Free The Parish by Alice Taylor Page B

of that, you must then convince the punter. You quickly learn to read faces, but you discover as you go along that it is very easy to get it wrong and that a large, jovial talkative man does not necessarily guarantee that you will have a sale at the end of the conversation. It could be that he just likes the sound of his own voice and, having let many other potential customers pass you by, you discover that though his mouth was open, his wallet was tightly zipped. Sometimes a distracted woman dragging a shoal of children behind her might look an unlikely prospect but she couldsurprise you and decide to take a sporting chance. We found out that a big heart is always more important than a big wallet. By the third day of the rally, we were no longer green beginners but learning fast the art of selling tickets.
    The steam rally provided our launching pad, but it was only the beginning in a long list of venues. John was the man in charge of the entire enterprise and he proved an inspired choice because he was a hard worker who never made hard work out of anything. A day selling tickets with this fast-thinking and witty man was a day was full of fun and hilarity. Having been an active member of Macra na Feirme for many years, which involved chairing a debating team to great success around the country, he was also a life-long ardent member of Fine Gael, so he knew more people than Bertie Ahern, and that is a great plus when you go out selling tickets. To me John seemed to know the whole country, and if he was snookered by an approaching stranger, he would whisper under his breath, “Do you know this fella?” and if I said no, he invariable approached them with the opening salutation “And how are we now?” So whenever I heard that salute I knew that John did not have a clue who the person was, but within minutes he would have solved that problem. The ultimate networker, he invariably knew someone belonging to them or someone from their home place. Needless to mention, he knew the whole Fine Gael fraternity and if one of them did not buy, he looked askance—“And he’s one of ours,” he’d say in exasperation. But he very seldom drew a blank.
    At one venue a pernickety woman challenged us as to the newness of our car, seeing as how we were parading it all around the country. She was determined to pick holes in our project. It was late in the evening and we were too tired toargue with her so we agreed with all her arguments, which drove her mad; eventually in frustration she told us that we were “a right shower of chancers”.
    As we progressed, we fine-tuned our act and instead of dragging the car around with us, we took posters, which was far easier. We also had an oil painting of the church, which we mounted on an easel, and we discovered that people are very interested in anything mounted on an easel. They regard it as a work in progress, and indeed our church was just that and we had large photographs of the scaffolded steeple to prove it. People were interested in the whole enterprise and enjoyed looking at the painting and photographs and hearing of our fundraising efforts.
    The best buyers were the people who had at some point in their own lives sold tickets as a fundraiser. Many of them told us, “Oh, God, we had to do this and it was a tough project.” And indeed it was, but with a good positive crew on board we also had a lot of fun.
    One of our most enjoyable outings was to Listowel Races. We had arranged with the Listowel Council that we could pitch our camp in the small square where all streets converge, and this placed us in the centre of the crowds on the way to the races. This is the square from which John B. Keane now surveys his town. A racing crowd out for the day are in a jubilant mood and most of them are by nature prepared to take a gamble, so they were our kind of people. We set up our posters, easel and photographs and got ourselves ready for the day; we were blessed with the weather, which was