When I was seventeen years old, I was packed off to train as a national teacher in St Patrick's Training College in Drumcondra, Dublin. There I was introduced to primary education theory and practice by the professors and to alcohol by my fellow students. Three days before Christmas Eve, the college closed for the holidays and I was anticipating my first trip home to West Limerick after being away since September. My parents had sent me, by post, the thirty shillings train fare from Kingsbridge to Limerick City. Unfortunately; I went out celebrating with some of my fellow students the night before I was due to go home and spent all but a few of the thirty shillings on drink and carousing. So I awoke three days before Christmas Eve with just three shillings in my pocket and stranded in Dublin. The College closed down that morning, so I had nowhere to go, as I knew nobody in Dublin.

Then I realised that all was not lost yet. In my home town in West Limerick there was a thriving quarry and lime factory which sent a lorry load of lime to the sandstone factory in Clondalkin, outside Dublin,a few times a week. I rang Roadstone to know if any lorry was leaving for my home town that day. The man who came on the line told me there was a lorry leaving at four o'clock that evening. I was saved! I could get a bus to Roadstone and get a lift home that evening from the lorry driver. I knew all the drivers as they were from my home town and they often gave people lifts to and from Dublin. I arrived at Roadstone in the bus at three o'clock carrying a heavy suitcase and dressed in a light overcoat. It was a cold gloomy afternoon. I went into the yard but could see no lorry. On enquiring of a workman I was told that a lorry had left for West Limerick at eleven o'clock that morning and there were no more trucks going anywhere that evening.

Somebody had let me down badly. It was four o'clock and I was over one hundred and thirty miles from home. There was nothing to do but go out on the Naas Road and try and thumb a lift. The lifts proved to be short and far between. By eight o'clock that night I had only reached Monasterevan. It was dark, freezing and a light snow was falling. I was tired and cold, having walked miles between the rare lifts I had got, lugging my heavy suitcase. I had a brainwave. There was surely a Garda barracks in Monasterevan and, if there was, it had a cell. I would ask the Sergeant if I could sleep in it for the night. I asked directions to the barracks and knocked on the door. A burly Sergeant came out and I, feeling I had nothing to lose, asked him if I could sleep in the cell for the night as I was unable to get a lift. He looked at me suspiciously. "Where have you come from?" he growled. "From St Patrick's in Dublin," I replied. "Is that the institution for young criminals?" he asked. "No. It's the teacher training college,"I said. He glared at me in silence for a moment, "If you don't move on out of here I'll arrest you for vagrancy;" he said gruffly.

I left pretty quickly. I walked on out of Monasterevan with my heavy suitcase, thumbing every car that passed but none stopped. The snow was getting heavier and I had to watch my footing. When I had walked about three miles outside Monasterevan, I noticed a haybarn beside a farmhouse on the roadside. An older student in St Pat's had once told me he had slept in a haybarn when he was thumbing home to Clare. I decided I would do the same. A dog in the yard started barking so it occurred to me to knock on the door of the farmhouse, where I could see lights in the windows and ask permission to sleep in the barn. The door was opened, to my surprise, by a young garda in uniform. I blurted out my story to him, that I was thumbing to Limerick but couldn't get a lift. 'I'll tell you what," he said in a matter of fact voice, "I'll stop a car for you." He produced a large torch and we went out onto the roadside, where every time a car passed he would move towards the centre of the road and wave the torch at the driver. Eventually a car stopped. There were two middle-aged men in it. They told him they were going to a funeral in Cork and would be taking the Cork road at Portlaoise, whereas I would have to take the Limerick road. The garda asked me if a lift to Portiaoise would be alright. I decided it would get me a good part of the journey; thanked him and got in behind the driver and his companion. They talked to each other in slurred speech. I realised they were drunk. The car swayed a lot on the road. They had said they were going to a funeral and I wondered if it would be mine and theirs, the way the car was going.

We got to Portlaoise about midnight and I left the car and went towards the Limerick road to continue my odyssey. I noticed a little shop still open. I counted the money in my pocket. I had ten pennies, I was very hungry and was delighted to find I had just enough to buy a packet of Marietta biscuits. I ate the whole packet ravenously standing outside the shop door. Suddenly I saw a man standing in front of me beside a big truck which I hadn't notice coming to a halt. "Are you the driver?" I asked hopefully. "Yeah sure," he replied. 'By any chance are you going to Limerick?”"Yeah, I am," he said, "Get in." I was on the pigs back. Once I got to Limerick city I would be just sixteen miles from home. Providence must have sent that truck to me, just after midnight. I don't know what lay in store for me if that truck driver hadn't come and became, to my mind, my saviour. After a pleasant journey from Portlaoise to Limerick, sitting in the cab, chatting away to the driver and forgetting about the cold and the exhaustion, I was ready to face anything.

My luck was in. My final lift was from Limerick to my home town in the back of a post office van. I got home at four o'clock in the morning. There was a Christmas tree glistening in our sitting room window. The key was on the door. There was a light on in the kitchen. Inside I found my mother asleep in a chair, where she had been waiting up for me.