An old yellowed news clipping I found bagged in my grandmother’s old suitcase, unleashed a flood of memories. Rose of Tralee contest, 1973, can you spot which one is me? I’m the short one in the middle with eyes closed, the only one dressed in red, that's me. I wore my grandmother's handmade lace collar on a bargain table dress, while the other girls were decked out for a polyester ball with Rhett Butler.
They were something else. Catty comes to mind. I was the hippie chick. I wouldn't wear makeup. But I had to put on war paint for the finale. There were nasty behind the scenes catcalls and comments from the other contestants, like calling me a slut because of my halter dress, and other catty things, like, Maybe you should wear makeup more often. Not said in a nice way. I really did not want to be there.
My aunt enrolled me as a favor to John Whooley. They were a few girls short—they wanted one contestant for each county. Well, I was short. Waaaay outta my league. My aunt Jane, who was a beauty queen of sorts, was a festival organizer. So I was stuck for the duration. Literally at the last minute, another girl took the county I was supposed to represent, County Longford, leaving me stranded, waiting in the wings, waiting to go onstage—without a county, until my aunt stepped in, and said we had cousins in Cavan. I was representing them. I stepped into the floodlights smiling. The show must go on.
I wrote more in-depth on the pageant experience here. In the early days of blogdom, I wasn’t as focused on trying to post my writing chronologically, as much as making family groupings. Also, I started my blog in 2007, long before Blogger changed its format to allow backdating to 1970, and I was madly cramming things in wherever I could fit them in. So the story posted in November, 2008 which was the unofficial Irish memoir section. But this entry is the first draft, from a Facebook post. Pádraigín McGillicuddy & the Rose of Tralee.
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