End of an era for bus driver Paddy

When Paddy Murray parted his curtains in Kildimo, Miltown Malbay on Monday, March 1, his view was clearer than it had been for 30 years. He wasn’t sure if he liked what he saw, though. But Paddy knew that he was bound to be hit with a withdrawal symptom or two.
“When I got up on the Monday, looked out and she wasn’t there…” he muses, his voice trailing off. 
“That’s the first thing I’d do at 8 o’clock. Put on the clothes, go out and turn on the key. She’d be running away then and I’d sit into her at 9 o’clock and up the road. But when you’d look out and she’s not there, it’s a big change. The fact that she was there for 30 years, between schools and service, t’was a long time. It was part of me,” he reflects.
Paddy had developed such a deep bond with his bus, he treated her like a friend. When he parked her for the last time on February 26, he knew he would miss it after 30 years of propelling her on behalf of first CIÉ and latterly Bus Éireann. Yet, more than Paddy hanker after the bus, which is no longer parked outside his wall.
“There’s one particular women; when she looks, that’s the first thing she’d miss. Especially on the Sundays and the weekends; t’was always parked seven days of the week outside the place,” he explains.
Even a trio of a neighbour’s donkeys, who Paddy often gives water to first thing in the morning, appear to have picked up on the absent vehicle.
“In the morning, when I got up and looked out, they were at the wall and the bus was gone. The three of them were staring at me,” he remembers.
While Paddy dealt mostly with people in his bus driving days, he’ll never forget the day he transported the contents of a small zoo from Limerick to West Clare, along with a quota of humans.
“Wait till you hear this,” Paddy laughs. “I had five dozen day-old chicks. A woman had them in her lap inside the door. I had a Jack Russell inside in a cage, a bird and two cats farther back. T’was like the zoo when you had all of them inside together.
“The cat was mad to get out to get at the chickens; the Jack Russell mad to dive on the cat. Then the chickens would get pure silent and a young fella might come up from the back and he’d lift the box and look in. They’d start again. You’d be afraid they’d come out. You’d never catch them. Sixty of them. It was some day,” he recalls.
He remembers giving advice to a passenger with a canary after another journey. Paddy even spent time in her kitchen in Kilkee, insisting that the canary’s safety was in mortal jeopardy.
“The young lady was after giving £15 for a lovely canary. She was afraid to put her hand in to take him out. So a big Persian cat jumps up on the table. I said ‘are you going to take him out now or do you want the cat to do it? He’ll be gone out the door with him like that’,” he remembers telling the canary owner, snapping his fingers. He can recall their conversation word for word.
“I dipped in and I put him into the cage. She had the cage left in the middle of the table and she looking in at him. I said ‘where are you going leaving that bird now?’ ‘There,’ she said. ‘On the table.’ I said ‘you have to be joking. The cat will be gone off with him, cage and all. You’d want to hang him off the ceiling. The cat won’t be able to reach him there’.”
Unfortunately, the canary’s owner didn’t listen. If she had, maybe her canary would have enjoyed a lengthier innings. Two weeks later, Paddy met her again. He wasn’t too surprised when she filled him in.
“You were right,’ she said. ‘Didn’t I leave him down feeding him one day and went out to get seed and the cat had him gone. He went out the door against me with the bird in his mouth,” Paddy remembers her telling him.
Another evening, Paddy loaded 15 Dublin women in Limerick. They were on a hen party and were heading for Kilkee.
“I thought we’d never make it,” Paddy gulps, years later. “They got on with me at half five below in Limerick. We didn’t get into Kilkee until about half nine, stopping to go to the toilet every five minutes.”
Their instruction was clear and he delivers their command in his best Dublin accent. “‘Let me out. I’m burstin’. If you don’t let me out, there’ll be an accident in the bus,” one of the 15 told him.
The women didn’t forget about Paddy when he dropped them at Kett’s in Kilkee. He went in for a cup of tea to steady himself but they fed him and landed a pint glass in front of their driver. “There was 40 pound coins inside in it,” Paddy marvels.
“‘We would never have got here only for you,’ one of them said to me.”
Although full-time with CIÉ and Bus Éireann since 1980, Paddy first drove a bus in 1971. He then piloted a delivery truck from 1971 until 1976, before diversifying a bit.
“I was a milkman, a postman, debt collector and then in 1980, the vacancy came up and I went in on the schools run. I was on schools from ’80 to ’95,” he says.
When he worked on the Limerick–Galway route, Paddy routinely dropped students off near their houses. They didn’t have to live near a bus stop. It suited them and it didn’t bother Paddy. He liked their style and remembers being delayed in Crusheen one day with a busload of 55 laid-back students.
“There was an accident above in the road there about a month ago. A couple of cattle got killed. I got a phone call to say the road was closed. Normally in that case, we’d go by Ruan into Tubber or you could go to Corofin and you’d still come out in Gort. But there was a funeral in both places, so we had to sit it out until the road cleared,” he says.
One of Paddy’s student passengers had an alternative plan though.
“This big fella says ‘we’ll go into Fogarty’s’. He said ‘the road will be well cleared by the time you get us out. We’ll be all drinking big pints and the women will be on vodka and red bull.’ He was pure serious about it,” Paddy says, shaking his head in admiration. The driver had a question of his own for the ‘big fella’.
“I said ‘are ye going to bed now when ye g’up’? ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘We’ll be out drinking pints till 12 o’clock.’ The students were great. A different league altogether. Recession or nothing bothers them. They’re a happy bunch. They’re just a crowd in their self. They’ll have their own chat and banter behind in the back. What happened and how many pints were drank and who met who.
“But I never yet had to sweep the bus after them. Never had to clean up a bus after anyone yet and I was going up and down for four or five years steady,” he reveals.
Paddy, whose wife passed away 10 years ago, loves his country music as much as he loved bus driving. He is heading to Nashville next year to see George Jones in concert. He loves Big Tom McBride’s music and has known him since the mid 1960s.
“Tom and myself go back to 1967, when he first pulled into town to the marquee in Miltown Malbay at the back of Vaughan’s garage, with a big blue transit. EBI 859,” he remembers was Big Tom’s number plate.
“I travelled to see him that time in the ’70s, three or four times a week. I’d travel miles to country music.”
Now aged 62, Paddy could have stayed driving for a few years yet. But he’d have lost his company bus and would have had to work irregular hours.
“If I was to stay on, I’d have to go in from Miltown Malbay to work. I was the junior minister with the state car for the last 15 years. I was losing my state car, so I’d have to drive into work everyday and home. You wouldn’t know what you’d be at. To do it, you’d nearly want a flat in Limerick, especially in the wintertime. You’d never make it home,” he feels.
In the end, Paddy could have driven the likes of the Kilrush–Ennis road blindfolded. Familiarity didn’t breed contempt, though. He loved being behind the wheel.
“I’d miss a stone off the road, I was so used to it. That’s a fact. I enjoyed it. They were great years. But you have to like it. It’s no use being there if it’s a job just to pay the bills. I’d know a character straight away when I’d see them coming up and we did have a few of them,” he smiles, perhaps realising that it takes one to know one.