Mill Street Memories
My mother used to say a wandering foot always found its way to places it owner had never intended to go in the first place. And my wandering feet do take me places I have never planned to be. (If you see what I mean)
Wandering feet is in the genes, I think. My mother’s sister, Aunty Theresa Mc Colgan, leaned to drive after many attempts. But determined woman that she was, she did succeed in the end.
She loved going for wee ‘runs’, as she called them. She’d powder her nose, put on her lipstick, check her hair in the mirror that hung above the fireplace in her home in St Colman’s Drive, in Strabane, pick up her bag and her car keys and head for the door.
When we asked where she was heading, she’d say, “I’ll know when I get to the end of the road.”
My sister Gert and I had a journey like that recently. We were feeling a bit sad. We had visited our sister Annette in Woodmount Nursing Home; and a few days before had kissed our other sister Kathleen goodbye as she boarded the Dublin Express on the first long leg of her journey home to Australia.
Easing out onto the traffic on the Melmount Road, Gert says “What about a wee run – have a coffee somewhere?”
How could my wandering feet refuse such an invitation? A plethora of possibilities open up before me. Like our Auntie Theresa we could end up – anywhere.
As we crossed from Strabane into Lifford, as usual childhood /teenage memories kicked in: Where we had danced, they boys we had fancied – sometimes without letting on – Ah, girls were modest in them days, I hear you say. Not sure about that, but we were definitely afraid of the wraith of our father. If the boyfriend in question wasn’t up to speed – or , if his reputation, as they used to say in Lifford, ‘met you on the road pushing a pram “- from our father’s point of view, your chances of dating him were in the bin.
“You are always saying you must go out to Ballindrait and check out Mills Street – for your memoirs,” Gert suggested.
Since it is only two and a bit miles with just one possible fork in the road to either to Raphoe or Letterkenny it was a safe enough bet we wouldn’t wander too far. Or so we thought.
Mills street has changed a lot from the days when Mary and Johnny Sweeney, (God be good to them,) run the sub Post office there.
Stupid, I know, but in writing my memoir for my own sons , I still thought of the street as it was when the old fellas’ used to gather on the bridge at the bottom of the street to play cards and watch a lone fisherman cast his net into the water of the River Deele.
But every cloud has a silver lining and as we stood at the end of Mill Street wondering out loud who might have old photos or postcards of Ballindrait , back in the day, a young man after his day’s work alighted from a van.
To cut a long story short, he turned out to be Shane, Nellie Donnelly’s (RIP) grandson – Gerts old school pal. His mother, Maria, coming to pick him up, found him leaning against the bridge chatting to the two of us.
In true Donegal hospitality style, on hearing my story, Maria says, “Isobel Catterson will know somebody. “C’mon, she lives just around the corner.”
Sustained with coffee and biscuit and a warm welcome, sitting in Isobel’s living room, we covered 50 years in 50 minutes.
It was like going down memory lane on fast track Almost as fast as we used to hurtle down Mill Street on homemade sleights with the steel handles off our mother’s buckets for runners.
But just as Mill Street has changed, Maria (Gibson) shared her dream of changing back / restoring the old disused Station House – later the station waiting room – in remembrance of her granny Ellen Donnelly, who opened/closed the railway gates and did all the hard work needed to keep Ballindrait Train Station going, before, during and after the Second World War years.
Maria is looking for photographs or any other information about the pre 1945 original station house, where you were able to purchase a ticket at Ballindrait train station for the Donegal Rail (CDR) that ran on the narrow gauge from Strabane to Letterkenny.
So there you go. My mother was right. A wandering foot always get something.
Gert and I renewed old friendship s and made new ones.
Not a bad days outing for a pair that had no real plan or idea where we might end up when we set out.
Our Auntie Theresa, may she rest in peace, would be proud of us.
If anybody in Facebook Land – near or far – has any photos of Ballindrait /Mill Street, back in the day, I’d be most willing to pay for copies and postage
Gemma Hill June 2017
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 