Chapter 8
Back at the apartment, plans are thin but suggestions are being liberally flung about the
room. Brendan wants to tour the windswept Blasket Island Center-an homage to the last
group of inhabitants on the most western island chain in Europe. Erin, bleary after a
sleepless night courtesy of Ti-Ti’s ripsawing, is eyeing a rarely attempted early-morning
nap. Brooke wants to explore the possibility of a 30-mile bike ride across the entire
Dingle peninsula. And Despite a breakfast of digestive biscuits, scones and dense
molasses sweetened bread-all of it buried under wads of Irish butter -Ti Carol is hungry
and ready for lunch. “Nutin’ heavy. I dunno, maybe some steak or somethin?” Her tone
doesn’t deserve the question mark.
Absent the necessary votes for anything else (Brendan’s tour suggestion is reduced to
rubble by Ti-Ti’s appetite), we slog off toward the Oven Door Pizzeria and its sign
advertising, ‘Really Good Pizza…Honest”. We are greeted by my wife’s cousin Eoiffa
(pronounced Eeefa, they tell me) who looks dizzy and a little horrified. She shows us to
a table for 7 then looks around for a rock to crawl under. Along with the requisite
uncomfortable kisses and hugs, Eoiffa is also forced to submit to the unfailingly
descriptive memories of her Yank cousins. “Do you remember the last time we visited?”
Brendan says, “You and Brooke shared a bed and in the middle of the night you had an
accident and soaked everything, I mean everything.” I think I notice Eoiffa’s skin
actually melting away from her body as Brendan continues. “Soaked right through to the
mattress—we couldn’t believe it.” If this is Craic we’re experiencing, I’m guessing
Eoiffa isn’t feeling it.
After finishing lunch we go to meet Brooke at a small pottery store across the street—the
first of several that we’ll march through this day—and she’s beaming. “They’ll put
whatever names we want on these coffee mugs.”, She says, “I’ve got like 6 or 7 that I can
think of already.” Brooke is wide-eyed and spooky. Pottery shops affect her much in the
same way laboratory-mescaline effects test-mice. She moves around, a little disoriented,
pawning things until she either buys something or promises to come back when she can
‘focus a little better’.
It’s just before 2pm and after picking up staples at the grocery store, we stop into
Flaherty’s Pub for several pints and some live music. In his travels, Brendan has
developed a friendship with a local musician dressed in an alarming combination of
patterns and fabrics. Gray, herringboned wool pants, a green suede vest, a chocolate
colored tweed cap and what appears to be a rayon-influenced Irish soccer jersey complete
Aiden’s outfit. Aiden makes his living roaming from Dingle pub to Dingle pub, playing
for tips and sweating like a mechanic. He had been hammering on his squeeze box out in
front of the grocery store when Brendan dropped several Euros into his hat. So begin
friendships in Dingle.
While each of us continue to swill our way through the Guinness, Dehlia takes off her
coat and begins jumping about on alternating feet. She is doing something that closely
resembles dancing absent any actual rhythm. She jumps, squats, freezes then repeats.
Her movements are so erratic that people are giving her increasing amounts of space,
eventually spotting her the entire run of the cold, cobblestone floor. When she realizes
everyone’s watching, she stops and buries her face in my lap. I try to coax her on with
another sip of Guinness but she’s ‘barassed’ as Ti-Ti Carol suggests and, much like
myself, would do well with a long nap.
Outside the pub we’re greeted with bright sunshine and the September gait of tourist
season. Like any beach resort back home, September is the month locals begin taking
their town back. While Dingle still carries an air of out-post Ireland, right down to the
speaking of Irish as a first language for many and as a second for just about everyone, a
revived Irish economy won’t be denied, even here.
Traffic into Main Street shops is brisk, with Germans accounting for 50% of those
looking for the perfect piece of Leprachaunalia. I watch a fat-kid crying outside of
Murphy’s Ice Cream on Strand Street-his empty cup sitting in front of him not unlike
Aiden’s empty hat. He’s either whining for more, or aching from too much already, I
can’t really tell. Considering the pace at which he’s lapping at the praline-drizzle on his
hand, I’m guessing it’s the former. His mother yanks him into a shop with fragile vases
and clay pots out in front—past one of those ‘Please keep your kids, especially the
praline-covered ones—under control’ signs. I don’t get the sense that sticky little
Augustus is much of a sign-reader though. He topples an ornate looking planter on his
way in and his mother gives him a whack, sending him into a bawling fit. It appears that
Gus may be in for a long day.
Erin and Ti-Ti Carol have had enough and head back to the apartment with a fading
Dehlia in tow—choosing an afternoon of snacks and television over a trip along scenic
Slea Head Drive with the pottery-hungry Brooke, Mema and Lori. Along the scenic 30
mile amble from Dingle to Ballydavid, pottery shops spring up like pox ; The Aisling
Geal, The Banshee, An Tuirninlin, Penny’s. These shops vary broadly in size from petite
to extra small and are mostly no larger than a single room with a window, a few shelves
and several dozen pots, vases and urn-looking things.
By afternoon, the sky is about as blue and cloudless as an afternoon sky gets in Dingle
which is to say it’s partly cloudy. Between the clouds, though, are long reaches of deep
blue that drop and blend into the equally blue North Atlantic. The uninterrupted horizon
stretches on for hundreds of miles without land mass to break its pace. It sort of makes
me dizzy to look at it when we stop for pictures with Brooke’s parents. I try and focus on
a fishing boat crawling its way out toward open ocean to settle my perspective while
Brooke fidgets with the camera and snaps off a few pictures of Brendan and Lori.
Brendan is still singing stanzas of ‘Carrickferigus’, a heartfelt love song and ode to an
emigrant’s lost home along Antrim’s Northeast coast. He has sung each of the songs
several refrains and has a peaceful look about him—one of blue skies, fishing boats, Irish love songs and family close-by—that no pottery shop could muddy. One shop, however,
is about to give it a go.
As we drive west along the Slea Head Road we take in enormous views of Ventry Bay
and the towering Skellig Michael . This massive rocky detachment is home to an 8 th
century monastic settlement. Hermit monks lived here in obscure beehive huts—their
main contact with the outside world being trading ships stopping between Spain and
Scandinavia. Next to it is a smaller island, Little Skellig—a breeding ground for seagulls
with 6-foot wingspans called Gannetts. In 1865 Western Union laid the first transatlantic
cable from here to Newfoundland. It was in use until 1965. The 1,600’ Mount Eagle
rises across from Little Skellig and marks, officially, the end of Ireland. From where
we’re driving, and thanks to clear skies, we can almost make it out.
About 15 miles into the Slea Head trip, we come across the grand-daddy of Irish
potters—The Louis Mulchay Pottery Shop. The lot is only 1/4 full as we pull in just a
few minutes before closing. Brooke and Lori have narrowed their focus and have limited
their conversations to topics related to the purchasing of pottery. Mema also appears
interested in checking things out but her curiosity level rises or falls to that of the
collective, so it’s a little difficult to tell. She’s appears more concerned with a small
white dog and a speckled cat tearing at each other out on the potter’s front lawn. Lori
and Brooke don’t care so much about the pets. They head inside leaving me several
yards behind and Brendan still in the front seat listening to music. “You go ahead” He
says, I’ll catch up. By the time I look back, he’s already asleep.
Inside the front building is a small room with pastel-colored walls lined with standard
pots and vases. It seems like a small, manageable spot until I turn up a narrow flight of
stairs and find the second floor. There’s another room brimming with tea-cups, platters
and ceramic tiles that leads to another (and another and another) in depressing succession.
Just when I think I’ve reached the final room (this being an appropriate name to give the
space where I find small glazed tiles used as pet headstones), I find a passageway that
leads to another. I finally stop at a small kid’s table and sit on a small chair to take a
drink of water. A 6 year old is sitting next to me giving me a ‘Mister, end my pain” look
before Mother rushes him away toward more browsing.
In the end, the ladies spend a total of 90 minutes touching Louis’ pottery but buy nothing.
‘We were just exploring a little.” my wife says, “We’ll be back in a few days when Julie
gets here.” Julie is Brooke’s older sister who’s scheduled to touch down in a few days.
Equally obsessed with the stuff, I can’t imagine adding her into this mix. On the way out,
past the sign that says, ‘Management reserves the right to lock your loose children in a
damp closet until the authorities arrive”, we pass little Augustus and his parents who have
apparently signed up for the same potter’s-crawl as we have. His eyes are red and he’s
goose-stepping in line behind his mom and dad who have that extinguished patience look
that defeated parents sometimes get. If Gussie breaks loose in this place, the closet will
seem like a vacation compared to what his parents’ll have planned.
It takes a few minutes for our eyes to adjust when we get outside. The day is still bright
and the windowless pottery shop (Mr. Mulchay wants you to lose your sense of time and
perspective much like casino’s do) has done nothing to prepare us for it. We find
Brendan sitting, sleeping, upright in the mini-van with the white noise of Irish talk-radio
as his backdrop. He stumbles awake when we unlatch the door, and fires off a series of
rhetorical questions “. What an afternoon huh? Where’s the pottery? Where’s the next
stop?”, knowing full well that several pottery shops could be found (in any direction)
down the road in Ballyferriter, Dunquin, and Ventry.
We pull out of the gravel lot and eventually wander back onto the Slea Head Road. On
our way back to Dingle we pass by crowds of grazing sheep on one side of the road and
90 degree drops into the Atlantic on the other. We pass by gawking tourists, obviously
deranged bikers and snapping photographers. We pass by archeological ruins and
ghostly settlements untouched since the potato famine(s) of the mid 1800’s. Pottery
shops are noticeably absent from our return trip. “Isn’t Ryan’s Pottery around here
somewhere?” My wife says, referring back to one of her previous visits.
Brendan draws our attention to The Lord Ventry Estate. As we drive by, we see palm
trees, magnolias, fuchsia and other exotic looking flora introduced to Dingle by Lord
Ventry in the early 1700’s. Because of the mild, gulf-stream cradled climate, Fuchsias
line the roads all over the peninsula and redden the countryside from June through
September. Brendan tells us that the country receives over 100 inches of rain a year, that
there are actually 40 separate shades of green in Dingle and that the Ventry Estate is now
home to an All-Gaelic school for 140 girls. Bored to near-sleep, the ladies completely
miss the Ryan’s Pottery sign on the left-hand side of the road. In the rear-view mirror,
Brendan gives a quick look back before returning his attention to the road. He’s smiling.