Tommy Tweed – Ballymoney Reflections

The NIPA was founded in 1945 and it's membership was open to all members within Northern Ireland - We are one of the largest weekly convoying organisations in the UK. Presently we have approx. 100 clubs as members, with over 2,000 members. Birds competing each week can reach 25 to 30 thousand, depending on the race. The race programme starts in Ireland down to Rosscarbery and continues through Wales & England to Penzance, and the Premier OB Nat flown from St Malo (France).
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willie reynolds
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Tommy Tweed – Ballymoney Reflections

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Tommy Tweed – Ballymoney Reflections
PIGEON RACING IN BALLYMONEY DURING THE 1960’S, 70’S AND 80’S
BY
TOMMY TWEED

Now that I am in my mid seventies I suppose I am one of the Old Boys of this great sport. I was a member of Ballymoney HPS from 1963 to 1997, after a break of 7 years I joined Rasharkin & District as AC & T Tweed with my wife Anne and son Chris.
My first memory of pigeons was when I was 13 in 1959, and old man called Jonnie came to live in and old run down house near my home. He brought some pigeons with him, he said they were Doofers, he put them in an old lean to shed at the gable of his house. As there were no windows he cut a few lengths of ash out of the hedge to make a frame for a netting wire door. Jonnie had a greyhound bitch and him and I would walk for miles looking for a hare to chase, we would also eye out old houses and sheds where pigeons were staying and we would go back at dark with cycle lamps and catch the fancy coloured ones. I knocked up a rough shed for some of my own, sadly Jonnie passed away September 1961.
I left school at Christmas holidays, I didn’t attend to well for the last 3 months as I gathered potatoes for 2 or 3 farmers, one of the farmers asked me to work for him a few months of 1962. On the 30th July, 1962 I started work in the old Pork Processing Firm in Ballymoney, little did I know when I walked in the door that morning that this would be my employment for the next 50 years. We left the old building April 1982 and moved to a new purpose built factory 15 miles away in Cullbackey. This would be me for the next 30 years until my retirement in 2012.
When I started work in Ballymoney in 1962 I was pleased a gentleman called Willie Smyth worked there, he had real racing pigeons and supplied me with pigeons for many years. He had a family of Red and Mealy pigeons, Bricoux and Logans that could race right through to France.
Willie invited me out to his house to see his young birds coming in from Wexford. I enjoyed sitting quietly in the corner of the garden watching them trap into his small young bird loft. Willie told me to get rid of the Doofers and build a wee loft and he would gift me some birds. Late October he told me they were holding a show in the Clubroom and invited me to come and see the show and he would bring a pair for me. He said the Clubroom was down a lane opposite the Tech School, this was where the Secretary Horace Devine lived. More about Horace later. I cycled to the show on a dark October night, down the lane I found the Clubroom. I walked up to the door I could hear voices inside. I didn’t know whether to open the door or not. Then down the lane and out of the darkness appeared a big tall heavy built man, he was a fancier called John Gilmore a local policeman known to all local people as “Big John Gilmore”. John told me when the judges had finished they would switch on the outside light and then we could go in. Soon the light went on and John and I went inside, I can still picture the scene, over at the left hand side on a top pen there was a lovely blood red hen she had got a VHC card. It was the first one I went to look at, John told me this was a bird of Willie Smyth’s and had said to him earlier he was giving this hen to a young chap, my heart gave a jump. Soon Willie arrived and confirmed this and showed me another gift of a Blue Cheq Cock. I took them home in the saddle bag of my bike. I treasured that VHC card and filled in every detail, the judge was Hugh Montgomery from Coleraine, he was a very posh spoken man known as H.A. Montgomery he was on the NIPA Committee. I joined the club to fly young birds in 1963. Back then the birds were transported by rail, they were race marked at a quiet end of the platform. A small table and big wicker hampers bedded with nice pine smelling shavings stayed there during the racing season. Old Sam Graham would sit on the table dangling his legs and working the rubber ringer, he would be smoking his pipe and spitting on the floor.
