Leo

Yes, me again. OurTown Lisburn video is on Youtube. Old Hill Street is on there,with a view towards Pipers Hill. A couple of girls are in the shot, but too distant for me to recognize. They come out of a house nearly opposite Bradbury's Buildings.
I get more out of watching that than a sex video = must be getting old.

Barney
I'm back again. i knew a lot of people well, whilst knowing nothing about them. Harry (MOUSEY) MCVEIGH, for example. Was he an adopted child?
The sort of thing I recall is one time, playing 'marlies' in Linenhall Street, he invited me to spar with him, and laughed as I managed to slap his face a few times - a wee squirt like me remembers stuff like that.
(It may have been one or both of the McAllister boys who was adopted).

Hi Dabbler, I remember clearly all the mentioned names and like yourself for some reason they come drifting back into my mind out of nowhere as Barney said Ken Burns married a girl from Fort Street on the Low Road named Boyd and they lived on the Belsize Road but that was years ago, but it was a shock to learn of the death of Teresa Gorman I know her 2 sons came home when her brother in law Mickey Collins died a few years ago but she must have died since, I worked with her for many years in Felix Elmore's another 2 guys were Dessie Douglas from the Causeway End and Jimmy Mcmillan both were on the message bikes when I left Elmores both of them joined the navy and I think they were in submarines regrettably both deceased, another springs to mind Vincent Lynch another employee from Elmores,also deceased Dabbler wish to hell I hadn't started this Eamon O Connor is also gone, Regarding Fr Mulholland he ended up I beleive in St Agnes's in Andytown this information came one morning in the sauna in the Leisure Centre while I was earwigging I refrained from saying I knew him ! I think its worth going back into the forum school photos and see how many you can now name, believe me Dabbler a hell of a lot's gone now,So its just a matter of keeping taken the tablets and keep meeting you mates at the recurring funerals the craic's usually great afterwards, Memories- Memories Regards Ted

Ted, I have very fond memories of the late Jimmy McMillan (Rimmel). Don't know how he got that nickname, do you? He and I went out together for a short time when I was only about 14.

However, he kept in touch with me after joining the Navy and I still have a greetings telegram he sent me on my 17th birthday. He was a lovely young fella, like a young Frank Sinatra. He treated me with great respect and I know he got a shock when he was on leave one time, called down to see me, and I had to tell him I was engaged to Dominic.

When I think of it now, I kept him standing at the front door, never even invited him in. That's the way it was in those days. As I say, I have very dear memories of Jimmy. In later years he suffered from multiple sclerosis and lived for a very long time with this condition. He was an inpatient in Thompson House until he died.

I think the name of Hales church was The Tabernacle not sure though

have a look at this about him and theres lots more on the net


A few weeks ago, Diana and I spent a week in the Holiday/Tarpon Springs area of Florida. Just down the road from where we stayed was the compound/campus/facility of Leslie Hale, the Irish Preacher. In the last two years, we’ve driven by it at least a dozen times and we kept wondering what was going on there. I think it’s supposed to be a church, but if that’s the case, it’s like none I’ve ever seen. Exterior-wise, the only identifying factor is that big sign with Hale’s name on it. No crosses, no God stuff, no nothing that says church. On the website, you have to click a link to even see mention of God or Jesus. And, forget mission work, I didn’t find anything close there. What I did find is multiple requests for cash. There’s a link to become an “encourager” (which requires a donation of $50 a month), his memoir is available for a “minimum donation” of $15, there’s a straight-out gimme button (similar to mine) and, finally, there’s the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, a recreation of the tabernacle of the Exodus . He’s already spent $2 million on this thing and he’s asking for another million to complete it. ****, if he sent out prayer cloths, he’d be the Irish Reverend Ike.

I don’t know anything more about this guy. I don’t know if he does any outreach in the community. I don’t know if he spends any time with poor people, if he helps the homeless find shelter, if he feeds hungry people. All I do know is that what’s listed above, because that’s what’s on his website. I’ve asked some people who are familiar with the area about him and they don’t even know who he is. I’d like to think that, as a man of God, if he’s spending $3 million dollars on this tabernacle thing, he’s spending even more on the things I just mentioned. I really hope so, but I don’t think that’s the case. Because if someone was throwing that kind of money around, people would be talking about it. And, they’re not. Nobody seems to know who he is. Which is really kind of sad. I mean, you’d think a preacher, someone who’s spent their life reading, studying and teaching the Bible would have read Matthew 25:35-45 and would be feeding, sheltering, clothing and generally looking after people instead of spending millions on what amounts to a freaking tent.

(Visited 664 times, 5 visits today)

he is pulling the same stunt he pulled here years ago

Thanks again Barney. Ken, (and I meant to write 'Ken', NOT John), was only seventeen or so when I knew him, but he really did seem the last person on earth to 'get in trouble', unlike many of my acquaintances. I remember his apologetic air when his sister first became involved with the Evangelists while he was still a Roman Catholic. He showed great interest in my stated opinion that she was a brave girl to go out in the streets - Market Square - and proclaim her 'salvation'.
HALE sounds like a con man, trapping gullible people.

