About their life and what I witnessed.
Every night, after dinner the entire family knelt and said the rosary out loud. The entire village seemed to be dressed in black. Was that because it didn't show the dirt or Irish rural modesty. Color would be ostentatious and bring attention to yourself; pride was to them a great sin. You weren't to brag, wear makeup, swagger, flirt, or any of a dozen other things. The parish priest was the center of power. For the entire month, I never saw or heard a word about any political representative. But every Sunday all went to church and the talk was of the priest's sermon, and that talk was always positive.
There was a night in 1961 when three Jimmy Dolan's were gathered, myself, my Uncle and my Granduncle. It was around the fire in my Uncle Jimmy's home. It was not the parlor. The parlor was a small formally furnished room off to the right as you entered. This room where everyone gathered I don't remember ever having a name. As you walked in you might turn to go into the parlor but they would take your arm and say 'come into the fire' and there it would be, a great fire with a large pot off to the side or if dinner was being prepared it would be directly over the fire. A kettle would be laying on the side in the embers filled with boiling water for tea, the beverage always offered to a guest first, with lots of milk and sugar. Well, this night all were gathered around the fire and my Uncle Jimmy asked his Uncle Jimmy to show the young Yank his 'health'. The elder 90 something Jimmy, the tallest and thinnest of the three of us, a quiet bachelor who lived alone 'up the road', proceeded to bend at the waist without bending his knees and then untied and tied his shoe laces. Everyone applauded and that was the gist of my visit with my Grand Uncle; we were that shy with each other.
The younger Uncle Jimmy always used the word 'fag'. Not in reference to a cigarette; actually I don't think he smoked but about everything: he was 'fagged'; they were 'fagged'; "I'm going to be fagged". It took me a while to realize 'fag' meant tired.
There was poverty but after awhile I didn't see it. Entertainment was just the radio played for about an hour each night if there were no visitors and there was almost always visitors. On those nights the entertainment was the talk. A lot of reminiscing with my father about those he knew and had grown up with. They all had nicknames. 'Pat the pusher' was a favorite of mine. Of course, there were no drugs for that kind of a pusher. What he did to earn that nickname no one could remember. Names over names: "Sure, don't you remember", someone would ask Dad and then there would be the stories of that one's family often leading to the tragedy that had befallen them. Then everyone would nod; someone would say something if it were a self-imposed tragedy: "well that's what comes from that sort of behavior". Except when the tragedy was due to alcohol which they called the drink. "It was the drink" would sum up a tragedy. "Ah, it's a terrible thing, the drink. The downfall of a good man." I heard that a lot.
There would be some who were die-hard nationalists. They spoke Gaelic most of the time and would go on in English for my Dad about the bloody British. Their stories of oppression were hundreds of years old and Dad had no problem telling them so. He would add that Ireland had nothing to offer because it's a rain and stone filled land. The only solution he saw was cooperation with the British for jobs and resources.
The young people were compelled at around the time of their Confirmation to take the 'pledge', a vow never to drink alcohol.
About the Irish and alcohol, I've always felt it was situational. The climate is a major depressant; their church's strict moral codes of behavior; their lives in and of itself, filled with death and helplessness in the face of disease. Many were isolated living alone far from any town. The drink was recreational, a necessary vacation to get you through it.
A few words about myself that first week:
I got so drunk one night I fell off a bridge. Fortunately, I fell not far and into a soggy wet bank, no injuries. Another day I crashed a bicycle into a wall, sore groin for a couple of days, I self-medicated with Irish and orange. Then there was the time I took a bath. It was Saturday night and I was directed to a room where there was a bath filled with steaming hot water for me. I had not had a moment alone since I arrived. Dad and I even shared a bed. It was so relaxing. Then when I got out and started to drain the tub there were all sorts of banging and shouting.
Now there were times I couldn't understand what they were saying because of the heavy brogue. This had become a joke between Uncle Jimmy and I. "Could you please speak the Queen's English for the Yank", he'd say.
Well, I got the gist of why they were yelling. This wasn't my bath; this was everyone's Saturday night bath in preparation for Sunday Church. I pretended I didn't understand. That was the slowest draining tub I've ever seen.
Let's leave Glan for awhile. Traveling out of Glan, next.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
To get the story
My Mom's story, that is, will take a lot of detours. All of which I will use to create as close a portrait of her that is possible by me. I will research Ireland's people, history, land, and faith. My Mom's immediate family and their interrelationships. An important part, one that comes from my own experience, will be my visit to Ireland in 1961 with my Dad in which we visited some of Mom's people and my trip to Ireland from my military station in the U. S. Army in 1967 to meet my mother on her first return 'home' since 1932.