When the birds would be all rubber ringed and the hampers tied and sealed one of us young boys would be sent to bring round a set of heavy scales to weigh one hamper. Then we would fetch one of the hand carts the porters used, they had long shafts and big wheels. We would load the hampers on and wheel them out to the edge of the platform, about three of us would then wait for the train to come. The rest of the members would head up to the Clubroom at the head of the town to set the clocks. The clock setters were Horace and another member called Willie Neill nickname “Tappy”. After the train would depart we would rush up to the Clubroom to help with the strike for the first two races. I didn’t have a clock so I had to cycle to use another member’s clock, it was about 5 miles away and uphill, I was allowed 3 minutes to the mile. My bike was made up of parts of 3 or 4 different bikes with just one gear, not much chance of winning a race. The third race Horace reached me a wooden case printer clock with a big T shaped key on the top, he said the owner had no birds away and wouldn’t mind me borrowing it. I was so pleased to know my birds would get their right time. For the next few races he lent me a 10 bird toulet, it was for sale but I hadn’t got the money, that Autumn I gathered a lot of potatoes on Saturday’s and bought a used 12 bird toulet for £15.
In the later sixties Horace would become the secretary of the NIPA an organisation of over 100 clubs all with a lot more members than clubs have now. He also took on the job of INFC secretary, the only man to hold these two jobs at the same time. At the same time he had a full time day job, first in the office of Nestles Milk Processing Plant, when it closed he had no bother getting an office job in Chestnutt’s Animal Feed Mill, not many computers then. I always heard people say, “Horace was a great man with a pen”. The NIPA erected a large wooden office in his garden just a few yards from our Clubroom. When he came home from his day job every evening and all weekend was spent in that office. He would sit at a big wooden table wearing a headset talking on the phone and working away with a pen at the same time. In the middle of the table there sat a big ashtray about 12 inches square and 2 inches deep, it always contained a lot of cigarette butts, you see Horace didn’t buy Gallaher Blues in a pack of 20 he bought a carton of 500, the carton always sat beside the big ashtray. In the later sixties the NIPA changed over to road transporting, it was no problem to the mighty NIPA to put six gleaming new transporters on the road. I well remember seeing the first visit a transporter made to Ballymoney, the first driver was our own member Willie Neill, Willie was an experienced lorry driver. His day job was driving a large flatbed lorry delivering farm machinery. The lorry looked lovely with the photo of cheq pigeon on the top of the cab. I remember being told the pigeon was called Iron Man raced by that top Ballymena fancier Tommy Harper.
I had reason to call at our Clubroom one Saturday afternoon one week before the first race by road transport, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The Clubroom was stacked from floor to ceiling with rolls of cardboard, this was the cardboard all the clubs would use to line their crates for the full year. Horace, Willie and another member, local Blacksmith Davy McKay were starting to cut all this cardboard to fit the brand new crates. Davy had been tasked to design and build a guillotine to cut with, they had this contraption setup, it had a round bar slightly longer than a roll about 2 inches thick, they slid a roll onto it just like a toilet roll holder, then pulled the end of the cardboard out to a marker, it was Davy’s job to let the blade come down to chop it to the right length. They tied sheets in bundles of 25, I was told that during the next week the corridor of the transporter would be packed full each day and delivered to all the NIPA Clubs, quite a job. In later years the cardboard was delivered to our clubs in rolls for us to cut ourselves now it comes already cut.
I wonder has the NIPA committee got a guillotine in the Dromore office, with Horace being NIPA secretary and Willie now driving the transporter we lost our two clock setters. A meeting was called to try and get two volunteers, it was the same back then as it is now, hard to get workers, eventually Willie Smyth said he would give it a try and asked me if I would help, I was delighted. I had wanted the job but I was young and shy and didn’t put my hand up.
We got a crash course from Horace one Saturday afternoon, what a collection of different clocks, there was 10 bird and 12 bird Toulets, Begigas, Le Continental, Sky Masters, STB, Kovo and metal and wooden cased Benzings and more. A big job as the membership grew bigger and climbed to a peak of 75 members. Going back to my mentor Willie Smyth, he was a great believer in eye sign theory, he studied pictures, read books on the subject and always seemed to have an old eye glass to hand, he would hand me one bird after another and say, “take a look at that eye”, or “what do you think of that eye”.
After the middle of 1966 I wasn’t interested in pigeon eyes, I had started going out with a pretty 17 year old girl called Anne with lovely red hair, I was more interested in looking into her eyes. I am very pleased to say she is still my rock and we look forward to celebrating our 50th Wedding Anniversary on the 26th August 2020.
I will end this chapter now but hope to come back with part two consisting of following.
Timing from France 1974,75,76,82,83. Taking my eye off the ball and losing positions, money and losing a Derby by 2 yards. Also a funny story about the night the 15 bird limit was voted through and a mention of some characters Sam Graham, Jimmy Kinnaird and Sandy McCaughan.
That’s all for now.
Tommy Tweed
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