Toomevara gone and not a toilet in sight

The piece below appears in today's IN&M regional newspapers.

By Michael Commane
Every time my late father drove through Toomevara he would announce that great Tipperary hurlers came from the village and the older he got the more often he would recall those great Tipperary hurlers. Names such as Tom O’Meara, Garret Howard and Matt Kennedy were regularly mentioned.

My dad had been to school at Thurles CBS and the Cistercian Abbey in Roscrea and both schools played hurling. I have a picture somewhere of my father togged out in Roscrea gear before a hurling match. It was 1926, I think. A long time ago.
For over 50 years, every time going through Toomevara, I have heard, thought or smiled about great Tipperary hurlers.

So you can imagine what it was like on Bank Holiday Monday driving from West Kerry to Dublin. Toomevara was no more. Off in the distance of time and geography, no doubt those great hurlers were dancing about in the ether of the small Tipperary village.

It is motorway all the way now from just outside Adare to Naas. I travel on a weekly basis from West Kerry to Dublin but usually do the journey by rail. On Bank Holiday Monday I decided to take the motorbike. I was too late to get the last of the online rail tickets and rightly presumed that there would be few if any large trucks on the road.

It really was amazing to be able to travel at 120km/h from Limerick to Naas with just one stop at the toll booth near Borris-in-Ossory.

It was cold but I was well decked out for the journey – with just one exception. There was a tiny hole in the lining of my left glove. Some days later my little finger was still cold. It’s always that weakest link that screws things up, always and ever.

Most family cars have fuel tanks that can easily hold 50 to 60 litres of petrol or diesel. So on most Irish motorways there is no need to refuel. Not so with my motorbike – the tank holds approximately 17 litres. I left West Kerry with a full tank and just a few kilometres south of Naas I was fortunate enough to spot that the needle was hovering in the danger zone.

I began to wonder whether or not I would make it to the filling station at Kill, just north of Naas but began to panic a little. The thought of running out of petrol on the motorway simply did not bear thinking. I spend my life procrastinating and prevaricating but that sort of nonsense on the motorway was just that – nonsense. So I decided to take a short detour and go into Naas, which has among its claims to fame one of the most expensive places to buy fuel.

And just like my dad before me I have a tendency to dither about buying petrol – the needle is more often than not on red. It was something that caused major conflict between my mother and father. Funny, no matter how we try, we invariably end up like our parents. I wonder how psychiatrists explain that? Or what do theologians say about how grace can influence us in any real way if things have already been predetermined by our DNA?

But to think that there is not one single service station on the motorway the entire way from Adare to Naas is simply ludicrous. Okay, most of the people travelling the road are either in cars or trucks and with a little bit of sense will make sure to have enough fuel before setting out. But what happens if a small child needs to go to the toilet?

And indeed, you don’t have to be a small child to need to go to the loo. There are a myriad reasons why someone might need to stop. It really is preposterous that there is not one single pit stop on that road.

I presume it will be built but surely it would have been much cheaper to have built it during the road construction?

Okay, we get a lot of things wrong but the latest statistics on road deaths are remarkable.

Last year saw the lowest number of road deaths since records began 50 years ago. I remember when the Naas Road was turned into a dual-carriageway and when there was two-way traffic in Dublin’s Grafton Street. To think there were less fatalities on Irish roads last year with over 2.7 million vehicles on the road than back in 1960 when there were a mere 302,767 registered vehicles is simply staggering and great good news.

In 1960 there were 169,681 cars, 45,530 trucks, 37, 719 agricultural tractors, 41,467 motorbikes and 10,370 ‘other’ vehicles on our roads.

Sometime in the 1950s my dad bought a second-hand Anglia. It cost £90 and I can still remember the registration plate – ZL 9968 and I don’t know the number of my motorbike.

And that’s a little like the Toomevara hurlers – my dad could reel off the names of the famous men of long ago but had trouble mentioning any of the names of the modern day players.

It was in that Anglia I first heard about those great hurlers. These days it often strikes me how formative those years were. I can remember every detail about that car. I can even recall the hole in the floor through which you put the jack so as to change a wheel. As a small child I thought of other ideas for that hole. My parents were horrified. Come to think of it, with no service station on the M7, that old Anglia could well answer the prayers of many a motorist these days.
The thoughts that can go through one's head driving on the M7!