Bach To The Future by Brendan Loonam
The easiest way to deal with the web apps site is just to paste it in to your browser, because you are dealing with, as of mid-August, just for Apple, alone, 1,700 Applications. There is such a vast variety of Applications that they must be personally experienced by the user. For example, you can have a map showing the most recent lightning strikes for an area; you can calculate your blood alcohol content after your dinner out; you can calculate the tip for your server; get driving directions from MapQuest; and one can even get a romantic quote to accompany the goodnight kiss. These apps can be employed on the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone, the Mac or a PC, or whatever device you happen to be working with; who knows, by the time this is printed, one may be able to run apps on one’s car radio.
APPLE:
http://www.apple.com/webapps/calculate/index1.html
Currently, Video calling is in full effect on iPod touch. Now your friends can see what you’re up to, when you’re up to it. With the tap of a button, you can wave "hi" while standing in a foreign country, get a second opinion on a pair of boots, or have your friends bear witness to the everyday pranks, bets, and dares that they otherwise might have missed. How outstanding is that? Some of the things being discovered and being released to the public right now, and I must add that the rate has been so ramped up that it is a relentlessly ongoing basis, seem not just business as usual, but seem like they might be not the stuff of Science, but Science Fiction. One might think of a classic film like 2001:A Space Odyssey , whose elements, like Video-Phone, from the Space Flight to the Cosmonaut’s daughter’s birthday party back on Earth, at first glance, were eye-poppingly futuristic, but today they can be bested by the most elemental cell-phones.
Indeed, if an average “Baby-Boomer” were to look at the wide swath of items available to the current up-to-date media user, it might be tough to determine which is fact and which might be fancy. It has been so vast that it has been difficult to wade through this morass of applications which were designed primarily for the purpose of entertainment.
Education has always been a focal point for me, and when I see a company aiming its resources toward instruction, it always catches my attention. For example, when I was teaching High School English, although supplies were limited, I always sought and usually was able to find 16mm film versions of certain classic novels and short stories, like Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.“ Students were electrified by the transformation of the written word into moving visual images. We also had read The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles and had lively discussions, but, sadly, did not have the benefit of that magnificent film, which was not released until well after I had left OLVA. Another film that I believe we would have made great use of is, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, based on the Ken Kesey novel. The film was released to great acclaim in 1975, and the cinematic sophisticates among us were individually able to seek the balance between the written word and the visual images by visiting available cinemas.
There were many at the time who complained that, if they were made available, students would just watch the movies instead of reading the books, but that kind of thinking is based upon the idea that the prize being sought is simply the intellectual possession or completion of that item. The idea behind education is to have students internalize a given intellectual item, and then challenge them to determine how the artist, be she novelist, poet, filmmaker or graphic artist, has manipulated his or her medium in order to achieve a particular goal. Again, these exercises were not designed to be used exclusively for that particular artistic work, but rather to develop a set of skills which could be used to analyze and enjoy any work of art.
Take, for example, Shakespeare’s MacBeth, which we used to study in the 11th Grade classes: should the reader fly willy-nilly through the text; picking them up and knocking them down, or should she stop and pick up all the evidence that has been laid out for her, examining carefully and deliberating? Are those three witches just there to spook-up the atmosphere, to make predictions of things that are to be wrought which will change the position of MacBeth, or are the predictions to be judged as reflections of MacBeth’s own unconscious wishes? And measured deliberation also gave us the opportunity to enjoy the stunning language that Shakespeare was able to employ in the spinning of his tales.
Looking at Shakespeare’s language, we also had an opportunity to look at a small collection of the Sonnets. With Juniors, there were many who really got them; who were able to read them as statements from one human being to another; on the other hand, there were many who had not yet reached the point where they could read,
THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:
And see it as a beautifully stated tribute by an older person thanking a younger one for recognizing the “choir, where late the sweet birds sang.” The young, inexperienced students would sit with a pained expression when confronted with such phrasing that was just too intellectually challenging in a situation that should, rather, have been emotionally weighted. Those poems were put in the Curriculum because of their intellectual “value,” but with little thought given to the skills of the school populations who were going to be engaging them. Modifications were able to be made with singularly bright students, but that was on a very individual basis. The songs of the Folk Movement did yeoman
work in that regard; both teachers and students were thanking god for Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, among others.
After a brief encounter with the 8-Track Tape Player, which seemed to have been favored mostly by guys who drove convertibles and loved the way that “VCR-seeming”-cassette looked sticking up out of the center of their automobile’s dashboard, the cassette tape, capable of being tucked right into the front of the car radio, briefly took over the industry, that is until the explosion of the Compact Disc, but that was later.
