Zan Thompson : End of the Road for Favorite Briefcase

It was the marvelous table set at the Great Southern Hotel in Galway that caused me to throw away my soft-sided briefcase, my favorite, which has been through two presidential and one senatorial campaigns.

The Claddagh Room on the top of the Great Southern Hotel is the restaurant in the elegant hotel, presided over by Joe Heskin, the captain. He suggested that we try the steak. I did only because for once in our lives both Audrey Ann Marie Boyle and I finally felt we’d had our share of fresh-caught salmon. The steak Joe brought was a New York, two inches thick and as tender as it was rare. There was at least half of both steaks left, and when Joe wasn’t looking, I popped them into a plastic sack and thrust them in my briefcase.

The Great Southern had rooms 14 feet tall, and ours had a tall window looking out on the park with a fountain in the middle. In the center of the fountain was a bronze sculpture shaped like a fishing boat. It was the only big city we stayed in and the hotel was gracious and comfortable. Dogs are allowed, but not in the public rooms. While we were having coffee in the great lobby one morning, a dog walked through the doorway, leading his mistress. He was a black shepherd with tan eyebrows and a poise which showed that not only had he been a guest at the Great Southern before, he obviously had his favorite squeak toy. No one even watched the twosome as they crossed the lobby and stepped grandly into the elevator and rose from sight. Only Audrey Ann Marie and I seemed aware of their elegant passage.

From there, we went to Clifden, my grandfather Joyce’s hometown, out on the tip of land where Connemara reaches to the Atlantic Ocean. The Gaelic name for Connemara is Connacht.

When Oliver Cromwell ground the Irish beneath his pointed boot, he gave them the choice of becoming a slave class or going to Connemara. What he is reputed to have said is, “Go to hell or Connacht.”

That’s because the amount of soil on top of the granite bones of the land is measured in fractions of inches, barely enough to support a covering of moss and scant grass. The Joyces chose to go to Connacht. Clifton heads out into the Atlantic like the prow of a ship, cleaving the towering waves.

Audrey and I stayed at the Abbey Glen Castle Hotel, looking out over the bay. Our windows opened out on the town of Clifton, the steeples of the two churches reaching toward the sky. One morning, we saw both ends of a rainbow, one end at sea and the other in the Twelve Bens, the tallest range of mountains in the west.

A creek wanders through the hotel grounds and makes its way to the bay. One morning, we saw a pair of China pheasants walking across the green at one end of the golf course, their feathers bronze and russet in the clear Irish light.

In residence at the Abbey Glen Castle was a fine black dog with his mind on his work. Dogs are not frivolous in Ireland. They are herding cattle or sheep, or guarding their master’s land. This old boy stood watch at the entrance to the parking lot and checked off each car that entered.

One morning, Audrey Ann Marie and I set out for the island of Achille and stopped to give Shannon, the dog, a piece of the Great Southern steak. When I opened the soft-sided briefcase, I nearly dropped to my knees. We had enjoyed two warm days and the steak had taken leave of us. We had tried to feed a couple of other dogs but had felt guilty, fearing that their owners would think we were dog poisoners. Anyway, not only did Shannon miss the steak, but I had to throw away my briefcase.

At the Abbey Glen Castle, I had smoked salmon the equal of that served on Aer Lingus, a noble fish, bright coral in color and suave with the color of smoke.

On our way to Galway, we had a day of Biblical storm, lashing rains and winds which were quite able to pick up the small rented car, but for Audrey Ann Marie’s able driving. And in the midst of that wild day, we came upon a detour which forded rivers and beat its way through forests with their limbs rasping down for the poor little car. There was no one out on that fearsome day but some simple-minded cows and a few trucks with schedules to keep. When we met one of the latter, we had to back up until we came to a slightly wider place in the road. The cows? Oh, we backed up for them, too. They aren’t crabby, just slow to know what is needed.

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to tell you that the Irish call a detour as wild as that one was--a diversion. Maybe they feel if they call it a diversion, the travelers will see it as a form of entertainment, like chamber music and the pleasant wine. Anyway, if it’s stormy and wild and the road falls away on both sides, believe me, you’re taking a diversion.

I don’t know where our friends and fellow travelers, the Langmades, were that day. Must have been lost.