A bright yellow Buick Wildcat arrived in Rockfield

PART TWO

ROCKFIELD, Turlough, native Joe Doherty contributed a nostalgic article for the Parke & Turlough magazine ‘Yesterday & Today 1911-2011’ in which he recalled emigrating to London, writes Tom Gillespie.

He wrote: In the autumn of 1960, following a ‘late night’ interview in a pub in east London, I talked my way into a job in Oslo, Norway, as a ‘pipe lagging specialist’.

While I never lagged a pipe in my life I survived the experience for two months on great money and returned to London in December 1960.

My sisters at that time were in New York and it was always on my mind to go there on a visit. I returned to Ireland for two weeks at Christmas and on January 21, 1961, I headed for New York City.

I only intended to stay for four or five weeks but I met a lot of friends there and my sisters insisted that I stay until St. Patrick’s Day. Paddy’s Day came up and it really changed my mind. The experience I went through on Paddy’s Day was out of this world.

The way Irish people were treated, I felt I just came down from heaven. Everybody loved you. It was so great, so important to be Irish after what I went through in England where you were ashamed to wear the green on the bus or the subway. They would look at you as if you had two heads, so what an enormous difference. My first Paddy’s Day in New York was one of the greatest days in my life.

I decided to wait here and change my career completely. I spent the next couple of weeks going round to building sites trying to get on as a carpenter. I had some experience from what I learned in the ‘Tech’ (Davitt College) in Castlebar, and it stood to me.

I got work on a building site doing some second fix and met up with a few lads from Mayo and we decided to go out on our own. They were known as the Delaney brothers from Ballyhaunis.

I was working with Austin and his brother Jim, and another Mayo man, Kevin Deacy, in a house on the outskirts of New York in Westchester County on the afternoon of November 23, 1963. A knock came on the window, a woman screamed, and said ‘Come here quickly’. I said: ‘What happened’. She said: ‘The President has been shot’. We were all in shock but continued to work; we thought it might not be that serious.

An hour later she came back and told us President Kennedy was dead. It was unbelievable, one of the greatest Irish descendants of all times - dead. It was a terrible shock to America, Ireland and indeed the world. Everyone of that era and to this day can remember where they were on that day.

After that the New York World Trade project commenced and we got work for a year or so and made very good money before we went our own ways.

In the meantime, I used to do a bit of singing and playing my guitar. I was in the Tuxedo Ballroom, New York, one night and they got me to sing. I sang a few country songs and the owners (who were from Roscommon) liked what they heard and offered me a few ‘gigs’. I used to do country songs, got a lot of publicity in The Irish Echo, and became known as ‘The Cowboy from Mayo’. To this day that name has stuck with me.

It was 1969. I was after buying a brand new Buick Wildcat. It was some piece of work, bright yellow with a black vinyl roof top, and you would look at it twice here in New York, never mind Rockfield.

I decided to go on a trip to Ireland and take the Buick Wildcat with me. I got it on the QE2, the second voyage of the QE2, and headed for Southhampton.

We were in mid-Atlantic the night Armstrong landed on the moon. After a week in London we drove them all crazy looking at the Buick Wildcat before we headed for Holyhead on our way to Rockfield. First stop there was Galway, then, of course, Castlebar, driving them all nuts there as well. We had a wonderful vacation but got it back in one piece to New York.

My next adventure was a pub. I built the whole thing and turned it into a Country & Western Irish pub, with all the paraphernalia, from guns to you name it. It was a small place but a great success. We called it ‘The Ranch’.

I hosted many Irish groups, including, in 1972, the Castlebar Mitchels Football Club when we put some of them up. They talk about it to this day.

I had the pub for a few years and sold it on before I got a much bigger place. We completely renovated it (I and my two business partners). We made it into a huge Country & Western Irish pub.

Then I started taking Irish bands over from Ireland, many bands including a local band from Crossmolina, the Merryboys - the Duffy brothers.

They were playing there one night and that’s how I met my good wife - Mary Anne Miller from Sligo. Her sister was going out with Tommy Duffy. I got introduced and, as they say, the rest is history. We got married and got a very talented daughter, Dawn Doherty, and, of course, our son, Dean, who is in New York with me.

I spent the next 10 years in the pub business and I then decided it was time to do something new.

I made a complete U-turn and started a new business called Precision Windows. It’s fabricating and installing brand new custom wood windows for old designated buildings. There is a commission called the Landmark Preservation Commission and they control all the older buildings in New York City. For the past 30 years (this was up to 2011) that’s what I have been doing and, of course, going back and forth to Ireland.

Concluded.