Yes, Miss Barry.
Take the last word, Mackey.Take it, take it, take it.
I will, Miss Barry.
Toby Mackey is a temporary telegram boy like me. He saw a film
called The Front Page and now he wants to go to America some day and
be a tough newspaper reporter with a hat and a cigarette. He keeps a
notebook in his pocket because a good reporter has to write down what
happens. Facts. He has to write down facts not a lot of bloody poetry,
which is all you hear in Limerick with men in pubs going on about our
great sufferings under the English. Facts, Frankie. He writes down the
number of telegrams he delivers and how far he travels.We sit on the
bench making sure we dont laugh and he tells me that if we deliver
forty telegrams a day thats two hundred a week and thats ten thousand
a year and twenty thousand in our two years at the job. If we cycle one
hundred and twenty-five miles in a week thats thirteen thousand miles
in two years and thats halfway around the world, Frankie, and no won-
der there isnt a scrap of flesh on our arses.
Toby says nobody knows Limerick like the telegram boy.We know
every avenue, road, street, terrace, mews, place, close, lane. Jasus, says
Toby, there isnt a door in Limerick we dont know.We knock on all
kinds of doors, iron, oak, plywood.Twenty thousand doors, Frankie.We
rap, kick, push.We ring and buzz bells.We shout and whistle,Telegram
boy, telegram boy.We drop telegrams in letter boxes, shove them under
doors, throw them over the transom.We climb in windows where peo-
ple are bedridden.We fight off every dog who wants to turn us into din-
ner.You never know whats going to happen when you hand people
their telegrams.They laugh and sing and dance and cry and scream and
fall down in a weakness and you wonder if theyll wake up at all and
give you the tip.Its not a bit like delivering telegrams in America where
Mickey Rooney rides around in a film called The Human Comedy and
people are pleasant and falling over themselves to give you a tip, invit-
ing you in, giving you a cup of tea and a bun.
Toby Mackey says he has facts galore in his notebook and he doesnt
give a fiddlers fart about anything and thats the way Id like to be
myself.
Mrs. OConnell knows I like the country telegrams and if a day is
sunny she gives me a batch of ten that will keep me away all morning
and I dont have to return till after the dinner hour at noon.There are
fine autumn days when the Shannon sparkles and the fields are green
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