The Wicked Chicken’s Therapeutic Intervention Model by Declan Byrne From an early age I suffered from a debilitating illness. I wanted to be accepted and liked and I used up a lot of energy trying to achieve these goals. I have been taking the medication and the symptoms aren’t as bad today though I do suffer relapses. When I was eighteen Joe Keenan told his mother, who told my mother Mary that there was a junior clerk’s job going in Dublin docks. I made the short journey from Ballybough to inside the dock gates. It was a world and culture like no other. I worked in a busy wages office with Joe Keenan and Tom Walsh, who for reasons unknown to me even to this day was called Pat. The last-in got the job of doing the docker’s wages. Gone were the days when the Dockers were paid in cash on a daily basis or per the job. Now the deep-sea Dockers could work for a range of companies and get paid through a centralised pay system at the end of each week. Their daily pay was calculated both on the tonnage they achieved and the type of cargo that they worked. It was my job to do the calculations and to tell the Dockers their daily earnings at the hatch. I loved the work, the banter and the craic. I was never really accepted or maybe I was but that is a different story. The planet Dublin docks was inhabited by macho men. There were the powerful shop stewards (Port Committee), the Foremen, the Dock Superintendents and the odd heavy and gangster. Pat/Tom Walsh was sound and it was no surprise that he was invited to drink with the Foremen and Superintendents. I became his willing apprentice. It was like winning the lotto when one Wednesday Pat/Tom Walsh was invited to Connor’s to have a pint and he suggested that I come along. Here I joined ‘Big Nose’ Patsy Kelly and his son ‘Little Big Nose’ Paddy Kelly. That night captain Benny Forde was there as was Carl Keaveney-‘Mr Tayto’. ‘Rollo’ Fullam joined later and I was in heaven. These men were serious drinkers and you joined their company by invitation only. They had their own dedicated room at the back of the pub. I think the pints were served through a hatch in the wall but I was locked from very soon on so the details are a bit blurry. The banter, the wit, the slagging and the craic was out of this world. As the new kid on the block I knew not to be too showy but I had to demonstrate my wit or I would not be asked again. Some of the other foremen were working late on ships so they were not there for my first night. Amongst the absentees that night was Dick ‘Maggots’ Reilly and the ‘Wicked Chicken’ Pullen. I must have put in an Oscar performance as I was accepted (or thought I was) and invited for the following night. For the next night I had to borrow a few bob as a junior clerk’s pay was paltry compared to a Foreman or Dock Superintendent. That Thursday night was a good buzz but I was told that Friday nights were always the best. Happy days as I finished work at 5pm and off to Connor’s I went. I was on my second pint when the ‘Wicked Chicken’ came in. He had been working a grain boat all week and had just finished. He told me he wanted to see me outside on the docks this was code for ‘I am going to beat the bollicks out of you’. I was very surprised as I had put a lot of effort into not upsetting anyone and into pleasing everyone I met and I also knew that I hadn’t done anything wrong on him (you would need to be brain damaged to consider doing anything wrong on the ‘Wicked Chicken’). Maybe it was a ritual wind-up and there should be no harm going out to see, though there was smoke coming out of his ears and if looks could kill I should have been dead by now. I followed him to the path outside and in a poor impression of John Wayne he drew an imaginary line on the ground between the path and the pub. He told me that if I returned inside that he would beat me so badly that I would require hospital attention. For a few seconds I thought it might have been a bit of a charade and I made a movement to go back in, while muttering “Christy you are not my Da”. He told me that he wasn’t going to let me make a mess of my life. He said that I was young and that I should be drinking with ‘fellas’ my own age and chasing skirt. I needed to weight matters up. I was convinced that he was deadly serious and he was famous for having a great right hook (something I experienced many years later but you have guessed it that is another story). The characteristic of all people pleasers is that they hate and avoid all personal conflict and they are a bit windy. So it is no surprise that I left Connor’s on the quays and headed for Cole’s in Fairview to join Angels, Snig and John Joe (whose real name was Tommy). Dockers had the reputation for being clannish and there was a great rivalry between the north side and the Ringsend Dockers, who were called ‘gulls’. Here I was a north side junior clerk (the lowest of the low in the pecking order) being threatened by a ‘gull’ for my own good. Looking back on my time in the docks I have a lot of people that looked after me. I had a solo-dependent relationship with Paddy Behan, which meant for years that I was totally dependent on him and he always had my back. It was an absolute pleasure to have known the ‘Little Flower’s’ younger brother Cormac – he had so much integrity he was unreal. Then there was the ‘gearman’ James McKane the bravest person I have ever met. Seamie Dillon taught me the art of ‘shit-stirring’. Good ‘shit-stirring’ is where you harm no-one but lift everyone’s mood with your carry-on (I learnt from the master). The ‘Old Lady’ Noel Daly kept me on the straight and narrow with the odd lecture. Jimmy Gregg dug me out of a massive hole that I had dug for myself. At one stage I stood on the wrong toe and found myself under threat. I believe that I was saved by a guardian angel (though he will not appreciate that description) ‘YaYa’ O’Driscoll. At a weeding last year in a moment of uncharacteristic male honesty (no-I was not drunk) I thanked ‘YaYa’ for playing a part in making sure that the threat was not followed through. He denied all knowledge of it but I do not believe him. For a brief period I also had Tony McGauley as a ‘minder’. Again in a moment of male tenderness he promised that when he passed away he would bequeath his baseball bat to me. As he soars now like one of his beloved pigeons-“Tony we are fine I did not really want it.” I took the ‘lump’ (voluntary redundancy) from the docks in December 2000 and changed my path completely becoming an addiction counsellor. Counselling theory informs you that if you want people to change their poor behaviours that you gently hold a mirror up against them. The ‘Wicked Chicken’s’ Therapeutic Intervention Model states that you hold up the mirror and if they don’t change you hit them over the head with it. I have struggled to deal with my illness and character flaws and I look up to people who march to the sound of their own drum. In my twenty-seven years on the docks I saw many examples of the ‘Wicked Chicken’ doing that and I saw other examples of his direct intervention methods. I am now a member of the Dublin Dock Workers Preservation Society (Facebook Dublin Dockers) a small group dedicated to honouring dock workers and trying to preserve their vanished history. If you want to hear more stories about the ‘Wicked Chicken’ it will cost you big time, maybe a pint or better still come to one of our photographic exhibitions, talks, music nights or services and I will tell you them for free. (I will do anything to be popular-oops a relapse). I am at home writing this and I am after having a small drink (no I am not a dipso) and I have written this in memory of the ‘Wicked Chicken’, who passed away a few years ago. “Cheers Christy”.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:40:20 +0000
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