When
Turkeys chewed TobaccoMemories from south-west Ulster
Chapter one -
EARLY MEMORIES
Our home
I have always been blessed with a good memory. When I was three years old I can remember playing with an old sheepdog called Nelson, trying to tie the turf basket to his tail so he could pull myself and my sister Annie. I can remember finding apples tied on a tree just beyond the turf gonnel. Years later I knew my father put them there because the tree was a whitethorn bush and all this was done to make us children happy.
Ours was a very happy home. I was an only son and with three sisters, one older and two younger. I often found myself the ringleader of all our childish pranks. Our house had a very rural setting, and our farm was six to nine hundred feet above sea level. Technically it wasn’t high enough to be called a mountain, but I was often referred to as being from the mountain and grew up proud of the fact that I was a mountain man, and no boy ever had a happier home.
Also in Chapter One: