I was standing in Marin County, looking out at the shimmering San Francisco bay, waiting to board a ferry. Myself and two friends had cycled from San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge, freewheeled down to Sausalito and were now headed back across the bay to the town full of hills and pretty houses and in common with our own fair city, too many homeless people. It was my first time in this incredible city; I remember standing there feeling stupidly lucky. And then D said: “There’s John-Boy”.
“Where?” I said. “There,” she said, pointing at a man standing a couple of metres away, a man who looked exactly like John-Boy Walton. For those under the age of 40, John-Boy was a character in The Waltons, an American TV series from the 1970s that used to be on RTÉ. They lived on Walton’s Mountain in Virginia, and there were loads of them. There were loads of us in my family too and we never missed the programme, which was full of gentle family happenings, wry comic moments, life lessons and always, at the end, a bedtime routine where the family — we only heard their voices and saw the lights in their windows during these scenes — would say a lengthy goodnight to each other. “Goodnight everybody.” “Goodnight John-Boy.” “Goodnight Ben.” “Goodnight Mary-Ellen.” “Goodnight Elizabeth.” “Goodnight Jim-Bob.” I looked over to where D was pointing. It was John-Boy all right. A face as familiar to me as that of my own brothers. “Hold my bike,” I said.
I reckoned John-Boy must be plagued by people shouting “Goodnight John-Boy” at him every day of his life since he left the series, but if he did he showed no signs of fatigue. I tapped him on the shoulder. I told John-Boy I was grateful for the years of joy The Waltons had given my family. I said he should be very proud of himself; that I was sure he’d been in lots of other things since then but really, The Waltons was important. He told me his name was Richard and that, yes, he’d been in “a few other things” but all things considered The Waltons was marvellous.
“You still look exactly like John-Boy,” I told John-Boy. “Well, thank you,” he said. I asked for a selfie and he obliged. I could have stood there talking about The Waltons all day, but I thanked him again and dragged myself back to the bike. On the ferry, my new friends and I googled John-Boy and realised his real name was Richard Thomas. He’d been in “a few other things” all right, Ozark and The Americans to name two. And he was currently starring as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mocking Bird in a San Francisco theatre. I thought about booking a ticket but the only ones I could find were $270 (€278) and I loved John-Boy but not that much. I thought he’d understand. We also discovered that the youthful looking John-Boy was in fact 71. There must have been something magic in that Walton’s Mountain water.
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I was in San Francisco for a holiday and for Hinterland West, the American iteration of the Hinterland festival of writers and artists held annually in Kells, Co Meath. Our gigs were held in the United Irish Cultural Centre near the zoo. There were events featuring crime writer Liz Nugent, Fintan O’Toole of this parish and archivist Catriona Crowe who received a standing ovation for her powerful presentation about the Mother and Baby Home Commission’s report. At the centre’s Irish library and second-hand book shop I picked up a battered copy of Down All The Days by Christy Brown and a book about Mary Lavin. By Monday, all my festival friends had returned to Ireland but I had two more days to explore.
Back to Golden Gate Rides to rent another electric bike. (It had to be electric, to cope with the hills.) I cycled to the Mission district, passing people in tents and countless completely legal cannabis emporiums and locked my bike outside a bar called The Sycamore. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 movie The Conversation was being projected on a wall outside on the patio. There was a pub quiz about to start. It was my kind of place.
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I thought about doing the pub quiz alone but then thought that was a bit sad so I asked two young men at a window seat if I could join their team. There was an uncomfortable silence before one of them said “uh, we’re all set” which was American for “no thanks, please go away and leave us alone”. Outside on the patio, I approached a team of two men and two women and asked could I join. They could not have been more welcoming. Witty and smart B sat beside effortlessly cool H who had just returned from a trip to Europe and walking the camino. Kind J and smiley A sat so close together, that I asked were they a couple. It turned out to be complicated. “If you are asking me do I love this person,” said J. “Then yes, I do.” You can bond amazingly quickly at a pub quiz with strangers it turns out. When I told them about the “uh, we’re all set” guys, they were outraged on my behalf. “It’s not in the spirit of The Sycamore,” they insisted as Barberella began playing on the wall. Being geriatric millennials they had not heard of John-Boy and were way more impressed by my Bono stories. We came fourth in the quiz, then to celebrate they brought me for tacos in their favourite place and for a stroll down beautiful Balmy Lane, where the original San Francisco murals were painted.
There were many other new friends made. There were cable cars and Alcatraz and the ghosts of Haight Ashbury’s music legends Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin as glimpsed from the upper deck of an open-top bus. There was dim sum in Chinatown and illuminating chats with a Derry boy far from home. There were foggy walks on Fisherman’s Wharf, long conversations with brilliant women over crudo and crustaceans in Sam’s Bar and Grill, Old Fashioneds at the bar of The Olympic Club, late night singsongs and morning pastries in Boudin and Tartine.
I was not sad to return to my own city by the bay, but I left at least a little bit of my heart in San Francisco. Good night Jimi. Good night Janis. Good night John-Boy.