May 27, 2022
He is a north sider.
Christopher “Christy” Dunne was born and raised and will one day die on the north side of the River Liffey. It’s the working-class side of Dublin and Christy takes pride in that.
He is a short man with a neck as wide as his head, probably somewhere north of 50, and his graying hair cropped close. He wears black tennis shoes, black shorts, and a red North Face tee shirt that fits a wee bit too snug about a middle age paunch. He will tell you that he’s put on a few pounds since his welter weight days in the 80s when he was the All Ireland champion with 57 K O’s .
He drives through Dublin, effortlessly darting between lanes, rolling down his window to give Sharon a tease because her car is sporting a handicapped license plate when he knows she just came from climbing the hills of Athens, or another cabby who is already regretting, before he has even left Dublin, that he agreed to drive a group of dim-witted Americans to sightsee in Belfast. Christy turned down the high fare jaunt because he had to get back to “train the kids” at the boxing gym.
His phone rings. His wife. He politely tells her he can’t talk now. He hangs up and explains what he sees as the beauty of owning his own taxi. If a customer pisses him off, he can call it a day and go home. And if his wife pisses him off, he can tell her there’s hurling match at “the Croker” and the fare rich fans streaming from the stands is just too lucrative to pass up. When we tell Christy that we are getting married, he asks if we have been married before. We tell him yes. He pauses with a wry grin and tells us “ye’s look happy.” Then, chuckling, not really meaning it, he says “so there’s a chance I could be happy again too? ,
A cyclist darts in front of us as and Christy, who will tell you he’s not a fan of the sport, announces with a mischievous grin at us in his rear-view mirror, “Watch this. I’ll wash his face for him” We catch up and as Christy passes, he turns his wipers and window wash on, spraying the cyclist.
When he’s not teaching his lads boxing, Christy is a fan of Irish football and hurling. Dublin is the perennial powerhouse in football, but Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary own hurling. Christy takes pride in the fact that both leagues are amateur, not professional, and 83,000 Dubliners will fill The Croker to watch them.
We arrive at Hertz to pick up our car to head toward Newgrange and the Mourne Mountains. Christy grabs our bags. I ask if I might take a picture. He pretends to plant a big kiss on Cathy, shakes my hand, tells me I’m a lucky man, and tells Sean, the parking lot attendant at Hertz, another Dubliner Christy knows,
“Ye take good care of me friends, now lad.”
"Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost" 