entry into the National University of Ireland and from there it was into the hayfields and the bog on my uncle’s farm nearby my house and that was grand after all the study and the mind work and then came the middle of August and the results I got honours and good enough results to get to third level and to study as a teacher which was my ambition at the time.
For recreation there was the alley in Bofield and the night clubs in Ballina and the dance hall in Bonniconlon The Grove on Show dance night and on other nights when dances were held there. The Grove was an old hall opened in May 1951 that had served the dancers of the 1960’s and 1970’s very well and was still in use in the eighties for part of the year for dances and concerts in fact Fr. Michael Cleary appeared there in 1982. The alley in Bofield was opened in 1980 and it was a central meeting place for youngsters from the district and many of us learned the skills and arts needed for young people to develop there and this stood to us in years to come when in faraway London and Dublin as was the lot of teenagers seeking work in recession – rid Ireland where there was little work to be found.
The highlight of the summer of 1987 was when the late Paddy Conlon of Ellaghmore God be good to him he died in the summer of 1991, founded a Tug of War team for the Bofield area and we joined up. We trained by the shores of Lough Brohly that legendary lake of battles and agitations in days of yore, and spent two to three evenings per week pulling the rope and doing some running to prepare us for tournaments of which we took part in a few including on the 16th August 1987 in Delvin Co. Westmeath, Delvin is located near Mullingar, we did ok and then listened to Cork and Galway footballers draw in the All – Ireland Semi- Final.
Fr. Padraig Costello left Bonniconlon that year and this was my last social function before knuckling down to preparing for going to college and indeed on that night we all spoke of how we would be going to London and Dublin and Leeds to start out on the journey of adult life- days of youth were passed for ever. Also one of the last rambling house hosts of the area Ann Baby Goodwin passed away and there was a traditional wake in her memory.
