"The Laundry Bomb"
Larne, Northern Ireland
August 8, 1983
Dear Folks,
All the way from Newry, on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, to the city limits of Belfast, the people of the North kept emphasizing to me that the violence in their province is overplayed by the media.
"You'd not know it even existed, to just walk down the street," I was told by several well-meaning people. But they were wrong. Very wrong.
My first encounter with the tension that exists in the daily lives of these people who consider themselves British, not Irish, was in the rural farming village of Dromara. There I snapped a photo of a policeman coming out of a heavily-fortified police station. In less than one minute, I was surrounded by several armed policemen demanding to know who I was and why I was taking photographs.
In Ireland I didn't see a single firearm. In Northern Ireland--particularly in Belfast--I saw not only firearms in the hands of hundreds of policemen and British soldiers but also many army helicopters patrolling overhead and dozens of heavily-armored troop carriers constantly darting from street to street. Quite frankly, to me the scene in Belfast during the two days I was there was very much like some war zone!
How a person can claim with a straight face that there are hardly any "troubles," when he or she can't go shopping in the downtown area without being frisked for weapons or bombs is beyond my understanding. Yet, so use to it all have the people of Northern Ireland become that they are able to believe so.
Perhaps the one incident that epitomized that whole incredible experience was a terrifying--yet also humorous--occurrance that happened to me this morning in the Northern Ireland port city of Larne.
There I was greeted by the Lord Mayor Thomas Robinson in the elegant, second-story meeting chambers of the city hall building. He explained to me his difficulty in attracting new industry to his recession-hit area because of the bad images associated with the sectarian violence. Then, just as he was winding up our discussion with a plea for me to write positive stories about my visit there, the building's doorman came rushing into the room to tell the mayor that he believed there was a bomb on one of the first floor windowsills.
"It is a package with a white fuse poking from it. I've telephoned the police, sir," the harried-looking elderly man said.
The mayor motioned for me to be calm.
"I'll be right back. I'd best give it a look. These things happen all the time here," he said, rushing off after the old man.
In the meantime I was anything but calm. Nervously I stood in a far corner of the huge and long room, expecting any minute to be blown out onto the street below.
Suddenly a disurbing thought swept over me. What have I done with the white plastic sack I stuff my dirty laundry in? And does it not have a white drawstring?
With a sickening feeling in my stomach, I remembered I had taken the sack out of my backpack a couple hours earlier, intending to wash my clothes before meeting with the mayor. But there had been no laundrymat near the city hall, and so when I'd stopped at the front of the city hall, to adjust my backpack and comb my disheveled hair in the reflection of a window, I'd absently-minded placed the sack on the windowsill.
I darted down the grand staircase to find several soldiers outside discussing the possibilty of blowing up the sack in the street. I froze with embarrasment. My God they are going to blow up my underwear!
I sneaked a glance at the Lord Mayor standing to the side. He was so resplendent in his official robes and medallians. Was I to tell them the mystery sack was simply my laundry, or should I say nothing?
I imagined the trees and the television antennaes on the nearby homes becoming gloriously festooned with charred remnants of my underwear. I tried to remember what brand of underwear I wore...Fruit of the Loom! Jeez, no one in Northern Ireland will be wearing such a brand. Such a silly-sounding brand name of underwear surely was to be found only in the States, I glumly decided. If they did explode the laundry, everyone would know it was me who foolishly left the sack on the windowsill. I sighed and meekly approached the officers.
"Uh, sir, that's not a bomb...that's my laundry. I left it by accident on the window, when I came to visit the mayor."
One of the officers gave the other a sort of knowing look and replied to me, "You know something, lad? I think the next time we will go ahead and blow up yer skivvies. But...we'll make sure you're wearing them."
There was a burst of laughter all about, as if all had been waiting with abated breath for the right punch line. And I guessed I should have expected such, for even with all the woes the Northern Irish have, they are still the most fun-loving and prankster-prone people I had yet to meet on this journey. As in most cases of violence, those at the center of the problems are in the minority and largely shunned by the rest.
"We must keep our faith," one tiny, fragile old lady reminded me a moment ago, as I boarded a ferry for Stranraer, Scotland.
Steven
Postscript: Years later I would be riding a bicycle into Larne on a road different than that which I walked along, and what would I see on the edge of the city but one of the largest Fruit of the Loom factories in the world. When I saw it, my jaw felt as if it dropped all the way to the pavement. Probably everyone at the city hall that day in 1983 had been wearing the same brand of underwear as me. I could have held my tongue, after all.