My Uncle Dinny – stage 4 speech

Mr Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters and welcome guests. Each summer from the age of two until I was about seventeen I went to my mothers home place in Donegal. The Gallagher’s were hill farmers in the townland of Glassan, 3 miles from the village of Creeslough, and about 16 miles north of Letterkenny.

Glassan lies on rising ground and so on a good day, if you look to the north, you will see the sparkling waters of Deep Sheephaven Bay. To the west lies the majestic Muckish mountain, it’s shape offering instant confirmation of the accuracy of it’s naming. Look east and you have the much smaller but none the less impressively named Crocawooma. PAUSE

For as long as I can remember we went to Donegal for 6 weeks each and every summer. I have memories of summer days that seemed never ending. I also have memories of long dreary wet days. Those soft days when the rain seemed to fall sideways and seep up from the ground beneath you. Days so wet that they could go on for weeks on end. But that didn’t matter because my Uncle Dinny had a turf shed and he had a tractor garage. All I needed was that shed and that garage. My brother and I could do as we wanted because we could do no real harm. We built forts out of turf sods. And we built machine guns out of bits and pieces of wood that we found lying about the place.

PAUSE But as I grew older it was my uncle Dinny that became the focus of my attention. In a city it is hard for a young boy to be useful. On a farm any pair of hands is useful. I could drive cattle, I could dig potatoes and I could turn hay. I was even allowed to drive a tractor.

And the best of all, I had my uncle Dinny’s undivided attention. Dinny never married. He had no children of his own. He was full of questions about my life in the city, about what I did in school and really seemed interested in what I had to say. That same level of attention was not available to the fifth in line in a family of six kids. PAUSE

Well, time went by as it must and in my late teens I went less and less often to Donegal.When I had children of my own I was able to return and introduce them to my uncle Dinny and to the place where I had spent so many summer days. The images of childhood are often viewed through rose tinted glasses. We remember the good parts. Yet there is often so much that we fail to see. I’m thankful that I had occasion to visit my uncle Dinny in his later years. Whenever I was working in and around Donegal, I would make a special effort to go and visit my Uncle Dinny. We would have tea stretched out before the cream coloured range. I can still smell the turf fire and hear the big clock ticking as it always did.

PAUSE It was on one such visit that I got a deeper insight into the life of this quiet man. One evening as I told him about the stresses and strains of my job and how sometimes it got a little bit too much for me, he started to tell me about the time a few years before when he had had to visit a psychiatrist because of stress. He explained how he too had felt the pressure of his job. I couldn’t believe my ears. Yet I felt honored that he felt at ease enough with me to tell me something of his inner life .

You see, my uncle Dinny was the local contractor before contractors were a business. Everyone said he was a master of machinery. In fact his neighbors said that he could fix anything and I believed them, because I had seen him do it, time and time again. For many years he had the only tractor in the locality and so it would fall to him to harvest his neighbour’s crops. Having the only machinery thereabouts, he felt an enormous responsibility for their livelihoods, meagre as they were.

PAUSE He went on to tell me how some evenings in the late summer, while one neighbour sat where I was then sitting, another neighbour stood in the shadows out by the turf shed, waiting and often a third further down the yard. He told me how after Mass on a Sunday, the priests final blessing still ringing in his ears, a queue would form wanting to know when he would be able to do this or that job for them.

I’m sure he got paid for his work and I’m pretty sure that the taxman didn’t see too much of it but that was not the problem. In those days if the rain came too soon, the hay could lie sodden on the ground for weeks, its quality draining away into the boggy soil. The turf might not get harvested for months and poor quality provided more smoke than heat. But these people were his neighbors. They depended on each other in ways that few of us today can understand. That sense of responsibility towards his community weighed heavily on his shoulders and gave rise to stresses within him that few of them would be willing to acknowledge.Mr Toastmaster