Terry
We had a fine bowling
team back in the fifties. We’d travel around to tournaments all over the place,
including some of the big ones: Frisco, LA, Reno, Vegas. Terry O’Hara was our
captain—a great guy and a solid bowler. He had a sanctioned 300-game and the
American Bowling Congress gives you a big, fat ring for that. He made it a
point to wear the ring whenever we traveled to tournaments out of town. We
never won much of anything, but we had our share of good times, and then some.
The trip that none of us will ever forget was to San Francisco in ’55.
We checked in at the tournament site, got settled in our hotel, then went out
to dinner at Lefty O’Doul’s down on Market Street. There we ran into a bunch of
guys we knew from past events. We had a few cocktails and that got the ball
rolling, so we invited everyone back to our hotel. Before long we were all
packed into Terry’s room and the party was in full swing.
Around midnight, the hotel sent up
their security guy. He said we had to quiet down or they’d throw us out. We
took a liking to this kid right away and it only took a few minutes to convince
him to join the party. About 2:00 AM, the S.F.P.D. showed up at the door and
they weren’t nearly as friendly. To calm things down, Terry went into his
repertoire of Irish ballads. He had a tenor voice like an angel. We sang along
some, but mostly we just listened. He finished up with “Mother Machree.”
Oh,
God bless you and keep you,
Mother
Machree.
Hell, there wasn’t a dry eye in the
room.
Then Terry stomps over to the
window at the back of the room, throws it open and says, “Ah, to hell with it!”
He climbs out on the ledge and jumps off. Mind you, we’re on the fourth floor!
You never saw a room full of drunks sober up so fast in all your life. We ran
to the window expecting to see Terry splattered all over the pavement four
stories down. But there he was, a little below the ledge, arms spread wide and
a big grin on his Irish mug.
“Ta Da!” he says.
See, he’d checked it out earlier
and found that the hotel was built up against the side of a hill. The drop was
only about five feet. Well, we hauled him back into the room and had a great
laugh, except for a couple of guys who were really mad. One of them took a
swing at Terry, said he nearly gave him a heart attack. It all ended with
handshakes and hugs.
We lost Terry to a car accident a
few years later. At his wake, I was asked to tell the story of the Frisco trip.
I gave it my best, with a few flourishes thrown in. It got a huge laugh and
everybody said it was pure Terry. I think he would have been proud.
If I could sing a lick, I would
have closed with “Mother Machree.”
_____