Looking Back: Celebrated ending of 'tyranny of the juggernauts' ... too soon!

In December 1994, Kilcullen was celebrating something which in retrospect was premature, writes Brian Byrne. We held a funeral procession to mark the end of the tyranny of the juggernaut.

In a story by Jane Mullins of The Kildare edition of The Nationalist, we marked 'with restrained joy ... the banishing of the thundering heavy vehicles from the main street'. The occasion was a three-day weekend festival to reflect on the recent by-passing of the town with the completion of the first section of the M9.

The town celebrated by recreating a Kilcullen of a century before, when horses and carts were the transport, a blacksmith worked in his recreated forge, and shops were decorated and their windows stocked with produce and products of an earlier and less frenzied time.

The accompanying photo by Pat Deasy, headlined 'Back to the Future in Kilcullen', was taken at the crossroads and shows Vivian Clarke, Pat Dunlea, Paddy Mitchell, Jim Collins and Peter Dunlea in appropriate costume.

However, the celebration of the end of the 'polluting heavy trucks' that clogged up the roads and 'made life hell' was, clearly in the light of the experience of today', a bit too soon.

Written from a clipping provided by PJ Lydon.

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