Hard Times and a Yellow Submarine
by Peggy Hernon
Have you ever had annoying music planted in your head? A dopey song on the car radio gets to you while you sit in traffic, or background music at a mall seeps into your brain while you shop. For me, it was the old Beatles song, “Yellow Submarine” played over and over on a toy flute by a child who was departing with his family on the 10.15am Aer Arann Islands flight to Inverin this morning. His parents, grandparents and grand aunt had identical, “Isn’t he adorable?” smiles, but I thought my eye might start ticking before I got them boarded. The crew had bolted for the garage at the first chorus. When the kid paused for breath, I asked him gently if he knew any other songs to play. He promptly started “Yellow Submarine” one more time, from the top.
I watched the flight depart with the crew at the fire truck. “That was brutal”, said a fireman. “No, it was Mozart”, said the student trainee, “we had it in school”. The rest of us didn’t say anything. Some things are best not pursued.
A group of hikers were departing next, but first I wanted to finish up some ticket summaries and clear them from my desk. When I got here 16 years ago I was a rather arrogant A-student who believed there wasn’t anything that I couldn’t learn if I really tried. Attempts to learn the Irish language soon humbled me. I took two separate beginner courses but never got beyond a handful of polite phrases. When my husband took over management of Inis Mor airport, he asked me to help him temporarily with the office work - ticket sales, cashiering, record keeping and the like. I had worked in brokerage in New York before I married and moved to Arain, but I was worried that the country that invented the Irish language might have come up with something equally challenging for numbers as well. To my relief, one plus one equalled two at Aer Arann just like on Wall Street, and tallying, recording and reporting methods were also exactly the same. “Temporarily” is 11 years now, and somewhere along the way it dawned on me that I probably have the best job on the island.
The walkers departed at 10.45am on two aircraft that brought in a group of French visitors who will depart on two aircraft at 3:45pm. The flight schedule today is something like a Wimbledon tennis match programme: Doubles all day to 6.15 pm, with singles at 1.45 and 4.15 pm.
A family arrived on the 12.30pm flight with flowers, presents and an enormous birthday cake to celebrate the 90 th birthday of a relative who is a resident at Aras Ronain, the island nursing home. Later this week, a summer day trip is planned for the Aras Ronain residents and escorts. They’ll depart from here at 9.15 am and return from Inverin airport at 5.30 pm. Don’t think for a minute that this will be a quiet group; there will be as much excitement and irreverent chatter as a school trip to a football match. The elderly residents can’t handle the pier or the boat gangplank, but a flight is manageable for them with some extra help from the staff at both airports. The matron told me that whenever there’s been a long spell of bad weather that keeps the residents housebound, on the first sunny day afterwards, she’s sure to hear, “Get the plane now, Mary. Call the plane.”
The aircraft sat out after the 12.30pm flight until the first departure of the afternoon at 1.45pm. The pilot, Alan Grimes, stopped to talk with the crew then headed inside for lunch and the Sudoku puzzles in the newspapers.
It is said that every person has a “doppelganger”, a ghostly exact double. I’m inclined to believe it, having seen Alan’s double in a film made in Nashville, Tennessee in the 1960s. I love old rock music, so one night after dinner I sat down to watch “Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits In Concert” on the Performance channel on Sky. In a few minutes I was up and standing four inches from the screen to watch Alan’s double play lead guitar in Roy’s band. I called my husband who took a look and said “Jesus!” and scrambled to tape it for pilot Alan as the resemblance was that remarkable. Alan’s double wore cowboy boots and a string tie, but he was as reserved and self-contained as Alan-the-Pilot. The band members were all dedicated musicians, not there to entertain the audience as much as to interact with each other and produce the kind of music that is as potent as a quart of Jack Daniels. Alan’s double doesn’t appear in any Roy Orbison footage after 1969. We figured he had to leave Nashville in time to show up in a pram in Mayo in his next reincarnation as Alan Grimes, future pilot. No, that isn’t far fetched when you live on a Celtic island.
I was glad the weighing scale has a 350 pound (25 stone) capacity for each of three brothers who left on a flight at 3.15 pm. People everywhere are getting bigger. Eleven years ago average weights were 180 lbs for a man/140 for a woman; now average weights are 210/180. The brothers were well above average. When I seat passengers on an aircraft I remind them to fasten their seat belts and turn off their mobile phones. For this flight I was tempted to add, “And eat your green & leafy veggies and lay off the sweets!”
I saw off the French group who departed at 3.45 pm on two aircraft that brought in a group who will attend a wedding tomorrow at Tempeall Ciaran. St. Ciaran’s Church is an early Christian site that has a holy well and a Celtic standing stone to mark it as a sacred place. Starting a new marriage at Timpeall Ciaran embodies the hope that the union will last for as long as the west wall has been standing, and that is since the 7 th Century A.D.
When check-in for the single flight at 4.15 pm was completed, I went outside to say hello to a friend of mine who’s a regular commuter. In the course of chat, I mentioned that I still had a song in my head from this morning, and she told me the way to dislodge it was to replace it with a different song. She looked at me expectantly. I started to sing “Everyday” by Buddy Holly, very softly, but she stopped me. She said I needed something with more punch, something with enough power to blow the submarine to smithereens, so to speak. Then, in full voice, she launched into “Hard Times” by Stephen Foster, a folk song that rings like an anthem. I jumped in at the chorus as did several passengers, and those who didn’t know the words clapped along in time. By the third chorus we were into it and rolling like a gospel choir of ten. We sang the final chorus one more time for good measure as the aircraft landed and taxied in:
“There’s a song, a sigh, of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door,
Oh, hard times come again no more!”
The student trainee brought the luggage trolley out from the garage onto the tarmac. He glanced at us but didn’t say anything. Some things are best not pursued
Have you ever had annoying music planted in your head? A dopey song on the car radio gets to you while you sit in traffic, or background music at a mall seeps into your brain while you shop. For me, it was the old Beatles song, “Yellow Submarine” played over and over on a toy flute by a child who was departing with his family on the 10.15am Aer Arann Islands flight to Inverin this morning. His parents, grandparents and grand aunt had identical, “Isn’t he adorable?” smiles, but I thought my eye might start ticking before I got them boarded. The crew had bolted for the garage at the first chorus. When the kid paused for breath, I asked him gently if he knew any other songs to play. He promptly started “Yellow Submarine” one more time, from the top.
I watched the flight depart with the crew at the fire truck. “That was brutal”, said a fireman. “No, it was Mozart”, said the student trainee, “we had it in school”. The rest of us didn’t say anything. Some things are best not pursued.
A group of hikers were departing next, but first I wanted to finish up some ticket summaries and clear them from my desk. When I got here 16 years ago I was a rather arrogant A-student who believed there wasn’t anything that I couldn’t learn if I really tried. Attempts to learn the Irish language soon humbled me. I took two separate beginner courses but never got beyond a handful of polite phrases. When my husband took over management of Inis Mor airport, he asked me to help him temporarily with the office work - ticket sales, cashiering, record keeping and the like. I had worked in brokerage in New York before I married and moved to Arain, but I was worried that the country that invented the Irish language might have come up with something equally challenging for numbers as well. To my relief, one plus one equalled two at Aer Arann just like on Wall Street, and tallying, recording and reporting methods were also exactly the same. “Temporarily” is 11 years now, and somewhere along the way it dawned on me that I probably have the best job on the island.
The walkers departed at 10.45am on two aircraft that brought in a group of French visitors who will depart on two aircraft at 3:45pm. The flight schedule today is something like a Wimbledon tennis match programme: Doubles all day to 6.15 pm, with singles at 1.45 and 4.15 pm.
A family arrived on the 12.30pm flight with flowers, presents and an enormous birthday cake to celebrate the 90 th birthday of a relative who is a resident at Aras Ronain, the island nursing home. Later this week, a summer day trip is planned for the Aras Ronain residents and escorts. They’ll depart from here at 9.15 am and return from Inverin airport at 5.30 pm. Don’t think for a minute that this will be a quiet group; there will be as much excitement and irreverent chatter as a school trip to a football match. The elderly residents can’t handle the pier or the boat gangplank, but a flight is manageable for them with some extra help from the staff at both airports. The matron told me that whenever there’s been a long spell of bad weather that keeps the residents housebound, on the first sunny day afterwards, she’s sure to hear, “Get the plane now, Mary. Call the plane.”
The aircraft sat out after the 12.30pm flight until the first departure of the afternoon at 1.45pm. The pilot, Alan Grimes, stopped to talk with the crew then headed inside for lunch and the Sudoku puzzles in the newspapers.
It is said that every person has a “doppelganger”, a ghostly exact double. I’m inclined to believe it, having seen Alan’s double in a film made in Nashville, Tennessee in the 1960s. I love old rock music, so one night after dinner I sat down to watch “Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits In Concert” on the Performance channel on Sky. In a few minutes I was up and standing four inches from the screen to watch Alan’s double play lead guitar in Roy’s band. I called my husband who took a look and said “Jesus!” and scrambled to tape it for pilot Alan as the resemblance was that remarkable. Alan’s double wore cowboy boots and a string tie, but he was as reserved and self-contained as Alan-the-Pilot. The band members were all dedicated musicians, not there to entertain the audience as much as to interact with each other and produce the kind of music that is as potent as a quart of Jack Daniels. Alan’s double doesn’t appear in any Roy Orbison footage after 1969. We figured he had to leave Nashville in time to show up in a pram in Mayo in his next reincarnation as Alan Grimes, future pilot. No, that isn’t far fetched when you live on a Celtic island.
I was glad the weighing scale has a 350 pound (25 stone) capacity for each of three brothers who left on a flight at 3.15 pm. People everywhere are getting bigger. Eleven years ago average weights were 180 lbs for a man/140 for a woman; now average weights are 210/180. The brothers were well above average. When I seat passengers on an aircraft I remind them to fasten their seat belts and turn off their mobile phones. For this flight I was tempted to add, “And eat your green & leafy veggies and lay off the sweets!”
I saw off the French group who departed at 3.45 pm on two aircraft that brought in a group who will attend a wedding tomorrow at Tempeall Ciaran. St. Ciaran’s Church is an early Christian site that has a holy well and a Celtic standing stone to mark it as a sacred place. Starting a new marriage at Timpeall Ciaran embodies the hope that the union will last for as long as the west wall has been standing, and that is since the 7 th Century A.D.
When check-in for the single flight at 4.15 pm was completed, I went outside to say hello to a friend of mine who’s a regular commuter. In the course of chat, I mentioned that I still had a song in my head from this morning, and she told me the way to dislodge it was to replace it with a different song. She looked at me expectantly. I started to sing “Everyday” by Buddy Holly, very softly, but she stopped me. She said I needed something with more punch, something with enough power to blow the submarine to smithereens, so to speak. Then, in full voice, she launched into “Hard Times” by Stephen Foster, a folk song that rings like an anthem. I jumped in at the chorus as did several passengers, and those who didn’t know the words clapped along in time. By the third chorus we were into it and rolling like a gospel choir of ten. We sang the final chorus one more time for good measure as the aircraft landed and taxied in:
“There’s a song, a sigh, of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door,
Oh, hard times come again no more!”
The student trainee brought the luggage trolley out from the garage onto the tarmac. He glanced at us but didn’t say anything. Some things are best not pursued