Ann, though no longer addicted to the bookies, I till get a kick out of watching top racehorses. Not quite the same, but I have ponies and horses in the fields behind my back fence.
I know that you wrote previously,(years ago),about young Vera, and I remember what you wrote as clearly as I remember her. She may have thought I was an older, sophisticated, youth. About the latter, she was very much mistaken. I was a gauche boy, gentlemanly, but young for my age. Vera liked me. I see that Ted asks about Philip Lavery. I cannot recall whether or not Philip was related. Though no older than fourteen when I bought an airgun from him, I distinctly remember thinking that his mother had beautiful auburn hair.

You sound like a nice kind girl, helping your cousin.

Hi Barney, I was in the same class as Philip Lavery from Fairymount. but it was Philip from Grove St originally, then they moved to Huguenot Drive and I knew he went to America but that was the last I heard of him, Barney I think I will stop asking about any more of long lost friends as they seem to be becoming deceased at an alarming rate, anyhow thanks for your update, Regards Ted

Philip must be dead nigh on near 30 years i think, he was buried in one of those large American steel coffins with a glass piece on it for viewing the occupant,Ted i think we are all now running out of birthdays

Barney and Ted
I knew both Philips. The one from the Longstone area was a friend of Oliver O' Neill. Due to my late start at school, he was in the class above me, and was probably the same age. Clever lad. I don't know how I met the other one, from the Low Road area. I just remember buying his air rifle.

Hi Barney, Every day brings something else ! Just read in this mornings Irish News of Sean O'Neill's ( RIP )death, one only has to go to the football teams on the Forum Photos to see him lined up with his brothers mostly in goals

Thanks Ann

We went shopping at a local superstore, gloated about how much we had saved, had eggs on toast at a cafe, and got some fresh sea air walking between shops. Later, I drove my grandson and his friend to play football - Jeez, our little five foot eight or nine 'Georgie Best' takes size eleven boots at fourteen - and then we cleared out the shed.
So, life goes on.
But, like you Ethne, I remember.``

talking to Brian McKeown today and he was telling me Sean O'Neill is getting buried in the morning told me of a few more who had died but i cannot remember now who they were

morning Barney.
I wonder if those people are relatives of anyone I knew. The Christian names do not ring any bells.
Any old acquaintances of mine still alive will be staggering out of the pub into the bookies today to have a flutter at Cheltenham.

I drove to my nearest bookies and had a flutter. Adds interest to TV viewing.

Dabbler, I wonder how many times I must have pased you on my way into the bookies in Linenhall St. I once wond 2 pounts and blew it all at Blundells amusement part in Smithfield market on the dodgems.??? Mauri

Barney, were you in Lisburn the day you met Brian? Brian is my first cousin - his father and my mother were brother and sister. I expect you already know that.

Mauri - Cooper's bookies, my second home when I was a teenager. :-)

Ann, you knew Paul McKEOWN, nd probably Teresa, who married my mother's brother. i think they had children. She remarried after he died young.

Dabbler, Paul McKeown is also a cousin of mine. (We're everywhere)
Paul is alive, married with a family, and lives in Craigavon. Haven't seen him for some years.

I don't know the Teresa McKeown, to whom you refer, but Pat, my sister, might.

A new GP remarked to me one day that everyone in Lisburn seems to be related in one way or t'uther. If not actually related, we all know each other. You have to watch what you say in Lisburn, and to whom you say it.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ann
i thank you for knowledge of Paul's life. The paranoid GP sounds typical of the people. (Prods or Fenians may be listening)

I know this is nothing to do with the subjcet matter but I remember on one ocassion when my family still lived at the top of the Longstone in Lismara Terrace it would be around September 1949 I was on leave from HMS Vanguard after six months in the Mediteranean. In my teens I used to wear white socks (still do) even with my uniform though I to caught a couple of times being inspected before we went ashore and I had to go back and change.
Anyway I had borrowed my Aunts bike to go downtown but stopped at "Ferris's wee shop at the corner of Ridgeway St and Chapel HIll to go in and talk to Hazel the owner's daughter. As I went in there was a bunch of young guys hanging around the corner and when I came out and went to get on the bike somebody made a nasty remark about me and my white socks,so throwing down the bike I challenged whoever it was to make the remark again and he would probably loose a couple of teeth, there was deathly silence so I picked up my bike and rode off.
Anytime I walked down Chapel Hill after that I always stayed on the
Chapel side to avoid trouble. Just think I am talking about 65 years ago when most of you were still learing your ABCs. Mauri

Hi Maurie, Just thinking I was probably in class at school across the road while you were chatting up Hazel she was a fine looking girl, manys a time I was in Billys shop and you needed coupons then but he had always something you could buy that coupons were not needed, then of course you had Livingstones up the road Paris Buns at lunch time Memories- Memories Kind Regards Ted

Mauri, good for you. You put the bigmouth in his box.

Dabbler, the GP isn't paranoid. He's only a young man, not long out of university, in his first GP practice. I suppose he had never come across a place like Lisburn where almost everyone knows everyone else (or is, indeed, related to them). I like him.

Barney, I see Brian all the time, although sometimes I'm in the car. He walks around Lisburn every day and I always have a word or two with him. He hasn't been very well recently and I know he doesn't work in the bookies any more. Saw him yesterday.