Stephen Kearney – The day my universe changed

It happened on a fine August day in 1968.  I was waiting at a bus-stop in Ballsbridge, an up-market Dublin suburb,  on the last leg of the journey, returning home from a seemingly healthy, (apart from smoking), camping holiday in the southern county of Waterford.  I had completed secondary school only two months before and at the age of 17, in the words of the old cliché, had my whole life ahead of me.  Contrary to the sales pitch, it didn’t look like much of an opportunity to me. I hadn’t actually thought much about the future apart from a long shot hope of perhaps, joining the army or the bank and just maybe “saving up to buy a   little car” and even these were hopelessly remote prospects.   A few years before, the Old Man had given me one of his many moralistic lectures (ol’ no. 56) about how I’d have to do better in school, pointing out that it would not be just for my benefit but for my “wife and children”.  Ha! – that was pretty rich.  His lectures over the years, occasionally invoking some of the family as a kind of chorus, had persuaded me that I was both unemployable and unattractive. Well, at least I’d never be disappointed.  So I’d never have a job or a woman, no matter what I did in school – or anywhere else.    It just wasn’t going to happen – apart from begging on Dublin’s streets, as I used to tearfully imagine only a few years earlier, crying myself to sleep. And yet,  some other weird strand of parallel programming suggested that, somehow, almost despite the conditioning, jobs and wives would    evolve automatically anyway.   I’d seen the future both in realistically likely and automatic versions and they both looked like a bummer.  But perhaps that was the way life was supposed to be.  Life, as lived by the parents,  themselves products (and victims) of austere Catholicism, was simply a series of drab duties; you had no right to expect any happiness in this life, and no-one seemed particularly enthused about the next one either.  Limbo on the other hand, was where good, but unbaptised people went after death. Those who failed to get baptised, the priest explained to the class, clearly sympathising with their  plight, would experience only worldly pleasures for eternity. Suddenly Limbo seemed a lot more attractive than heaven and every guy in the class, good Catholics all,  wanted to go there.  Alas  it was too late – unless you could get your baptism rescinded.  The Devil always had the best tunes. What was the point of it all?  Combined with the then prevalent idea that your childhood was the happiest time of your life, I used to think that if this was the good bit, I’d hate to see the rest.  Why did anyone bother?  I used to wonder  why there weren’t mass suicides.  And then it happened.

Up the road, fresh off the Dun Laoghaire ferry, came a huge, mechanical monster, gleaming in black and chrome, piloted by a warrior encased, head to foot, in black leather, his woman sitting snugly behind in similar attire, except for a leather mini-skirt completing her ensemble.  In a crescendo of thunder, this vision, utterly beyond words or comprehension, roared past and in a few seconds its sight and sound had disappeared.  But the memory had not. I was dumbstruck.  I had been hit by an armour-piercing shell.  That was the way to travel – and live!  Suddenly, the prospect of a job, even in  the unlikely event of me ever getting one, seemed no more than just the route to the dead end dump of a life. Like Toad of Toad Hall, I was smitten.

I don’t know what the bike was but it was big, black and British – and to that 17 year old, it was, quite simply, the coolest thing on the planet.  Naturally, I had been aware of bikes in a general way but they were small and red, sometimes blue, and made weedy buzzing noises and came from Japan.  I must admit, though, that I thought they were pretty cool too – until that day.   Of course the guys at school who owned them thought they were big: it might seem strange now but the Honda 50 – yes the step-thru – was considered the standard heavy bike in the Ireland of the time, at least to the youth.  Many saw it as a status machine.  Indeed, around that time there was a small ad in the classifieds  of the  Evening Press, Dublin’s main evening paper, which began “One of the fastest Honda 50s on the south side …..”  These things traded on the image of speed and power in contrast, for instance, to the NSU Quickly or Velo Solex mopeds – and I mean a moped in the original sense of the word in that they had pedals like a pushbike.  To start them you had to pedal them like a pushbike too, which was seriously uncool and made you look like an old geezer. One of my sisters had an NSU Quickly which sort of proved the point and I once overtook a Velosolex borne nun on my bicycle.  Man, these things were for weeds!   The Honda 50, on the other hand, had power, prestige and a manly kickstarter.  This was a serious, heavy bike and deserved respect: I used to get irked by the four Monkees in the introduction to their 60s TV show riding Honda 50s on the beach in an irreverent manner like they just weren’t taking the bike seriously.

Above the Honda 50 was the Honda 90 – the C200 with a proper petrol tank between your knees –which was considered very serious metal indeed.  And then, right up at the top of the tree, the crème de la crème, the King Kong of bikes was the Honda 125 Benly, which apart from its size, boasted two cylinders no less.  Nothing on the road could be bigger or faster.  In modern advertising hype it would have been described as “awesome” which is exactly what a few of my lucky classmates,  proud owners all, made of it too.

It is worth pointing out that, at least to any casual observer, the traditional biking scene never really penetrated into Ireland, certainly nothing like it did in England, and what little there was, seemed to have died out by the early 1960s, leaving behind only the Velosolex and NSU mopeds to represent the daily commute before the Japanese stuff arrived in the mid 60s.  Of course there were some scooters, mainly Lambrettas, but they were excluded by my juvenile filter system.  Scooters? Schmooters!  And then there were the old British two strokes like the BSA Bantam or Francis-Barnett Fulmar (what the heck is a Bantam or a Fulmar anyway?) but these were seen as even more old geezery, ridden by ancient men shrouded in exhaust and cigarette smoke who couldn’t afford a good coffin, and did not really register either.  The Japanese bikes did!  The Honda 50 caused quite a stir when it first arrived: it used to be advertised on Dublin buses and on national radio – “Are you a Honda mover?” I remember my brother pointing out to the Old Man the ease with which one tackled a local hill on only 50CC, a previously unheard of feat, apparently.  Biggest rival to the Honda was the Suzuki 50 which soon followed: Honda had the reputation for durability, Suzuki for speed.  From around 1966, Yamaha started making a gradual appearance and were considered quite stylish.  Only the small commuting models of the various Japanese makes were imported into Ireland and certainly none of the sports versions.  125cc seemed to be the biggest size available and to most people, that seemed more than enough: to some it was downright huge!

But these motorcycles, objects of respectable consumer desire, as reflected in the famous advertising strapline “You meet the nicest people on a Honda” were still very much of the world of mortgages, of conformity, of mowing the lawn and going to church – and then on to heaven, presumably.  This was the world epitomised  by Mr. Dylan’s “get dressed, get blessed, try to be a success”.  These bikes were for those who belonged!  Somehow they were part of a world from whichI would be forever excluded.

That was the world as I knew it. It was simply the way it was.  Change, excitement, expression, fulfillment and adventure were simply not on the agenda in an Ireland stifled by conformity and religion – and fear!  Fear of being different, fear of being laughed at, fear of trying anything new.  The safest thing to do was to fast forward your life from 17 to 70, never knowing anything different in between and never, ever drawing attention to yourself.  It was just the way it was – until that fateful day.  Suddenly, being excluded felt good!  And that was the day my universe changed.

The Day My Universe Changed.r2©  Stephen Kearney October 2020