Last word the spirit of building bigger and better

The Anglo-Celt’s PAUL FITZPATRICK caught up with PETER MONAGHAN, a man with a long, storied history of involvement in the Virginia Show who recalls the plus side of taking on huge debt, and the year a storm threatened the Show.

Amid the hustle and bustle of the Virginia Show last Wednesday, the lowing of cattle, stall-holders peddling their wares and farmers and machinery men greeting old acquaintances, sat Peter Monaghan, an affable man with a century of history stored in his razor-sharp mind.
Peter, a native of Munterconnaught, will be 100 years old come New Year’s Day, and remembers the very first Virginia Show. He was there through it all and, sitting in the pristine new media centre over-looking the thronged masses below, he shared a joke and some stories.
“He’s a great man,” said one by-stander as we approached, “a great, lovely man, and a contented man.” And so he is.
When the Celt asked Peter for a few words, he beamed a smile and joked that we would need “big banner headlines!”. And then he told us about how it all began...
“A committee was formed,” recalled Peter, “and they bought the field. They had no money, so a few of the committee signed on the dotted line everything they had... But it had to be paid back. It went on from that.”
Peter attended 37 successive shows before missing his first. He still speaks in awe of the workers who established the show on a firm footing, and helped it flourish into one of the best in the country.
“I was at 37 shows, one after another, until I was away at a job far away and I wasn’t able to come to that one. And I got Harry McIlwaine into my place. We had two great secretaries, Paddy McNamee and Mattie McNamee, one after another. They were very, very good.
“Nobody knows the work that has to go into it until they go through it. A mountain of work that very few would want. But I was through it all. And that’s the story.”
Time moves irrevocably on, of course – the show expanded, the crowds swelled, but the hard work that underpinned the whole thing remained the same. The first committee were, said Peter, a remarkable bunch of mighty individuals, who pulled together as a team.
“The biggest change? Sure it’s out of this world,” said Peter.
“There’s one thing I would like to tell you – they were the finest set of men I think you could pick if you travelled the world over. They were mostly small farmers and they were getting it hard enough at the time, in the middle of a war, when the hall was built.
“And it was very hard to get money that time. The men put in their time to anything that would make a few bob and they stuck together, an awful gang of them, and even after the hall was finished, it wasn’t fully paid for and didn’t they take another chance, and build a big school - on their own and they swamped in debt.
“And the idea for that was, it was very clever when you think about it, to keep a big outfit together was to remain in debt. Wasn’t it a clever move, to be in debt?
“The result was then that they built the school and rented it to the Department of Education. And I’ll tell you, if you owed the Department five shillings, they’d spend a hundred pound to take it off you. And when they had to pay out, you had to beg on your knees, it could be two or three months over due when you’d get a few bob.
“There’s the government for you. I remember it all.”
As the years went on, the faces changed but the Virginia Show persisted, reliable as the changing of the seasons. As summer came to a close, the crowds – farmers, traders, breeders, salesmen and, in later years, whole families – descended on the town. Peter didn’t make it every year, but he was there in spirit.
“I kept in touch, even when I wasn’t able to come, I’d always make sure that I got the programme and all the information on it. It’s still there,” he says, harking back again to the original group.
“They hardly had enough to live themselves and they’d go out of their way to help you. They’d organise before the show how many men would come in each evening and do a certain amount of work. If I was in some trouble, I wanted something heavy lifted, they were beside you on your back to help you. And now it’s a different generation, you wouldn’t get that help now...”

A man of many trades
Peter could turn his hand to most jobs – the sort of man who is priceless to an endeavour such as the one in Virginia, with a thousand little jobs needing doing, he says, which no-one notices. Honest hard work has been the foundation stone of his 99 years.
“From my view point anyway, it was an outdoor life, and plenty of work. I started out a carpenter, I served my time for six years and sure I had that [trade] around my neck. And from that to sweeping chimneys, I had every job that ever was.

“I remember when the hall was up, there came in an extra charge of entries that year and when they went to look for an extra marquee for the dance, they couldn’t get one. All the marquees were out on hire and there was none to be got. And we had to put a temporary roof up for the show day. It was just skeleton timbers on it, no slates or covers of any description.
“And it turned out a beautiful day and the crowd was excellent and a wonderful dance. But what happened during the night - there was a terrible wind storm, and it blew the temporary roof the whole way through the field, and the sheets of galvanise, you could make necklaces out of them.
“And I was sent in the next morning to try to sort it out. I remember that, and I remember Paddy Reilly, God be good to him, he came down with a couple more men to see it. I remember just as if he was standing there beside me - I hope he’s in Heaven – and [Peter impersonates the late Paddy and draws uproarious laughter from those listening in] ‘mmmmm’, he says, ‘we’ll build it bigger and better’. They were the words he said. And did. That’s true.”
And then he smiles, in fond reminiscence. Our conversation has come to a close.
“Now,” he says, brightly, “you’ll make something out of that, you will?”
We will – maybe that was the mantra, all those years ago.