The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
ON Friday week, May 31, everyone in Kilmurry McMahon will be hoping John O’Connell can attend the Drumdigus National School reunion. John is the oldest surviving pupil of the school in Kilmurry McMahon, which was located where the community centre now stands, until the new school was opened in 1966.
The event will form the first leg of a June Bank Holiday festival in the parish. Rebel band The Kilkennys will play in the specially constructed marquee on Saturday, June 1, while Crystal Swing will return to the marquee the following night.
While John cannot recall his school days in great detail, he does remember enrolling in Drumdigus National School in 1920. The original school was opened in 1888.
Class sizes were quite large in those days, testament to the fact that most families were fairly large. However, most of John’s contemporaries have since passed on.
“They’re not here anymore. Not even one of them,” he noted.
In great form and very keen for a chat, John is planning to attend the reunion if at all possible.
“I think I’ll go. My daughter is up in Galway but she’ll make sure I’ll be able to be there,” he laughed at his home in Kinlea, Kilmurry McMahon.
John, who farmed all of his working life, has 16 grandchildren and six great grandchildren. He is very proud of his extended family but acknowledges that every now and then, he has trouble putting names on faces.
“I have a good few of them (great grandchildren) but I have a desperate job keeping tally of the names. When all those fancy names come up in front of me, I mix them all up,” he smiled.
All farmers have to be attuned to weather patterns. The recent fodder shortage in West Clare underlines how difficult farming is in 2013. However, John remembers a particularly inclement year in the 1950s.
“We got an awful bad year, black frost and everything. It nearly ruined the country. They’re talking about it being bad now for the farmer but it was nearly as bad that time. There wasn’t cattle or grub there. There was nothing there. I couldn’t throw an exact year into it but I often saw the cows coming in to be milked and they’d be making along by the ditches for to get footing to come in,” he recounted.
Just last week John paid a visit to Drumdigus National School where he met the current junior infants class. While more than 90 years separate them age-wise, they share the fact that all of them were educated at Drumdigus National School.
