It was the late 1960’s and it was rural Ireland at its ruralest - a small remote parish in the far-flung outer edges of East County Limerick - out there with our bitterest hurling rival, Tipperary no more than a good puck of the sliotar over the road from us.
I was maybe eight or nine years old at the time and I was walking back from Hennessy’s shop with an ounce of plug condor for my father’s pipe. I was approaching Judy Webb’s cross when a shining new hunter-green Morris Minor car pulled up beside me, and a very tall elegant elegant-looking man with fancy duds, that reeked of moth balls, got out of the passenger seat and asked me where the accordion player lived.
I had wanted to tell him that there were two accordion players but I was terrified of strangers back then and all I could do was point him in the direction of home - I did though manage to tell him that he lived at the bend of the road, at the mouth of the passage and the big conker tree just inside the snowcemed walls.
He got back in the car and the woman who was driving him made the left at the cross and as I stood there watching after them, I wondered which accordion player were they going to meet first.
We lived directly across the road from my uncle Frank and both Frank and my father were accordion players. It was a beautiful summer's evening and the blackberries were ripe and plentiful on the ditches at both sides of the road.
While I was tempted to run home to see what the strangers wanted, I just couldn’t resist those gorgeous ripe blackberries that were totally irresistible.
As I stood there stuffing my mouth like a wild starving savage, the music from both accordions came back the road against me.
I wanted to learn how to play the accordion and carry on the tradition - but I never did. I am a singer and I never had to be taught how to be that. I am a storyteller, like my uncle Frank and I’m a dancer, like my father.
I could visualize the two of them, standing out there in their respective cobble-stoned yards — their eyes closed and playing away to their heart’s content.
There were many times like that evening, when the accordions came back the road against me.
It’s still one of the most treasured memories of my childhood
My father is 93 now and he is the last of 14 siblings that still remain with us.
*Pat Greene, formerly of Co Limerick, now lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can find him on Facebook here.
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