The cast of local characters
WHAT town or village in Kerry would be complete without its cast of local characters? While most of them are gone, they’re certainly not forgotten and there is hardly a pub in rural Kerry without its own individual history of colourful personalities.
Over the bar in Finucane’s hangs an Aussie cowboy hat with all the signs of a life fully lived etched into its leather. It belonged to one of the great regulars at the bar - Bill Fitzmaurice. Indeed, his history is strewn in memorabilia throughout the bar in an illustration of how much Finucane’s personality was informed by that of its patrons.
But the hat takes pride of place, with the legend ‘Bill Fitzmaurice - October 2000’ tagged onto it. “Bill said to me ‘when I die, I want my hat put up there and every pint that’s drank I’ll drink it with you!’,” Michael laughed. “So I put it up in his memory.”
Around the corner of the bar counter is further evidence of Bill’s ties with Finucane’s. It looks a bit strange at first: a man lying on a bed of nails with five concrete blocks balanced on his midriff and another fellow over him swinging a sledgehammer onto the blocks. “That’s Bill’s son Jim, who broke the world record for breaking the heaviest weight while lying on a bed of nails in England.”
Alongside the framed photographs is a news article from sometime in the ’80s: it shows Jim, a pro wrestler, sitting on the arm of Giant Haystacks.
Not far from that is Moyvane artist Brenda Fitzmaurice’s painting of Ben Costello, another celebrated character who has since gone to his eternal reward. “He was an out and out character and Brenda’s painting shows him on the last day of licenced salmon drift netting on the Shannon some years ago.” Gone, but not forgotten in the museum of Bally that is Finucane’s.