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The Interview John Connor saw huge changes during his half century of service to Mayo County Council.
Long and loyal service
The Interview Michael Commins
THE man who never took a day off sick in his 50 years with Mayo County Council is hoping to journey down many new roads in the years ahead. John Connor from Aghatharn, Tooreen, has caught the travel bug and he and his wife Teresa are planning to see some of the charms of other lands. A prime ambition is a trip to Cape Canaveral in Florida to watch a launch of the space shuttle. John’s story with Mayo County Council begins three years before the Russians put the first man into space. It was 1958 and things were quiet in rural Ireland. “My father Jim was a ganger with the Council and he got into bad health. Joe Duggan, who was the engineer in Claremorris, came to see him one day and when he was leaving he said ‘Jim, haven’t you got a good strong young lad here who could go out to work?’. My father said ‘I suppose I have, but he’s not old enough to go out. He’s only 15.’ “Joe called back a few days later and said ‘I have arranged with the Council that your young lad can go out working with the men but he will get a shilling a day less than them until he’s 16.’ So that’s how I started at the age of 15. And from August to January, I worked with that arrangement and then I became a ‘man’ and got the extra shilling!” recalls John with a smile. This was still the era when the horse and cart were the backbone for the road-making process. Screen gravel would be tipped along at various spots. The men then filled the sand with their shovels into the cart and proceeded to fill the pot-holes and side-dress the roads. The same procedure was used for tar-patching. The old stone crusher was still in vogue back then. “Farmers would have heaps of stones stock-piled on the side of the road and the crusher would come along. The men would throw the stones by hand into the crusher. Men with barrows would then wheel the broken stone away from the crusher and stock-pile it before it would later be taken away for road-making and that was how it was done. “In relation to the tar spraying of the road that time, if you ever watch the film ‘Cool Hand Luke’, which starred Paul Newman, you’ll find them spreading chips on the road. It shows prisoners out in America who were brought out every day to do road-making and other things and they throw the chips on by hand with the shovel and that’s the way we used to do it. Small piles of chips left along the side of the road. There would be about ten men, the tar sprayer would go down along the road with the steam-roller pulling it and the men would throw the chips on the tar.” John Connor was a quick learner. And it didn’t go unnoticed further up the line. He was made a ganger at 18, a foreman at 24, and an overseer at 31. He became the youngest ever to hold all the positions with Mayo County Council. While he spent a few years in the Claremorris region, and the last four in the Swinford area, around 90 per cent of his time was as an overseer in the Kiltimagh region which swept out to Ballyhaunis and down along the Roscommon border to Carracastle. “The normal working week in my early years was 54 hours. In the summer time, we worked from 8am to 6.30pm from Monday to Friday and until 1pm on Saturday. I used to cycle from here up to Ballygowan bridge [just outside Claremorris] in those days back around 1959 or 1960.” Around 90 per cent of the roads were still sand roads at the time as the major tarring programme did not get under way until the early 1960s. “The main Galway-Sligo road came through Tooreen and Ballyhaunis until the new road was built between Charlestown and Kilkelly and that must be 35 years or more ago now. The road through Tooreen was known as the T11 at the time. The road up Barnacarroll hill was very quiet before the building of the road below Kilkelly. It was really just the link road between Knock and Claremorris back then. “There was great camaraderie between the Council men and there was no shortage of news and chat at the dinner breaks. We used to fill a bottle of tea and wrap it within in a woollen sock to try and keep it warm. As you can imagine, it wouldn’t be too warm in winter time when you’d fill it at half six in the morning and you wouldn’t be having it until around 12.30pm. “I remember one of the older men working with us at the time sitting down at dinner one day and saying ‘My lad was home from England for Christmas. He told me they have a yoke over there now where you can put tea into it and it will keep it hot all day.’ And one of the other men turned to us and said, ‘Well, Jesus, what will they think of next!’ We didn’t know what a flask was in 1959 or 1960.” John was there for the early stages of the ‘change-over’ as modern road-making machinery began to make an impact in rural Ireland. “The diesel rollers started to come and then the graders. I saw men gathering around to look at the first grader. Many of them thought that it still wouldn’t replace the shovel. The grader came from John A Woods in Cork.” As overseer, John had responsibility for the guidance and completion of numerous projects through the east Mayo region, among them the N17 stretch from Glann crossroads up to Corhavnagh near Shanvaghera. “We had to cut the big hill and lower it down. There was also the new road into Knock Airport and the Ballyhaunis link-road between the Knock and Claremorris roads. Myself and my colleagues were involved in overseeing and completing the fencing and preparation work for the Charlestown by-pass. It was a good one for me to go out on after all that time.” Years in the service led to many friends and a firm sense of comradeship. When something happens to one, the ripple effect reaches out to all. “The death of Robert Brannick from Ballindine was a big shock to all of us back in the mid-1980s. Robert was working with the Council when he got electrocuted near Ballindine while working on the new by-pass road. That was a big blow to the Council workforce. “Last year, the tragic death of Austin Carney from Mace, Claremorris was another big shock to all of us. Austin was known all along this area. What made it even sadder was the fact that he was on his last week with the Council before his retirement. “Mayo County Council has had a very good safety record over the decades. I suppose I was l very lucky and have a lot to be thankful for that no one had ever a serious accident in my whole term of 47 years in charge of jobs.” The biggest single thing that happened around the region during John’s years with the Council was the building of Knock Airport, the project which is synonymous with the late Fr James Horan. “For a good many years during the 1980s, it was the big talking point every week. People were coming there from all over Ireland because it was such a national controversy at the time. There were around 35 lorries hauling in material for months and months. Frank Harrington and his team showed great leadership and vision in those times.” When a capacity crowd gathered in the Cill Aodáin Hotel in Kiltimagh before Christmas to pay tribute to John at the end of his long career with Mayo County Council, many compliments were paid to the man from Tooreen. During his 50 years, he worked with four different county engineers, TP Flanagan, Joe Egan, Paddy McMyler and Joe Beirne. He also served along with 13 area engineers since the 1970s. One person John singled out for special mention was Bernie (Hyland) Groarke who served as secretary in the Kiltimagh office for 27 years and who had acquired a vast knowledge of the workings of the Council and the geography of the area covered from the office. John is married to the former Teresa Walsh from Kilkelly and they have a family of five, daughter Marina and sons Gearoid, Shane, Damien and Ivan. Last September, John and Teresa enjoyed a lovely vacation which saw them visit Niagara Falls, parts of Canada and back down through the New England states. They were also in New York for the St Patrick’s Day Parade in March. More trips abroad are already beckoning now that they can take life at a more pleasant pace. “I’ve always had an interest in the Space programme. Some day I hope to be at the launch of one of the shuttles at Cape Canaveral. There’s one thing that I did see around two years ago and I don’t think there are too many who saw it. I watched the launch of the space shuttle from Cape Canaveral at 9.50pm on Fox News. I was watching it live there on the television and I went outside and, 18 minutes after it was launched it came in over Ireland and I saw the solid rocket booster dropping off and that was away out over the Atlantic. I saw that happening from the hill 100 yards down the road there.” From sand roads to Knock Airport and watching the space shuttle pass over Ireland, John Connor has seen huge changes since a boy growing up in Aghatharn. And with John’s infectious enthusiasm, there should be many other new avenues to travel down and more horizons to explore. He is one Tooreen man who will take it all in his stride … and that’s for sure.
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Speaking on Newstalk, Alan O’Reilly of Carlow Weather cautioned that “warning fatigue” is taking place amongst the public due to the regular occurence of weather warnings
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