There's a lot of work to do and I am looking forward to it.
There's a lot of work to do and I am looking forward to it.
Ireland with my Father in 1961
It was August; I was 17 and my Dad was 52. I had just graduated from high school and had been accepted into a college, the first in my family to be going to college. This trip was not a graduation present. I at first actually declined because traveling with my Dad to visit his family seemed pretty much like a month of those Sundays in a starched white shirt sitting on sofas, quietly, while the adults talked. I went because my neighborhood friends thought it was special.
The flight was on a propeller plane and as I looked at them, the engines seemed to be on fire. I didn't look much and tried not to think about the fact that we were floating in the air. My Dad was sick the whole flight and blamed it on one of the vaccines we had to get to travel to Ireland.
Aunt Kate Ann and Uncle Jimmy met us at Shannon Airport. I wish I could describe myself accurately at this time as an explanation of why I missed this special moment. Suffice to say my adolescent brain was filled with everything concerning me and missed what was happening at this moment. I missed all of what must have been an extraordinary: my Dad's arrival home. He left Ireland in 1929 and had not been back in 32 years. All I remember of that first meeting was how shabby, shy, awkward and, I thought, backward my Aunt Kate and Uncle Jimmy was. In their hometown, Glan, they weren't at all. They were quite well off. Uncle Jimmy owned half a mountain filled with sheep, a bunch of farm animals, two grocery stores with a post office and the only 'cab' service within 30 miles. Kate Ann was a school teacher with a working farm. I believe, and all I have to say about the Irish is pure conjecture, they were self-conscious of putting on airs. They lived and looked as their neighbors, customers, and students did.
Uncle Jimmy drove us to his home from the airport and we must have stopped at a half dozen bars. Some of them were no more than a plank of wood on two beer barrels. I was introduced by Uncle Jimmy to Irish Whiskey and Orange, the orange being a kind of soda, and that's what I drank for the month, quite possibly every day. Jimmy knew everybody and they were all glad to see him. This was his routine: bringing home the Yanks and giving the trade to his friends. I liked Uncle Jimmy a lot. He immediately treated me like an equal. He was fun and took a lot of pleasure in my American ways. Kate Ann was my Dad's great heart; there were times I felt she was the only thing he loved about Ireland. She gave him the money to immigrate with some hardship to herself and her family. With me, she seemed the school teacher. I felt I was being graded. Dad's other sister Mamie, the total of his surviving siblings being three, lived in Drumshambo, married to a doctor, with three sons and a grand house overlooking Loch Allen. She was not self-conscious about anything. I liked her and her husband. They concerned themselves more than anyone with my comfort, the warmth of the fire, it was damp and cold everywhere you went in Ireland in 1961, with foods I would like, offering me an American chocolate chip cookie.
Uncle Jimmy seemed to have a lot of children, one son Justin and 4 or 5 daughters who always seemed to be darning clothes. Justin was the boss in the house until his Mom spoke. Uncle Jimmy never spoke much in the house and I never saw him drink alcohol in front of his wife and children.
Kate Ann had two children living with her, Maeve whom I immediately fell in love with, as almost everyone did, and Mehaul, who was a bit goofy. Kate Ann's husband, her second marriage, was very quiet, nice but not memorable. Her first husband had died, quite possibly as an 'IRA man'. Mamie's husband was reported to be an 'IRA man' as well. But in those times if you patched a wound or fed a neighbor's starving family because the 'troubles' had robbed them of the makings of a life you were with the IRA.
Ah! I was beginning to feel like I was riding a merry go round. Distant, looking out at so many people, my perspective constantly shifting and enjoying myself.
More tomorrow, I hope. I have a trip to Spain to explore. I want to get some history of the country, etc. before I go to Madrid. It'll be here on the blog when I get to it and more of Ireland as I build my way to Mom and I, our story and my story. It's all about me, here anyway.
The flight was on a propeller plane and as I looked at them, the engines seemed to be on fire. I didn't look much and tried not to think about the fact that we were floating in the air. My Dad was sick the whole flight and blamed it on one of the vaccines we had to get to travel to Ireland.
Aunt Kate Ann and Uncle Jimmy met us at Shannon Airport. I wish I could describe myself accurately at this time as an explanation of why I missed this special moment. Suffice to say my adolescent brain was filled with everything concerning me and missed what was happening at this moment. I missed all of what must have been an extraordinary: my Dad's arrival home. He left Ireland in 1929 and had not been back in 32 years. All I remember of that first meeting was how shabby, shy, awkward and, I thought, backward my Aunt Kate and Uncle Jimmy was. In their hometown, Glan, they weren't at all. They were quite well off. Uncle Jimmy owned half a mountain filled with sheep, a bunch of farm animals, two grocery stores with a post office and the only 'cab' service within 30 miles. Kate Ann was a school teacher with a working farm. I believe, and all I have to say about the Irish is pure conjecture, they were self-conscious of putting on airs. They lived and looked as their neighbors, customers, and students did.
