It Occurs To Me:   A ‘store’ of memories

In the accompanying photos are two legendary Donegal shops which often vied for the title of the country’s smallest stores. 

I was delighted to see the tin shop outside Donegal Town has had its exterior renovated of late, as it holds many happy memories, particularly for children who looked at it through a magic prism back in the day. I was one of them. 

Another one which I would have passed more frequently was the wee shop in the other Barnes Mountain Gap, between Creeslough and Termon, near the old rail viaduct. 

It was run by Mary Gallagher — fondly known as ‘Mary The Gap’, or ‘Mary Den’... and was a landmark for travellers on the mountainy road between Carrigart, Glen and Letterkenny. It was often referred to as “Ireland’s smallest shop”, and Mary would give out rock candy to the children. 

The tin shop outside Donegal Town

The old ruin of a house across the road in the Gap was inhabited by 'Jimmy Den', who allegedly once told a tale of being kidnapped by the fairies for three days. 

He was found slumped up against a church gable wall and was so traumatised by the event that he rarely ever spoke of the encounter again. 

Wee shops were such an integral part of our lives back then, and Danny Logue’s in Carrigart was a half-shop and half-pub, and behind the counter was an old wall clock that had been stopped for decades. 

The wee shop between Creeslough and Termon

On our way home from school, we’d call into Danny’s and enquire: “What time is it today, Danny?” He’d turn around to the clock and sigh: 

“The same as yesterday…aye boy aye, he says, aye boy aye.” He’d then pass a few sweets over to us. The other shop was Josie Doogan’s in Bogagh…Josie was a patient and very decent man, and when we enquired “How much are the penny bars?”, he’d laugh benignly and give us a few for free. When we’d thank him, he’d respond: “Thank yourselves now, thank yourselves.”

                              The curse of celebrity politics?

I vividly recall a headline in the Indo last year which read: “Politics is no longer ‘showbiz for ugly people’, so watch out for a new wave of parachute candidates like Gráinne Seoige as she seeks Fianna Fáil nomination.” Were any lessons learned? 

What a shambles, and we now have a two-horse race for the presidency. Whatever about Jim Gavin’s Brian Lenihan’s moment, which ultimately finished him. 

Fianna Fáil said on Friday: “In relation to the tenant, he does not have any recollection or records of any such dispute, and they have reviewed all the records they have from 16 years ago.” 

READ NEXT: Muireann Bradley ‘honoured’ to join concert lineup with Neil Young and Lana Del Ray

The following day, Saturday, the ‘tenant’ contacted Fianna Fáil but on Sunday, Jim Gavin was still ‘investigating’. Ooops! And oops again!  

Due diligence, me eye! As the Examiner put it on Monday: “Fianna Fáil 'a laughing stock' as Taoiseach under pressure following Jim Gavin's exit”,

One Fianna Fáil party source called Jim Gavin's short-lived presidential campaign 'a complete and utter f**k up from top to bottom'.”

A week of gamechangers indeed!

                                         Mine is bigger than yours!

As the Guardian put it: “US fans' ugliness at the Ryder Cup was merely a reflection of Trump’s all-caps America.” 

Philip Reid in the Irish Times wrote: “ I’ve been to 15 Ryder Cups but this was a new low”...some were shouting “Throw out the Irish trash”. Ah well, at least we silenced a good portion of the trailer trash! As one observer noted: “What happened at this year’s Ryder Cup is a great analogy to what’s happening in America. Europe demonstrated amazing group-think and teamwork, while America floundered due to their ‘individual mindset’ (The Ryder Cup is a team event.)  People have become crass and indecent and American fans were a total embarrassment - the laughing stock of the world.”

At a farmer’s convention in the US, a big boastful Texan picks up a spud belonging to a Donegal farmer at his display stand and laughs: “What’s this small thing?! 

The Donegal man replies: “It’s a potato from my farm back home.” 

Your man laughs again and boasts: “On my farm back in Texas, I grow potatoes as big as melons!” The Donegal man responds: “Ah sure we just grow them to fit in our mouths!”

                              Who’s wearing the lemon juice now?

On January 6, 1995, McArthur Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson robbed two Greater Pittsburgh banks at gunpoint without attempts to disguise themselves. 

Instead, they had covered their faces in lemon juice, believing it would make them invisible to security cameras. Johnson was arrested a few days later, while Wheeler was apprehended in April after being identified in surveillance photographs.

According to Wheeler, Johnson had told him lemon juice would make him invisible to security cameras, akin to how it functions as invisible ink. 

Although initially sceptical, Wheeler had tested this method by covering his face with lemon juice and capturing an image of it with a Polaroid camera. 

As he was missing from the resulting photograph, he trusted the method to be effective. Detectives believed his absence in the image was caused either by a bad film, a maladjusted camera, or Wheeler having unintentionally pointed the camera away from his face.

Johnson was arrested on January 12. 

A surveillance photograph of Wheeler was broadcast as part of a Pittsburgh Crime Stoppers segment with the 11:00 p.m. news on April 19. Anonymous tips subsequently led to Wheeler's arrest at 12:10 a.m. on April 20, less than an hour after the broadcast. When shown the photographs in which he had been identified, Wheeler was shocked and exclaimed “But I wore the lemon juice, I wore the lemon juice!.”

Johnson pleaded guilty to the heist at Mellon Bank as well as two unrelated robberies from 1994. He testified against Wheeler and was given a five-year prison sentence on October 27. 

Judge Gary L Lancaster sentenced Wheeler to over 24 years in prison, followed by three years of probation, on January 5, 1996, for the Swissvale stickup. Charges for the Brighton Heights case were dropped.

A brief account of the robberies was included in the 1996 edition of The World Almanac. 

David Dunning, a professor of social psychology at Cornell University, discovered this story and subsequently wrote a longer article about the case in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He came to believe that, “If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, “his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.” With his graduate student Justin Kruger, he organized a research program to determine whether someone's perceived competence could be measured against their actual competence. 

They authored the 1999 paper, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, in which they found that “when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr Wheeler, they are left with the mistaken impression that they are doing just fine.” 

This became known as the Dunning–Kruger effect, a psychological phenomenon where people with limited knowledge or skill greatly overestimate their competence. 

Wheeler’s lemon-juice blunder has since become a textbook example of this effect. It demonstrates how ignorance isn’t simply the absence of knowledge, it can foster misplaced certainty. His case, though humorous in hindsight, underscores a universal human flaw: the less we know, the more likely we are to overestimate our abilities.

So, “his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.” 

Swap orange for lemon, and who comes to mind?

                                        Thought for today

Light travels faster than sound. That is why people appear bright until you hear them speak.