ROBERTSTOWN & LULLYMORE, 2 August 2002: by Brian Byrne & Trish Whelan. "This is great," grinned Councilman Marc Kraft as he stood in the gently drizzling Irish rain with his daughter Erica (above). "We've had two months without rain back home and this is really nice."
Well, then there's a lot of 'nice' for Nebraskans here on their twinning trip to Naas, because the weather forecast for their August Bank Holiday visit to County Kildare isn't promising. Kind of like what the rest of our 'summer' has been, really. But it IS a change from the 100degF-plus which they've been having back home in Omaha.
"There are farmers at home who won't make enough money to cover their costs," Marc Kraft told us on the sober side of things. His state's farmers grow corn and raise hogs and cattle. This year, that isn't easy.
Still, this is a holiday. And after arriving in Naas this morning and being met briefly by Mayor Timmy Conway and councillors Pat O'Reilly and Willie Callaghan, the 65 visitors were packed off to Robertstown's Grand Canal Hotel for lunch, under the care of Naas Twinning Committee's Dave Gibson and Naas historian Paddy Behan.
Paddy gave them a good grounding in the heydays of the Grand Canal as a major commercial waterway before the railways killed the canals off. Hailing as he does from that part of the world, there was no one better than him for the job.
After that, it was a trip up over the old canal bridge for those who wanted to walk off their lunch before travelling on. "We've nothing like these old bridges in Nebraska," Marc Kraft murmured. "Our country is too young."
Then it was on to Peatland World and an afternoon of the history of the Irish bogs, which underpin so much of Ireland's ancient past and modern industrial growth in the mid-20th century.
Michael Jacob, manager of the Peatland World heritage centre (above right), talked them through the stories and implements of old Irish living, getting them into the spirit of things by involving several of the visitors in small theatre-pieces to illustrate scrubbing clothes with a washboard, rocking the cradle, and knitting. Paddy Behan obliged with a couple of the old songs which were the main entertainment of the Irish in older days.
Then, despite the increasing drizzle, the party headed out directly onto the bogland of Allen, and after a nifty demonstration of the use of the slean from Michael and Paddy, a number of the visitors tried their hands at cutting turf.
"There's a couple of ye have the makings of good bogmen," Michael grinned later as they filed back to the bus and to tea and scones at Peatland World. It was there that we left them, as they still had a visit to the nearby Heritage Park to do. If the weather held up.
If it didn't get too much worse, anyway.
Tonight they have a chance to go to the dogs in Newbridge, and maybe raise a little hell with the locals at the Town House Hotel afterwards. The official business of the weekend takes place tomorrow night in Naas Town Hall, when Mayor of Omaha Mike Fahey and Mayor of Naas Timmy Conway sign the second part of the twinning charter.
Stay tuned here for more. Meantime, check out the picture gallery from today. And if they bring some sticky wet black stuff back to Omaha homes, remember that it needs to dry for a summer before you can burn it.
Shouldn't be hard to do that back there just now, we reckon.
