“Lucky”
March 15, 2023
This week’s prompt is LUCKY! I’m guessing it’s because St.
Patrick’s Day is coming up and everyone knows the saying, “The luck of the
Irish”! So, let’s talk about those Irish!!
Picture it – Ireland, March 2020, just before the world shut
down from a Covid-19 Pandemic. I’m sure that conjures up a great deal of words
and memories for those of you reading this, the least of which “lucky” is NOT
one of those words, but we were in Ireland looking for more ancestors of the
Gallagher clan. Our trip was planned for
March 8- 20th. Here we go!!
We arrived in Dublin early in the morning Monday March 9th,
2020 – the red eye flights suck! We were tired but rented a stick shift car
that drives on the left-hand side of the road and drove into Dublin during
morning rush hour. Getting to our hotel
was like going through a maze making all left turns when our hotel was on the
right. Silly us, we thought we had to follow
the rules of the road and continued making left turns, until we made a U-turn
in the middle of the road and finally made it into the hotel. The question was, would they let us in so
early in the morning when check in was about 4pm? We got LUCKY – our room was ready,
and we got some sleep.
The saying, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a
lamb” seems to hold true for Ireland. It
was cold and rainy and snowy. We left
Dublin for the town of Bundoran in the county of Donegal to find our B&B. Driving
was a bit of a challenge when it was snowing and the roads were narrow. Mark kept getting stuck in 1st
gear. After a while I just started laughing at the whole situation. We safely made it to Bundoran.
By Wednesday, we started getting notifications from our
daughters that this Covid thing was getting bad and we needed to be careful.
Word was it was highly transmissible and caused death. I felt we were pretty safe. Who in their
right mind goes to Ireland in March when the weather is this bad!! We were the
only ones in our B&B – we even got to pick out which room we wanted.
Thursday, March 12, we went to St. Patrick’s Church in
Ballyshannon – the Gallagher’s hometown in Ireland. The church is in Kilbarron Parish and it was
beautiful! And right in the center of Ballyshannon, so walking around was
easy. The Parish office was on campus
and we walked in and found a young man named Ray who was in charge of
digitizing church records. We explained
to him that we are in search of Gallagher ancestors. He was able to give us the baptismal records
for Mark’s grandfather, Charles Francis Gallagher as well as his siblings and
the church marriage record for James and Margaret!! How LUCKY is that!! Now off
to the Abby Catholic Cemetery in Ballyshannon, we were sure to find some
Gallagher’s there, right???
If I were Steven King, I would have the right words to
describe the Abby Cemetery on March 12th in the afternoon. So,
instead I will say, “It was a dark and stormy” afternoon! The wind was whipping
through us and the rain was cold and almost horizontal. The cemetery was very old and the older
graves were towards the back of the cemetery.
The graves were right next to each other all with rocky boarders wet
with moss and dirt. Since Mark’s family would have been buried there in the
late 1800’s we had to trudge over these graves and read each one to find a
Gallagher or McGloin. We did find some,
but none of the names looked familiar.
Mark gave up quickly – it was not a pleasant experience. I want to go back. He says he’ll never do
that again. We were LUCKY there were no ghosts!!
We also found a museum in a small section of a department store and met two men who were self-
proclaimed historians of Ballyshannon. They were a wealth of information. We knew of a public house that Mark’s Uncle Pat McGloin had on Eastport called the Railway Hotel in the 1800’s. The day before we walked up and down the street looking for what might have been Pat McGloin’s public house to no avail. The guys in the museum picked up the phone to find out who owned the Railway Hotel and who owns it now. That’s how we found the “Bullfrog” Bar – the current name! This bar was named for the “Bullfrog Blues” by famous rocker Rory Gallagher. No direct relation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GvQ5gNKsQ4
Another LUCKY find!!
We were able to see a wee bit of Ireland but realized that
the United States would be issuing a travel ban starting March 13. We were not able to reach anyone to change
our tickets despite Mark being on the phone on hold for hours, but we were able
to purchase one-way tickets back to the US for Saturday, March 14, 2020. We left before sunrise to drive across the
country from Bundoran to Dublin. We dropped
off the car and got into the airport only to find the line to go through immigration
and customs for the US (in Ireland you go through customs and immigration on their
side when coming to the US) was about ½ mile long. No masks, no distancing, just a lot of
confusion and thousands of wayfarers trying to get home, all huddled in narrow security
lanes. We finally get to immigration and
I passed through without any problems. Mark is pulled off into a closed room
and I’m waiting outside that room unclear what was going on. After about 30-45min he finally comes out and
says that he was quizzed as to what other countries he was in this past
week. He let them know it was only Ireland,
but they wanted him to PROVE it.
LUCKILY, he had pictures on his phone everyday we were in Ireland –
including when we went to the Beleek factory which is a stone’s throw from the
Republic of Ireland and is technically in Northern Ireland – supposedly a different
country. They finally let him out and we
were able to catch the plane which was delayed due to the backlog at the
airport.
WHEW!! What a trip!! Although it was a whirlwind, we had a
good time and were LUCKY to find the info we found and to get out safe and
sound without covid!!
