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Pat Smyth, a civil servant with the National Assistance Board in West Tyrone from the 1930's to the 1950's, recalls his memories, experiences and the larger than life personalities he encountered on the way.
We had a lively cross-community chess club in Omagh during the war. Ernie Charles the Postmaster, was the Chairman and Bobby Chesters, a master painter, was Secretary. I was Treasurer.
We met at the Melville Hotel, courtesy of the owner, Mrs. Broderick, and paid a very nominal room charge. Often we shared space with the commercial travellers who had special desks and stationery boxes, where they silently wrote-up their books. Chess being a quiet pursuit as well, there were no discordant noises.
With petrol rationed, and public transport virtually non-existent outside working hours, we seldom played away from home. Just after petrol rationing ended we had a Cookstown team as guests and accepted an invitation to play a return match at Cookstown, with Cookstown Orange Hall as the venue.
An expatriate Czech was Secretary/Chairman at the Cookstown Club. He had a name something like Komgatt. One morning I had a phone call from Ernie Charles who sounded highly amused as he retold a phoned message that he had had from Mr. Komgatt.
The latter, I was reminded, had only a limited grasp of English and when he was excited he was apt to become incoherent. Charles gleefully related that all he had been able to make out was 'Zee oranges! Zee oranges! They not give it'. That 'banjacked' our proposed visit to Cookstown.
John Rossi, who had a most prestigious confectionery/tobacconist shop and ice-cream salon on lower Market Street near the entrance to the Market yard, was our master chess player.
He had an oversize board, with pieces as large as teacups, and fairly hefty fists. When John decided to take a piece he lifted his own, tucked it in the palm of his hand, and all one heard was a loud clunk, a quite intimidating clunk, if the lost piece happened to be one's queen!
When I had had some practice, I once evaded John for well over an hour, which was acknowledged as quite a feat. I was of course only able to play a defensive game and I had as much chance of beating him as the proverbial snowball in hell
Names of all but a few club members have faded from my memory but Billy Torney, Tom Kernan, Walter Murnaghan and Bill Dunn come to mind. To entertain visiting teams and for transport, we needed money. So we had to do something about fund-raising.
A ball seemed to be the best bet, so we booked a hall and a leading dance band from Strabane: I believe it was the Clipper Carleton. Sadly, on the Friday of the event it poured all day - torrential rain with no let up. By the time the dance was due to begin, Omagh streets were flooded kerb-high, with a rivulet flowing past the entrance to the hall at Sedan Avenue and the Strule nearby threatening to overflow its banks.
A man in rubber boots might have walked Sedan Avenue that evening, but definitely no lady in dancing attire would have ventured out, not even by car. Not more than a dozen people turned up, and most of those were club members.
The only course open to us was to cancel the event and throw ourselves on the mercy of the leader of the band. Happily, he was sympathetic and settled for a nominal fee to cover travelling expenses. I believe the regular charge was something like £60. We got a fright and there ended our first and only fund-raising event.
Pat Smyth, 2001
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