The Baker St Boys – The Murder of Crows.
Some couples are blessed with children, some would beg to
differ. The Casey’s of Baker Street were legendary throughout the city of
Limerick in the fifties and sixties. Mr Casey ran a butcher shop with his
father. When he married Lucy O’Neill, a perfect storm
of fertility was unleashed on the city. Within a year they were blessed with a
bouncing baby boy, closely followed by bouncing twin boys. In short the kids
kept bouncing out until their little house was splitting at the seams, every
one of them boys. By the time the Casey’s moved to Baker Street, there were
nine rambunctious little rascals tagging along between the ages of four and
twelve, including two sets of twins, one identical one not.
The house the Casey’s moved to was a three story
townhouse. It backed directly onto a row of single story, crofter cottages that
had been there long before the city grew around them. Baker Street was never
the same after that day. All of the Casey boys had been blessed with vivid
imaginations. They could turn any stick into a gun, any hole in the ground into
a castle. There wasn't a bad bone in one of them, but their high spirits often
bordered on riotous. One of their favorite places was the roof of their
house. The older boys soon found out that they could climb out of the skylight
on the back of the house and into the gully in the roof. From there they had a
vantage point over the whole city, all the way to the banks of the Shannon.
They played spy, soldier, and knight up there. They soon found they could
clamber down the drain pipe on to the boundary wall which separated their tiny
back yard from the little row of houses behind them. From there it was only a scamper over the roofs and a short drop into Farmers Lane.
This was years before the term ‘Health and Safety’ sucked
the joy out of life. Back then, an adults reaction on seeing a troop of
pre-teen boys clambering down the outside of a three story building was less “Oh my God, they will be killed’ and more
‘Oh my God, I’m going to kill them’. To the people that lived in the little
cottages, the thunder of hobnail shoes crossing their roofs became common
place. The only one that ever complained was old Mr Ryan, he was a grumpy old
sod that lived directly behind the Casey’s house. One day after a particularly
exuberant game of Cops and Robbers followed by a roof top chase, Mr Ryan tuned
up at Mr Casey’s shop, hopping mad. When Mr Casey got home he rounded up all
the boys and read them the riot act. He stopped their pocket money and took
away all their comics for two weeks. Two weeks! Having your comics taken for a
week in the sixties was the equivalent of shutting off both the TV and the
Internet toady.
That night the Casey boys held a meeting in Eoin’s bedroom
after dinner. They decided that they had enough of Mr cranky pants Ryan. Eoin
had a plan, all he needed was a twenty thousand tonne container ship full of
corn and a few other odds and ends. Two days later a very similar ship pulled
into Limerick City Harbour. With grain
shipments came crows, lots of crows. That evening the Casey boy’s ran home from
school like their tails were on fire. Soon the whole clan had gathered on the
roof of the Baker Street. Dozens of crows were perched on the roofs and
chimneys all around them. The birds didn’t seem to be bothered by the smoke
coming from Mr Ryan’s house. Eoin had his catapult with him, a prized possession. His
little brother Eamon handed over a fistful of ball bearings he had salvaged
from a dumped washing machine earlier in the week. Eoin loaded the catapult and
took careful aim. The ball bearing pinged off the edge of the chimney making
the birds flap in alarm but they soon settled back down. Eoin’s next shot
sailed over the heads of the birds, in the distance the sound of breaking glass
made him duck quickly under the ridge tile.
“Give me a go, you cross eyed yoke,” said Eamon grabbing the
weapon. Eamon loaded the catapult and took aim. His little arm shook with the
strain as he drew back the rubber, sighting between the v, aiming a foot over
the heads of the massed crows. He let the ball fly, all the boys watched as the
shiny silver missile crossed the few feet between the Casey’ roof and the
Ryan’s Chimney pot. The little ball found its mark, one crow vanished in a puff
of feathers down the chimney while all the others flew away. Nine little heads
peaked over the ridge tiles like smiling pumpkins when the back door of Mr Ryan's flew open. Black smoke billowed into the sky in a rolling cloud. Old Mr Ryan
stumbled out half choking, the stink of burning feathers could be smelt in
Dublin. The Casey’s tumbled back through the skylight, laughing delightedly.
Operation ‘Singed Feathers’ was a complete success. The boys hugged and laughed
until Mr Casey shouted up the stairs to keep the racket down. From that day on
Old Mr Ryan never complained about a few footsteps on his roof again.
