Twelve of us golfers, along with five wives, and some kids, decided to go to Ireland and play some of the best courses that the Emerald Island had to offer. One of my main concerns was the IRA bombings that were still taken place in Northern Ireland at that time. Since, I was completely arranging the whole trip; I was concerned that we had to have a bus driver for the guys that would be able to move us from course to course, from accommodation to accommodation with no incidents happening. I was also arranging for a separate driver for one of the wives and her kids. The other wives were totally on their own, having a large rental vehicle to tour around in Ireland at their own leisure.
I was looking at hiring someone that was IRA connected, figuring that would be our safest bet. The company that I work for is totally made up of American Irish Catholics, so I started asking several of the Irish managers if they had any relatives back in Ireland that were IRA connected, of course, everyone at my company denied any ties to the IRA. I did finally end up with a couple of names of tour drivers in Ireland, so I called them both up on the phone and personally interviewed each of them.
The first fellow that I talked with, Michael Collins just did not make me feel very comfortable or convinced me that he would make sure that we all would remain out of harms way. The second fellow on the other hand that I talked with convinced me that I should absolutely hire him, although he flatly denied any knowledge or relationship with the IRA. Something deep inside of me kept saying to stay with this guy, Donald O’Shea, he’s connected somehow, and I was right.
Donald O’Shea and his partner Jim O’Leary helped us get on Ballybunion’s Old Course, which I was unable to do at the time. I had arranged the entire tee times at twelve of the top rated Irish courses in Ireland, plus three of the top rated courses in Northern Ireland, but I was not able to book Ballybunion Old Course when I wanted it. So, I booked the Ballybunion New Course. It was going to be a trip of a lifetime.
I told Donald of all the courses that we were playing, the castles and manors that we were booked to stay at, all I needed him to do was to drive us from place to place quickly and safely. He agreed, although in his own Irish brogue he said to me, “Ballynunion New Course is a piece of crap, you want to play the Old Course.” I told him that I could not get on the Old Course on the day that I wanted. He told me not to worry, he would arrange it and son of a gun, he did it (this guy had connections).
When we were driving around in the bus, Donald finally did break down and started disclosing information about the IRA, after we all kept hammering him constantly with questions about the IRA. He started telling us that his parents and grandparents were all IRA connected, all having dead at the hands of the Brit’s. He swore to us that he was not IRA, but rather just a small golf tour operator, who never commercially advertised his business. None of us believed that for one moment. He would only talk about the Catholic and Protestant strained and segregated relations in the bus. Outside of the bus no politics were ever discussed at all, that was his only rule, which we all honored. We learned a hell of a lot about the IRA and the Brits. Hell, Donald even took us to two allegedly active IRA pubs, one in County Cork called, The Black & Tan Arms, and the other on our way to Dublin called, Dead Man’s Wooden Leg. Again, the rule was no politics to be discussed or spoken in either pub, just drink the Pint (Guinness), throw some darts and talk about golf. Both pubs were very old, very dark inside, with the smell of stale cigarette smoke, the smell of stagnate brew permeating from the floor boards and the local patrons sipping the pint, while eyeing us indiscriminately.
We finally crossed over from Ireland into Northern Ireland one bright sunny warm afternoon, after our round at the Royal Dublin golf course. You could not help but immediately notice the change in the quality of the roads. You went from a very narrow two-lane road with no shoulder on either side of the road, to an extremely wide two-lane newly paved blacktop highway with same quality of paving on either side of the shoulders. When we crossed this demarcation line between Ireland and Northern Ireland, Donald told all of us in the bus to put our beers down, look out the buses windows on either side, both to the east and to the west. You could barely see them, but there about 1 mile from the bus in either direction, were two British Army Lynx helicopters hovering about 100 yards off the ground, just ready to descend upon us.
Donald said that those Brit’s were now scrutinizing us with their long range surveillance lens’s, determining whether or not we were moving illegal arms or bombs into Northern Ireland. He said that if we were not stopped within a mile or two of the border, we were considered safe and no threat to the British people or army. We were not stopped. Hell, we are just a bunch of yahoo golfers from Peoria, not gun toting smuggling IRA activists.
We continued straight to the Portstewart golf course in Northern Ireland, teeing off around mid afternoon. Unbeknownst to us, there was a bombing that took place that afternoon just outside of Belfast in Omagh, where 29 people dead and some 220 were injured. It was the very last major bombing that the IRA did before both sides finally agreed to a mutual peace treaty.
The wives were not as fortunate as us, since they crossed the border that day in mid afternoon, just hours after the bombing; they had to go through check point Charlie at the border, which the British army immediately set up. The wives had to get out of the cars, show their passports, open up the trunk of the cars, open up their entire luggage and withstand verbal and a no nonsense dialogue with the soldiers with machine guns pointing directly at them and their cars. There was no joking around or pleasant conversation being spent with these soldiers; it was a very serious and tense atmosphere. They finally were allowed to pass through, were everyone of them were thoroughly unnerved by the events that took place that day.
We stayed about 20 miles west of Belfast in a small country estate, called the Dunadry Hotel, which was about 40 miles away from where the bombing actually took place. Several of the wives wanted to fly back to the states that evening. I kept telling the ladies that the IRA doesn’t bomb two days in a row and that our drivers assured us that we were completely safe. Donald had promised us all that if anything was going to happen on our trip, we would not be in harms way. Once again, he was correct and somehow well informed.
This country manor estate had a Scottish wedding going on that evening. My wife and two of the other wives saw several men wearing Scottish kilts and asked one of them what they wore underneath the kilt. They found out rather quickly, as he lifted up his kilt to reveal that there was absolutely nothing under the garment, as we say here in the states, those fellows were going commando, and he was very proud of his Johnson, or should I say his O’Johnson.
We had a great time that evening, eating, drinking, and then playing golf the very next day at Royal Portrush, staying one more evening in that hotel and then driving back to Dublin to catch our flight back home, all safe and sound. As the Irish say, “May ye live to be a hundred years, with one extra year to repent.” Or, “May ye be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you’re dead!”