Uncle Jimmy drove us to his home from the airport and we must have stopped at a half dozen bars. Some of them were no more than a plank of wood on two beer barrels. I was introduced by Uncle Jimmy to Irish Whiskey and Orange, the orange being a kind of soda, and that's what I drank for the month, quite possibly every day. Jimmy knew everybody and they were all glad to see him. This was his routine: bringing home the Yanks and giving the trade to his friends. I liked Uncle Jimmy a lot. He immediately treated me like an equal. He was fun and took a lot of pleasure in my American ways. Kate Ann was my Dad's great heart; there were times I felt she was the only thing he loved about Ireland. She gave him the money to immigrate with some hardship to herself and her family. With me, she seemed the school teacher. I felt I was being graded. Dad's other sister Mamie, the total of his surviving siblings being three, lived in Drumshambo, married to a doctor, with three sons and a grand house overlooking Loch Allen. She was not self-conscious about anything. I liked her and her husband. They concerned themselves more than anyone with my comfort, the warmth of the fire, it was damp and cold everywhere you went in Ireland in 1961, with foods I would like, offering me an American chocolate chip cookie.
Uncle Jimmy seemed to have a lot of children, one son Justin and 4 or 5 daughters who always seemed to be darning clothes. Justin was the boss in the house until his Mom spoke. Uncle Jimmy never spoke much in the house and I never saw him drink alcohol in front of his wife and children.
Kate Ann had two children living with her, Maeve whom I immediately fell in love with, as almost everyone did, and Mehaul, who was a bit goofy. Kate Ann's husband, her second marriage, was very quiet, nice but not memorable. Her first husband had died, quite possibly as an 'IRA man'. Mamie's husband was reported to be an 'IRA man' as well. But in those times if you patched a wound or fed a neighbor's starving family because the 'troubles' had robbed them of the makings of a life you were with the IRA.
Ah! I was beginning to feel like I was riding a merry go round. Distant, looking out at so many people, my perspective constantly shifting and enjoying myself.
More tomorrow, I hope. I have a trip to Spain to explore. I want to get some history of the country, etc. before I go to Madrid. It'll be here on the blog when I get to it and more of Ireland as I build my way to Mom and I, our story and my story. It's all about me, here anyway.
Sunday, January 15, 2017
Mom
Am I ready to do this? Is it something I should do? I don't know the life other than my experience of it which is clouded by my re-imaginings of what happened.
It would be best and most honest to give a full-scale biography, but she did not have much to say about herself. She was taught very early on to resist self-absorption. There are no witnesses now to consult, no archives, no letters, just a few photos. There is the photo of her on the rooftop of Tiffany's where she worked. She is in the company's uniform and looking seriously at the camera. She is alone. There is a photo of her with a group of other Irish immigrants, four of them all crowded on a sofa, dressed in their Sunday Church clothes, highballs on the coffee table, all looking at the camera, some smiling, posed for the photo to show each other and others, themselves on a Sunday enjoying drinks, conversation, and good friends. They are cousins; she would tell you, you felt she meant 'cousins' because there were so many of them it was hard to believe they were all cousins, but then the Irish had large families. I had no cousins in or out of photos to point to. [It's hard to resist pushing my way into her story, but that will come]. She would tell you a bit about each of them, this one was a lot of fun [fun was important], and here isn't she pretty [also of importance], then the list of nicknames would come flowing out with warmth and smiles. "That's Tommy hun [a nickname]", she'd say with pride and maybe she'd mention where the Hun's lived: "down from us" or maybe it was "in Glan by the post road". I felt the importance of the personal and the place in relation to her life and her past. I never heard where they lived now or what work they were about or their current families but a lot of their parents and siblings as though I were looking not at four people crammed on a sofa in Brooklyn on a Sunday afternoon but at a room in a small country town in Ireland in the early 20th century.
She saved photos and would take them out and look and talk about them, but always the talk was about other people. I never heard a word about her photo on the roof of Tiffany's. She did talk a lot about Tiffany's.
It was a source of great pride. She was one of two elevator operators. The other was Mary McGovern, also an immigrant and cousin from home with Mom. [Perhaps the photographer on the roof of Tiffany's]. I believe they knew each other in Ireland but definitely knew of each other. Years later at a funeral in Riverdale, we met Mary outside of the church and Mary asked my Mom who she was and my Mom told her she was Baby John Einny.
