Growing up in a fishing village like Cheekpoint in the early 1970s, nets were part of the everyday scene in the community. They lay around in the same way tractors and machinery hang round a farmyard. Nets for fishing the weirs, trawl nets including beam and otter,...
Because I was raised in a traditional fishing community and went to fish as a child, I often took for granted what others consider magical. But there was one such phenomenon is what we call locally "Fire in the water", that never lost its appeal. And although it was...
As children in the 1970's one of our favourite games was Cowboys and Indians. Everyone wanted to be John Wayne, or indeed Clint Eastwood as it was the era of the spaghetti western. On one occasion we were making a lasso out of some rope in the yard when my father fell...
If I had a penny for the number of people who asked me what was the factory across from Cheekpoint with the big chimneys I'd be wealthy. Of course those distinctive 450 foot chimneys, which belched black smoke into the atmosphere for just over three decades, were part...
Happy La le fhéile Padraig, an occasion for the “wearing of the Green”. During my childhood I really looked forward to it and particularly the nine am mass at Faithlegg Church. I guess the mass stands out, as in those days before it became a "festival" the day was a...
We celebrated the Waterford Harvest Festival recently which had a significant input from the local Grow it Yourself GIY project. Its a philosophy that I have subscribed to with my wife Deena for many years, and I have my grandmothers generation to thank for...
In 1932, a Hungarian sea captain, Rudolph Udvardy, who was master of the MV Honved,was in the port of Waterford with a cargo of Maize. To free up berth space, the Honved dropped down to Cheekpoint, where she anchored while the ship waited for an outgoing cargo....
I recently recalled the selling of Salmon in Cheekpoint. In conclusion of that piece, I mentioned the practice of running fish, a means of earning a bit of extra cash for some of life's pleasures, which invariably meant drink and cigarettes. Because the...
Being from Cheekpoint, I've often met people both at home and abroad with positive memories about the village or its inhabitants. Its usually a connection with an individual but also recollections of views from the Minaun, the meeting of the three sisters, or a meal...
A picture paints a thousand words they say, and that was proven yet again recently when Catherine Heffernan posted to the Cheekpoint Faithlegg and Coolbunnia Facebook page. The photo was of the Morning Star II, the pilot boat that operated from Cheekpoint when we were...
As a salmon fishing village, Cheekpoint, like all the others in the harbour, had to have a means of selling their fish. In our case we either had to travel to sell them. Or, when we were children in the 1970's, the buyers traveled around to collect the...
I'm occasionally asked what I miss most about drift-netting for Salmon. When it stopped in 2006 I was fishing on a part time basis, but I refused to participate in the buy out of licences, preferring instead to hope for a return. So when I answer, I'm usually a bit...
Have you ever wondered why a palm tree stands in Faithlegg graveyard. Well Faithlegg Graveyard's Palm Tree is a symbol of love. It marks the grave of Captain Rudolph Udvardy, a Hungarian Sea Captain. He fell ill while aboard his ship the SS Honved at Cheekpoint in...
I've mentioned before that I first came to live in the Russianside with my grandmother, Maura Moran, in my late teens. "Nanny" as she was called was in the family had her own way of expressing herself. But of course, she was just a different generation, and from an...
As the Reaper and the other Cheekpoint boats proceeded downriver, we were joined by the Passage and Ballyhack men, forming a convoy of decked and half decked motor boats of varying size and power and a multitude of colours. Depending on the tides, the Passage...
It was about this time of year in 1983 that I got my first taste of fishing in the deeper waters of the harbour around Dunmore East and the Hook. It was a strange and confusing place that was more dangerous and unpredictable than the fishing I had known...
Regular readers may be surprised to learn that I have something in common with Abraham Lincoln, Joe Stummer and Rod Stewart. Well As a fishermen in the 1980s Cheekpoint, and in the depressed economy of the time, you quickly learned to take a few pounds wherever...
I was never great at school. But one specific class I can remember as a highlight was a lesson one day on placenames. I don't recall if it was a planned session, or if it was an aside. But Michael White who was principal at Faithlegg was talking about how important...
Paddy Moran was an old school fisherman. He was a brother to my Grandmother, Maura Moran, and I knew from her, just how hard she, Paddy and her other brothers worked the river from their earliest years. With the arrival of better nets, outboard motors and relatively...
Today marks one year of blogging about my community and giving a sense of just how rich this area is in terms of history, heritage and culture. A theme that runs through the writing is how the ordinary becomes a little more, once you take the time to look more...
I've often mentioned that the Cheekpoint of my childhood was a very different place to what it is today. One of those major differences was an active Herring fishery which was not just water based, but also provided land based employment. Back then the herring...
I first began fishing eels commercially in the spring of 1984. Pat Moran asked me to join himself and Gerry Boland as the previous year had been so hectic. I jumped at the chance and in the next few days there was a lot of hustle and bustle in preparing...
It was a March evening in 1993 and my brother Robert had joined me with Pat Moran and Dermot Kavanagh as they sorted oysters on the back of a trailer in the Mount Avenue car park. It was promising to be one of those frosty evenings, dry and cold and very...
As a young boy fishing in the river, the one thing I hated more than anything, was keeping up to the nets with an oar. Pity the boy that let his mind wander and the boat blow off the nets, or worse, onto the mud on the flood tide on the coolagh (cool ya) mud. I first...
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