Mayo broadcaster to launch book of short stories
Widely-known Castlebar broadcaster Peter Killeen will launch his book of short stories, Friends of My Youth, at Bridge St., Castlebar, on Saturday, November 27, at 6 p.m.
The launch will be performed by his son, Professor Jarlath Killeen, and Peter's good friend John Healy will make the introductions while Declan Durcan will provide an insight to the book's design.
Friends of My Youth is about the lives of a group of boys and girls from McHale Road in Castlebar, growing from childhood to their middle teenage years between the years 1953 and early summer 1961.
The stories draw you into the very heart of the adventures, misadventures and misdemeanours of their childhood through to the angst and pangs and the joys and heartbreak of teenage romance. Although their relationship to each other is often peevish and grumpy their friendship is deep and abiding.
As you turn the pages of the book you step into their world where the only curfews are meal times and the only restrictions their own endurance.
Saleen Lake on the outskirts of the town, which is now a mere pool, was a focal point of their lives and a recreation spot for grown-ups as well as children from the Station Road/McHale Road/Mons Terrace area of the town.
There they swam and smoked, schemed and connived and later courted and kissed on its green grassy shore.
Lough Lannagh was known as Church Lake and was rarely visited.
The magnificent stadium that is now MacHale Park was then known simply as the Sports Field and was used by the children of McHale Road as a playground for all types of sports and games.
While Friends of My Youth follows the protagonists from 1953 to 1961, each story is complete in itself and is like a window into the different stages of their lives, which combine to give a kaleidoscopic vista of their emergence from children to teenagers at the time that the word teenager came into vogue to describe young people between the ages of 13 to 19 and become a distinctive class which distinguished it from childhood and adulthood.
As teenagers their playgrounds moved from the wide-open spaces to the confines of the dance floors in the Tennis Pavilion or the summer marquees and the laminated tables in the Moira Café in Rush Street and its star attraction, the Wurlitzer Jukebox.
This wondrous machine housed a collection of the latest hit 45s from Elvis, Fats, Buddy Holly, Every Brothers and most of the other Rock ‘n’ Roll stars of the day. There they devoured plates of sausage and chips while the jukebox devoured their sixpences and shillings.
Friends of My Youth opens a door on life in Castlebar in the middle years of the 20th century when the town was much smaller, shops were smaller and money was elusive.
Most of the shops and businesses in the stories no longer exist, lost to what is euphemistically referred to as progress.
The book opens with a poem, appropriately called Friends of My Youth, and we then plunge headlong into the world of our band of adventurers as they stride across the pages undaunted by setbacks and ever optimistic in the quest for romance.
This is a book to settle down to on these long dark winter’s nights to be transported back in time and when you read the last word on the last page, you’ll be impatient for the sequel!