[about the Irish nicknames: just about everyone in rural Ireland would have similar surnames. In the area where my parents came from there were the Dolans and the McGoverns for the most part. These names originated from the feudalistic practice of naming all serfs after their owners. There were a lot of Bridget Dolans, so to distinguish each of them the surname was dropped and substituted by the first name of their grandfather plus their childhood nickname. Owen was her Grandfather's name, I believe, and Baby was her nickname. Bridget was changed in America to Beatrice. Generally, her friends called her Bea.]
Shortly after my mother responded, Mary McGovern asked Mom again who she was. My Mom laughed and told her again and Mom asked: "Don't you remember me". Mom knew Mary had beginning Alzheimer's and I was surprised at her response; I worried it would embarrass Mary. But she got Mary to say her memory was going and they talked a bit, as much as Mary was able. That style of, what shall I call it confronting awkward moments was very common amongst her and her friends, and when I visited Ireland I found it common there, too. It was done with a jocular intent. One of my cousins, I did actually get to meet some, called me a queer duck. I was a seventeen-year-old American in rural Ireland who talked and dressed very differently. Who knows what he meant because I never responded, embarrassed for the wrong reasons perhaps, so we never got to talk ... closely. Now, that's me again. Too soon for me. Let me take a break and come back to her, my Mom.
It would be best and most honest to give a full-scale biography, but she did not have much to say about herself. She was taught very early on to resist self-absorption. There are no witnesses now to consult, no archives, no letters, just a few photos. There is the photo of her on the rooftop of Tiffany's where she worked. She is in the company's uniform and looking seriously at the camera. She is alone. There is a photo of her with a group of other Irish immigrants, four of them all crowded on a sofa, dressed in their Sunday Church clothes, highballs on the coffee table, all looking at the camera, some smiling, posed for the photo to show each other and others, themselves on a Sunday enjoying drinks, conversation, and good friends. They are cousins; she would tell you, you felt she meant 'cousins' because there were so many of them it was hard to believe they were all cousins, but then the Irish had large families. I had no cousins in or out of photos to point to. [It's hard to resist pushing my way into her story, but that will come]. She would tell you a bit about each of them, this one was a lot of fun [fun was important], and here isn't she pretty [also of importance], then the list of nicknames would come flowing out with warmth and smiles. "That's Tommy hun [a nickname]", she'd say with pride and maybe she'd mention where the Hun's lived: "down from us" or maybe it was "in Glan by the post road". I felt the importance of the personal and the place in relation to her life and her past. I never heard where they lived now or what work they were about or their current families but a lot of their parents and siblings as though I were looking not at four people crammed on a sofa in Brooklyn on a Sunday afternoon but at a room in a small country town in Ireland in the early 20th century.
She saved photos and would take them out and look and talk about them, but always the talk was about other people. I never heard a word about her photo on the roof of Tiffany's. She did talk a lot about Tiffany's.
It was a source of great pride. She was one of two elevator operators. The other was Mary McGovern, also an immigrant and cousin from home with Mom. [Perhaps the photographer on the roof of Tiffany's]. I believe they knew each other in Ireland but definitely knew of each other. Years later at a funeral in Riverdale, we met Mary outside of the church and Mary asked my Mom who she was and my Mom told her she was Baby John Einny.
[about the Irish nicknames: just about everyone in rural Ireland would have similar surnames. In the area where my parents came from there were the Dolans and the McGoverns for the most part. These names originated from the feudalistic practice of naming all serfs after their owners. There were a lot of Bridget Dolans, so to distinguish each of them the surname was dropped and substituted by the first name of their grandfather plus their childhood nickname. Owen was her Grandfather's name, I believe, and Baby was her nickname. Bridget was changed in America to Beatrice. Generally, her friends called her Bea.]
Shortly after my mother responded, Mary McGovern asked Mom again who she was. My Mom laughed and told her again and Mom asked: "Don't you remember me". Mom knew Mary had beginning Alzheimer's and I was surprised at her response; I worried it would embarrass Mary. But she got Mary to say her memory was going and they talked a bit, as much as Mary was able. That style of, what shall I call it confronting awkward moments was very common amongst her and her friends, and when I visited Ireland I found it common there, too. It was done with a jocular intent. One of my cousins, I did actually get to meet some, called me a queer duck. I was a seventeen-year-old American in rural Ireland who talked and dressed very differently. Who knows what he meant because I never responded, embarrassed for the wrong reasons perhaps, so we never got to talk ... closely. Now, that's me again. Too soon for me. Let me take a break and come back to her, my Mom.
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