By Brian McDaid
I could hear them before I could see them. Their voices in song echoed off the empty walls of Lower Main Street in Letterkenny.
It was evening time, the sun was setting out the Glen and they were sailing into it.
I am about to get into my van parked on the Back Road and have my camera to hand. There wasn’t time to change the studio setting from the last job, there wasn’t even time to think!
Now in sight as I panned with my camera following them as they passed by, trying to freeze their movement.
I think it was John McGeever, standing on the back of the lorry that spotted me first and let a roar out of him up towards where I was standing.
We have known each other all our lives. We were in the same class at the boys school and walked down from school every Thursday afternoon as children when I went down to my auntie B’s for our dinner in the Back Road.
John’s call to me now had everyone on the back of this flatbed lorry looking at me. It’s Letterkenny Reunion Week. These are all in the moment, all decked out in the back and amber of St Eunan’s GAA club.
They are heading to O’Donnell Park for their big reunion game. As quick as they came into view they were gone. I can hear Brian Kelly’s voice leading the singing as they head into the sunset and over past the Slate Row.
I’m nearly afraid to review the photo on the back of the camera. The camera settings were all wrong. I was expecting a blur across the screen but the image on the screen looked ok.
It’s one of the enjoyments I still get to this day with photography, especially with a photojournalism photo like this.
There’s nothing perfect about it – you might think the background is wrong; you might wonder if you were shooting this from a different angle if it would look better (say from the Skittle Alley car park across the road you might have captured St Eunan’s Cathedral in the background).
On a closer look at the photo I start to see a few different tiny details that I didn’t notice at first – like the footwear of some of those who had their feet dangling over the side of the flatbed lorry.
Football boots indicated that they were togged out and ready for the game, possibly changing up the town somewhere like Blake’s Bar.
It was a tradition of yesteryear where changing facilities weren’t great and players got ready in a nearby bar and landed at the pitch ready to play the game. Often, they’d end up in the bar afterwards.
Hugo Blake, Brian Kelly, Paddy Delap, with their boots on, and Dickie McGranaghan, with a bandage on his knee, were all ready for the big game.
Then there was a ‘style council’ led by Caroline Mackey decked out in a Donegal shirt with her friends. Mickey Gibbons is centre stage, the smile on his face showing he was so happy to be in the moment too.
Photographer Darren Crossan is on board as well, camera bag on his back travelling with the crew to cover all the week long events.
Then there was the driver – none other than Eddie Tinney behind the wheel of his coal lorry. It was covered in ‘black and amber’ bunting.
I thought how lucky I was to capture this photo of Eddie at this very spot at the bottom of the Back Road. He was driving past the very same location that his father Patrick Tinney started his own business in the 1940s
Patrick started work for Roulston’s at the foot of the town before he decided to go it alone and start up his own business selling coal around the houses in Letterkenny
He secured a yard where Browns had their foundry and he also carried on the foundry business when Browns went back to Derry again.
On the run into Christmas this year Cecelia Tinney, Eddie’s daughter, was looking for this old photo for their 2025 calendar.
Talking to the Tinney family, Cecilia and Joanna, Eddie’s daughters, Margaret and Charlie, Eddie’s sister and brother, we recalled memories of Eddie and his father Patrick delivering the coal.
Margaret had great memories of Peg Alison working in the old offices at Lower Main Street where the foundry once stood.
Peg did the books in an old fashion type office that had all the trimmings of a bygone era. There were old filing cabinets, swivel chairs and lovely wooden desks.
When Patrick Tinney started off in business, he needed someone to look after the books for him. He employed a young girl who had just left the Tech called Peg Allison from The Back Road.
Peg was my mother’s best friend. They grew up together. Peg was my mother’s bridesmaid on her wedding day and she also was Godmother to one of my brothers, Nelius.
Charlie remembered being sent down as a young boy to his father with a bottle of tea wrapped up with a sock to keep it warm. He’d to go from his home on the Port Road and walk the length of the Main Street to his father’s place of work.
Margaret still has receipts for boat-loads of coal that their father purchased from a company in England called W .E. Fisher and Sons which made the journey from Whitehaven to Ireland, right up Lough Swilly to the port in Letterkenny
The delivery was unloaded and hauled down to Tinney’s Coalyard at the foot of the Back Road.
Charlie Tinney has memories of my own parents and remembers us living in a flat in a house just next door to the Devlin Hall. He recalled delivering coal to our flat and how my mother worked there as a dressmaker. She made his late wife Susan’s wedding dress.
Tinney’s was a family business that had a connection with almost everyone in town as it once was.
My grandfather Willie ‘Pop’ Coyle got Patrick Tinney to go guarantor in the bank when he built his shop at the corner on the Back Road.
The late Eddie Tinney, sadly no longer with us, worked all his life with the family business working.
He was a great man for keeping the memories of our town going.
And heading into 2025, his family are keeping that link going with a lorry load from the Letterkenny Reunion heading into sunset – calendar stars from happy times.
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