Seated at the window of his bedroom, overlooking the rolling green fields of the Clogher Valley, Jack Primrose regales visitors with vivid tales from his youth.

With bright eyes and a clear voice, he recalls fondly his days as a cattle dealer all over Ireland and England. And, with a cheeky grin, he refuses to give away what made him fall in love with his wife Sarah.

He will celebrate his one hundredth birthday tomorrow (Friday) surrounded by family and friends at St. Macartan’s Nursing home, Clogher.

Never one to let his age get in the way of living his life, Jack, who drove until he was 97, loves playing cards and he borrows five westerns a week from the local library. He also reads the Newsletter and The Irish News each day and looks forward to reading The Impartial Reporter on Thursdays.

Born on November 18, 1916 at Glenoo, Fivemiletown, Jack was one of six siblings. Life in rural Ireland was tough and Jack’s father wanted him to help out at the home farm. But the ambitious teenager harboured a desire to make some money. He bought his first calf for four pounds and by the time he was 18 he had enough cows to go to the Moy Fair in 1934. He then bought and sold cattle across Tyrone and Armagh, before “falling in” with Johnny McCartin from Carrickmore, who he worked with for the next 25 years. 
“When he died, I took a notion that I’d ship cattle myself,” Jack said. “I shipped to England from 1955-1959. Then I heard there was a good turn in Dublin so I went there. The cattle were tied by the neck and sold to the butcher.”

Jack also dealt extensively throughout the west of Ireland and his name was well-known wherever he went. “I had my customers. Before I left home I knew who would be buying the cattle,” he said. 

The luck penny was such an important part of any transaction that Jack was known to drive to the west of Ireland on a Saturday if he had forgotten to give a man his luck penny. He states: “The only thing you have in this world is your word. You need to be fit to go into a town, you need your reputation. If I ever borrowed money off a man, I’d pay him back.”

Amidst the hard work, there was time for fun. Jack quips: “I wasn’t selling cattle at night.” He enjoyed attending dances in local houses and church halls. It was at one such dance that he met his wife Sarah Johnston, from Colebrooke. What made him fall in love? “I can’t tell you that,” he smiles, adding that Sarah worked hard looking after the home farm and rearing their two children, Ann and William, while he was away dealing cattle.

In 1942 he borrowed £200 to buy a house at Cornarusland, Cooneen and was married in 1946.

Jack was 35 when his son William was born. At that point he was smoking 80 cigarettes a day and was given a stark warning by his doctor. He recalls: “The doctor poked the coals in the fire and said: ‘That’s what your lungs will be like in five years.’ He told me I’d never see William grow up. So I tried to cut down but then I’d go on them twice as bad, so I just gave up completely. I had a cousin who was a male nurse who was smoking 80 a day. He only cut down. He lived for five years and three months.”

World War II cast a shadow over Jack’s twenties. Although he did not know anyone who went to war, he felt the impact through rationing and the subsequent smuggling that saw him get into many scrapes with the police.
Jack laughs as he recounts a night when he was carrying two stone of sugar across the border, the hilarious chase across fields and through briars, ending when he lost the officer in a “priddy field.” “The last ditch I crossed I could find his fingers going down my back. I could hear the slap and I got away from him,” said Jack. 

He was not alone during that era, where war rationing meant that the temptation of cheese, sugar, chocolate and cigarettes in the south was too much and cross border smuggling was rife.
“I shouldn’t put that in the paper but I doubt they’ll come after me now,” Jack laughs.

Asked if he’s looking forward to receiving a card from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth for his one hundredth birthday, Jack comments: “She’ll not put anything in it!”
He voiced his surprise when he was told he will receive a Centenarian Bounty of €2,540 from the Irish Government and a congratulatory letter signed by the President because he was born in Ireland before partition.

Jack has had a life-long love of westerns and enjoys visits from his card-playing friends twice a year to St. Macartans, during which he takes pleasure from playing Whist and Twenty Five.

He looks forward to visits from his only surviving sibling Gertie (89), his son William and his daughter Ann Bell.

His secret to long life is “plenty of hard work, not much sleep and two half-uns of whiskey every day.”