Brian Gilhooly with a tale for the ages: featuring his Ma, The Fugitive and a little corrugated galvanised hut down below in Rosslare Strand.
The year is 1968 and my parents, Mick & Joan Gilhooly, are living at No. 2 Roches Road, Wexford, adjacent to Wexford Garda Station. Da had recently taken up a post as Superintendent Clerk in the ‘Chief’s Office’ at the rank of Sergeant, having just been transferred from Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow.
Ma hated living here because there were unruly neighbours — “of course we were all so perfect in every way!!” — and little privacy beside a main divisional Garda station for Wexford/Wicklow. Previously, they lived at Distillery Road opposite Pierce’s Foundry, where, if Ma put out the clothes on the line at the wrong time, they’d blacken slightly with smoke billowing from the factory. Ma said the rodents nearly needed menus they were so cheeky and plentiful, emanating from a river at the rear of the property called the Horse River. Also, the stairs was little more than a ladder with no landing at all; they just led straight to a room. Steps only, so you could look right through the creaking stairs.
Ma felt this experience of both properties to be akin to homelessness. Maintenance of any type was non-existent, even though the Garda house was OPW (Office of Public Works) “maintained”. Ma said, “If they were ghosts, they wouldn’t give ye a fright, Brian!” That whole system was top heavy and completely inefficient. The place was alive with “dead horses, waiting to be flogged”.
Community Spirit
But around this neighbourhood, there was fantastic community spirit, where we were all in the same boat and untouched by affluence or ego. Some of the best friendships that any one of us children ever made were formed around this part of the town. For instance, you had Roches Terrace, Clifford Street, Bride Street (upper/lower), Joseph Street, Green Street, Peters Square, Carrigeen Street — all teeming with children all the one age and similar interests. Ma said it was rich and affluent from the perspective of friendships and community — wonderful that way. The streets were your extended home, where everyone was rooting for and caring about each other.
Rosslare Strand
Anyways, a colleague of Da’s had inherited a little corrugated galvanised hut down below in Rosslare Strand. This is situated about 15 miles south/south east of Wexford town. Really popular beach destination and still is to this day. I’m open to correction here, but not in human memory did anyone ever unintentionally drown there, and Da always concurred with this. At the time the family car was a Wolseley 1500cc, registration number DNI 260.
Da comforting my brother John on the boot lid of DNI 260, at Rosslare, Co. Wexford.
The hut in question was one of maybe a dozen or so, situated on a hilly-holly gradient dune between the main road looking out across the sea and the beach. This was, at the time, a heavily overgrown ‘dune’ area, and still a bit that way to this very day. So a little holiday was in the offing whenever it suited during the summer holidays.
The Fugitive
Simultaneously, the tiny amount of TV Ma did manage to see at that time was The Fugitive, starring David Janssen as Richard Kimble.
David Janssen staring in the Fugitive in the middle 1960s.
She loved David and had watched the series all the way over a few years. This was one of only very few pleasures or vices that Ma really enjoyed. The final episode was due to air during their stay in Rosslare, but Ma just couldn’t miss this at any cost. You see, at that time there was no such thing as re-runs or computers, let alone the internet or YouTube, God love us. So if Ma missed the final episode, that was it, until maybe Sunday Mass that week to catch up with some friends about what happened.
All these goings-on with The Fugitive and the like meant zero to Da — even minus figures, if ye want to go there. Da would gladly watch cars rust before he’d watch anything like this. Down below in Rosslare, it was like the Mediterranean, with melting sun, ice cream, and Tayto’s on the go full belt with all the children. It was a great little economical holiday for my parents, with loads to do, and the sea hut was the perfect fit.
Ma ‘organising’ my older brother Michael just in front of the infamous ‘Fugitive’ hut.
Everything Set
Ma got onto Da about getting in somewhere to see the final episode of The Fugitive, as our hut had no such luxuries. With that then, a friend of a friend staying in another hut about 500 yards away said Ma was more than welcome to watch it there with them. They were visiting from Dublin. Their hut was green corrugate with a brown door, and they’d be expecting Ma at about 7.30. So everything was set, and Ma was so relieved that this was somehow sorted.
My parents were down in the Martello with the four kids at about 7, and they left there to make their way up the hill back to the hut, where Da would be on babysitting duty. The various huts were sporadically scattered about the dunes — nameless, boundary-less, and numberless. Plus, they were all the pre-1963 Planning Act, so no fencing or any type of regulations were about that time and would have been in short supply, d’ye know.
All set then, Ma made her way over to the hut in question as the clouds rolled in off the sea and the wind picked up slightly. With a bit of difficulty, rustling about the undergrowth and narrow walkways, she arrived and tapped the door. A strange, vacant-faced middle-aged woman opened the door and remained silent. Ma exclaimed, “I’m Joan, Mick Gilhooly’s wife. I’m here to see the last episode of The Fugitive. I hope you don’t mind.” With that, the woman, dressed in a long cover-all shawl, stood to one side, but totally silent.
