Old Time Fun and Games

PART EIGHT

BY JOHN FITZGERALD

The Obstacle Race at the big 1926 Sporting Day in Callan proved controversial. At first the outcome seemed beyond doubt. Mickey Croke had sprinted across the finishing line. His laces looked impeccably secure, and there was no sign of the spud. (You’ll recall from last week that the winner needed to have devoured a roasted spud before crossing the line.)

But Martin Holden called for quiet. A grave expression on his face, he rose from his stool, removed his hat, and paced with great deliberation across to where the apparent winner was standing.

Turning to the lady who held the saucepan of Starmocks- delicious floury potatoes, he stuck a fork in one and held it up to the onlookers, who thought Martin had lost his marbles.

He then called upon Mickey Croke to remove the spud he had concealed inside his jacket. Mickey blushed with embarrassment, admitted he had not eaten the spud, and produced the now cold potato for all to see.

Martin and his fellow Committeemen quickly agreed that Mickey could retain his winning title…but only if he consumed a scorching hot potato in front of the crowd. This, explained Martin, would make up for the one he had failed to swallow during the race.

Mickey took the hot spud from Martin’s fork, dropped it with a shriek of pain, picked it up again, and began munching it. You could have heard a pin drop as he partook of roast potato in the Paddock.

Once he had it all inside him, the crowd breathed a collective sigh of relief, Martin Holden smiled, and Mickey Croke accepted the Obstacle Race trophy to tumultuous applause. “It was a hard one to swallow”, he admitted in the pub afterwards, “but I have no regrets. And I’ll be back next year!” Further cheering ensued.

As night fell, dancing got underway in West Street. Though the sports day was held but once a year, happy couples danced lancers all year round on the platform beside the Creamery. On cold winter nights, they danced to warm themselves in the street: Mostly to music, but sometimes unaccompanied.

Danny O’ Shea, an uncle of Mick Kenny, played a mouth organ alongside the squeezebox men. One of the most accomplished dancers was Mick Walsh, who later emigrated to New York.

The sports days and dancing continued until about the mid 1930s. The dark spectre of emigration- or what Peter Roughan called the “Scatter that came to West Street and the rest of Callan”- led to the old Committee breaking up as the members went their separate ways, some to cross the Atlantic and others to board the ships bound for England.

The sound of dancing feet would never again be heard near the creamery gates in West Street. Like the sports days, the dancing on the street was consigned to history and the realms of folklore… to be spoken about at firesides in Callan, or in far-off New York, Boston, London, or wherever Callan folk had settled after saying goodbye to their native town and country.

Now, the memories too are fading. Where laughing couples once danced their hearts out… cars, vans, and lorries today line up for re-fuelling at the Top Shop, a symbol of progress and prosperity near the site of a humble but colourful past.

(More stories of those bygone times can be read in my book Callan in Words and Pictures, which is available from Amazon)