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Molly's Boy
Down The Long Road
The adventurer on safari
Excerpt 4
Going down to the Dublin docks was a real adventure. You drove your tractor, large Ford Major or little Massey Ferguson, each with a front loader and trailer attached and you raced through the streets like a charging chariot. You had to have your clearance dockets in order and then when you got to the correct docking shed find a checker to clear them for you. The machinery waiting to be collected could be muck spreaders on wheels, which could be towed, or piles of front loaders or rotavators or forks or buckets or hay machines; the whole gamut of farm machinery. These had to be pulled out of the heaps and handlifted or hoisted with the front loader onto the trailers. This was tough physical work and you could easily get a gash or worse if you were not watching carefully. If you parked your tractor and trailer in the wrong place and it was blocking a docker they might dump it on the bed of the Liffey. The Dublin docker fought for his corner and if you messed him around, especially coming from a suburban import company, you might find your tractor and trailer playing with the fishes. The docks was a tough yet stimulating environment and I have never tasted a better sausage sandwich than was provided in the docks canteen by the Liffey river.
You had to make urgent deliveries to all the train stations in Dublin. These were spare parts for machinery which had to be with the customers urgently so at the end of a long day you had to tear around at break neck speed from Kingsbridge and all the other stations down to the Point, which is now a concert centre, and used to be the depot for north west rail traffic. You learnt to drive fast and hard and would go screaming down the Dublin quays and up the back streets and know all the short cuts. You were a professional rail dispatch driver and I would time myself on these runs to see if I could knock minutes off. Even though I say so my self, I was a sharp driver. On occasions you had to bring heavy machinery to the station to be lifted out from your van or trailer by crane and hoisted into the train wagon. This particular crane driver down in the Point had a habit of lowering and crashing the hooks of his crane inches away from your ears and scaring you half to death. He was bored with his job and this was his way of bringing a spot of light relief into the proceedings. I remonstrated with him in the language of the sidings and he became upset. He was a large and angry man and he poured himself out of the crane cockpit and was slowly descending to tear me to shreds. A fellow driver was there from Farmhand, a strong no nonsense country man, and after further conversation the crane driver went back up to his perch and rolling his false teeth round looked for another victim.
I was driving up from the docks on a tractor pulling a huge load of front loaders which were a dead weight. The traffic lights ahead were turning red and a car stopped just before me. I put my foot on the brakes and with an ever increasing sense of astonishment felt the whole load keep going further as the weight of the equipment on the trailer pushed me into the back of the car. The poor driver was of course shocked and upset and I apologised and admitted it was all my fault and said I would report it immediately to my firm as soon as I got back. I saw Mr. Scrivener when I returned and when I said that I had admitted liability he went ballistic. He said when you are in an accident you never admit to be in the wrong; you just give the details and let the insurance companies fight it out. But that was the end of it as far as he was concerned and it had taught me a valuable lesson when driving with heavy loads especially on icy, slippery and wet roads. We also had a jeep for a while and what power that was to drive through Dublin. I was the adventurer on safari and the citizens of Dublin became wild beasts as I tore past them through the flora and fauna of the cottages and tenement dwellings of the city's northside.
All texts are ©1999
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