insert binary data into a table column with psql

I am running REDHAT 5.5 64 bit with PostgreSQL 8.4.7 64 bit.  I am trying
to load a binary file into a bytea column into a table without any luck
from psql.
On the linux server a script is looking for a file and if found would
create a record into a table that contains a ID, date of load and the
file in the bytea column.
table looks like the following
table x
(ID number,
 load_date date,
 image  bytea
)
from psql
I have tried several ways including creating a function to read a file
without any success but basically I want to do something like the
following from a bash shell

psql <connection information> -c "insert into x (ID, load_date, image)
values ($PID,clock_timestamp()::timestamp(0), copy from '/tmp/$FN' with
binary);"

Any help would be greatly appreciated

John