As Ma made her way in, The Fugitive just happened to be on. Inside, there was another woman of the same age and only a two-seater couch. Ma introduced herself to the woman seated, but again met with total silence. Then the first woman made her way back in and sat next to the seated woman. Ma was left in the middle of the room, stranded, like she was on her own island in the middle of the South China Sea.
Oh God, Ma told me her blood started to run cold, such was the high-pressured and heavy atmosphere in the room. As Ma looked around, there was a child’s tripod stool, and she just went over and sat on it, but the TV was angled in such a way she could barely see it. The night continued to flow downwards because the signal started to fade, with cloud cover increasing outside. At that time, it was all just terrestrial aerial signal from the UK, and I’d bet it was one of the BBC channels as well.
The Enormity of the Silence
Ma was deaf with the enormity of the silence and the feel of the situation. Neither of the two women interacted with each other either, which added to an already draining situation. Ma said that she barely got to see half the episode, and towards the end it was a joke to even stay there at all, with the TV picture all fuzzed out! Now, it’s funny — Ma didn’t even care anymore about the final episode; she just wanted out of this uncomfortable place of hostile origin.
Then the brave decision arrived. Ma rose to her feet, thanked both women, and let herself out the front door, again in silence — it was the only door either way. As Ma closed the door behind her, someone had turned out the lights completely. Pitch dark. No sign of a guiding light anywhere. High gusting wind coming in off the Irish Sea and lashing rain.
Ma opened her eyes and closed them again, and there was hardly any difference.
Now she is the Fugitive herself!! The only thing was she knew she was upright — everything else was a mystery. Missing now was the distant barking and howling of the infamous “American Bloodhounds” in search of a “felon”, just like in the film Cool Hand Luke. Coincidentally, this film was just in the cinemas around this period. Jassus, Ma would be some ‘felon’ alright.
The Rosslare Dune Grass
The heavy dune sprawling grass could cut like razor blades, and its intended victim was Ma that night. God love her, she stumbled, rolled, fell, slid down passageways, totally disoriented and still suffering the lingering aftertaste of that embarrassing experience. How’s that for a mixture of emotions, with an onset of desperation starting? Prisoner to her surroundings now, she spent a good 40 minutes or so — she thinks, doesn’t even know the time — rolling about aimlessly. Don’t forget, this terrain is very hilly, and well as everything else it was throwing at Ma that night.
Eventually, she stumbled out onto the clear beach — bruised, cuts all over, drowned wet, shivering cold. The sharp cutting bristled, ‘cat-tongue like’, wild and un-caring dune grass finally succumbed to Ma’s iron will for survival. The dunes must have chucked to themselves, ”Ah well, ye can’t win them all, what harm anyway!”
David Janssen(AKA – Richard Kimble) 27 March, 1931 to Feb 13, 1980.
Even the bloodhounds are gone home; they’ve given up the ghost for the night. Now Ma doesn’t know which direction is up or down the beach. She can only just make out the waterline against the white Rosslare sand. So up along the beach she goes and finds a little walkway out onto a small boreen that leads to a roadway. Her compass is finally starting to kick in, and she eventually made it back to our hut, shaken but not stirred.
After all that, she still didn’t know whatever happened in the last episode of The Fugitive, but did find out in the next week or so at Mass. But she didn’t actually see that episode for nearly a year after all this!!
As Ma made her entrance into our hut, she resembled something that was actually in The Fugitive series, my God! Da was there, kids in bed, stove gas stove lighting, and a double Jameson in his left hand. He exclaimed, “You look like you’ve been chased by a crocodile, not a fugitive — what the hell?”
“Don’t even begin to ask me anything — just pour me a stiff one, quick!” Ma retorted.
The Rosslare Hut/The Fugitive Hut
From then on the infamous ’Rosslare Hut’ was known as the ‘Fugitive’ hut and Ma managed to abscond, unnoticed by the FBI. No further charges were ever brought against Ma, and the case went cold.
Just as you’re about to be completed consumed by the Dunes unexplained and insatiable interest in my mother, another cloud hung over the Rosslare district that year as an Aer Lingus light Aircraft floundered off Tuskar Rock.
This is the location of a lighthouse on obviously a tiny rock about 7/8 miles off the coast of Rosslare. Da was part of the investigation team, but actually how much involvement he had is unknown to me. He told me that while searching either Curracloe Beach out by the Raven Point or Rosslare, he and some colleagues came across a woman’s body. She was cut from her neck base straight across her chest. So she was missing her whole head, right arm and shoulder, God be Good to her gentle soul. Da said the cut was like a razor-blade used and her age was about 30 years old.
I’ve never even Googled this, it’s all pure memory with me. God knows, I wouldn’t even research myself, let alone a plane accident back in 1968, leave it so.
The only other thing that Da said about this terrible accident came in as one complete sentence, “Brian, a door on the plane was opened or self-opened and down she went, that’s it in a nutshell!”
God rest the gentle souls of all the occupants and indeed the people I write about here from by gone days.
(c) Brian Gilhooly
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