When the audio cassette arrived on the scene, it seemed to be a perfect marriage with the 8 mm film. It was also tailor-made for partners working together, and the pairing seemed to bring out the best from each side. I believe it was during school year ’73-’74, that girls started using tapes of rock songs that best represented the message or mood they wished to declare, and then, for the first time, they filmed striking images, either from nature or their own creation to highlight the ideas in those songs making 8mm films for their Final Projects. I remember being stunned by the images of the reels spinning on gas pumps and cash register drawers opening and closing, accompanied by Pink Floyd singing “Money,” which was newly released at the time. A few years ago, I received an email from an OLVA alumna, who was a member of a very creative family, Joanne Hopkins, and she said something along the lines of, “We were making music videos before MTV was.” To tell the truth, I am more inclined to agree with her than not.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Irish Names and New York City by Brendan Loonam
Writing as I am now only from the New York Metropolitan Area, it occurred to me to put in something extraordinary about New York City and Irish names, something that at one point in time were thought to be synonymous, and unfortunately, now are really only considered together automatically when bars are mentioned. It will be seen, however, in these two stories, that bars and Irish names are inextricably interwoven. For the first, I must thank an old and dear friend, John Murray, for passing on the investigation that his father had in turn shared with him. This dates back to the time when New York City was among the forerunners when it came to installing indoor plumbing. As the largest metropolitan center in the Northeastern United States, New York City had the largest work force, in addition to the greatest commercial marketplace. These forces would, daily, bring together great numbers of people, mostly men, and in New York City, at its beginnings, most of those working men were Irish. Some genius realized that the thirsts of all those Irish working men would have to be slaked every day while they ate their lunch. Another genius realized that he could provide that lunch for a pittance and make a fortune selling spirits to go with it. It wasn’t much of a stretch to extend the drinking hours throughout the working day, and then, of course, carry on after work. With all that drinking going on, it stood to reason that the sanitary needs of the drinkers would have to be looked after. Unfortunately, the foresight of many of the proprietors of those early saloons did not extend beyond a shallow channel running from a pit behind the establishment out to the gutter and into the street. The accumulation of the waste thus expended caught the attention not only of the neighbors and hapless passersby, but also of the Authorities, and in fact, where none existed, causing Authorities, such as Boards of Health, to come into existence. Like many businesses and services that were aborning at the time, in the mid 19th Century, plumbing services and fixtures had to be brought into being. Now, is there anyone still alive who remembers Jack Paar’s contretemps with the Media Powers for uttering, in the face of the American Viewing Public a joke containing the vile phrase, “water closet?” Poor Jack; the least offensive man who ever appeared on television, allowing a euphemism for “toilet” that could have been recognized only by natives of Great Britain, but some NBC television executives deemed it sufficiently repulsive that they deleted it from the show before it could be aired . Paar so resented this censorship that he resigned from hosting the Tonight Show, citing the hypocrisy of the ultraconservative Fox Media Empire as his reason for doing so. But I digress; this hesitancy to mention toilets has existed for centuries. The installation of toilets in late 19th Century New York City, particularly in the Public Houses or Pubs, was accomplished using fixtures manufactured by a man named John Murray, and featured prominently in the center of both urinals and toilets was the name of that gentleman: John Murray. So striking was the contrast between the black letters of the name and the white porcelain, that it was immediately imprinted on the consciousness of the viewer. From as far back as the 1870’s, it seemed to be a race for everyone to get their indoor plumbing installed, and it soon became a status symbol to have it done. In pubs, where men would go to relax after work, they wanted to be able to drink and then relieve themselves without any undue stress; therefore, when they first poked their head in the front door, they would ask, “Is there a John Murray in the house?” Receiving a negative answer, the prescient drinker would move on to the next ale house. This, of course, happening enough times would educate the proprietor as to the wisdom of acquiring a toilet. Also, in the way of fast-moving, fast-talking workingmen, the ones poking their heads in the front doors soon transformed their question to, “Is there a John in the house?” A tradition was born; a name was created. ”Where’s the john?” “Straight back.”
The second piece about an Irish name and New York City was revealed to me by my sons. First, by Brendan, the elder, who rented an apartment around the corner from the place for five years, and then by my younger son, Matthew, who tended bar there as a second job for about three years.
Before I go any further, I think I should explain the milieu in which it was all engendered. During the 1920’s, in New York City, Boxing was controlled by the Irish, or at least that part of the Irish-American population that could control things like the sport of boxing, with some Mob intrusion. If a young man wanted to pursue a successful career in boxing, the word on the street was that if he didn’t have an Irish name, he could just forget about it. In Hoboken at that time, there was an Italian-American young man who felt he had the skills and courage to battle for the Lightweight title; his name was Anthony Sinatra,. Unfortunately, as stated previously, there was no way he could vie for that title with a name like Sinatra. In a stroke of genius, his Manager stepped up and for the purposes of fighting the good fight, changed his ring name to Marty O’Brien Sinatra, which he used during his career of over 40 bouts. He also later became a captain in the Hoboken Fire Department and had 24 years of service before his retirement. Parenthetically, he was also the Father of Frank Sinatra, world renowned singer and entertainer. He died January 24, 1969 at 74 years of age. ,
Pete Hamill, long a chronicler of the Irish in America, also created what is considered to be the definitive book about Frank Sinatra, Why Sinatra Matters. While Liam McCormick was thinking about a name for the Pub he was about to open on Second Avenue, between 87th and 88th Streets, he was filling in his down-time by reading the Hamill book on Sinatra. After reading about Anthony Sinatra’s tenacity in pursuing a boxing career, Liam slammed the book down, leapt, laughing, to his feet and allegedly thanked God, Sinatra and Pete Hamill, for he had just found the name for his pub: Marty Obrien’s Pub. Affixed to the wall, right inside the front door, is a black plastic plaque explaining the significance of the Marty O’Brien name, and when the unsuspecting visitor reaches the part about Anthony Sinatra, it usually elicits something approaching a squeal.
Liam is glad to have created a memorial for that extraordinary step taken by that young man from Hoboken.
The second piece about an Irish name and New York City was revealed to me by my sons. First, by Brendan, the elder, who rented an apartment around the corner from the place for five years, and then by my younger son, Matthew, who tended bar there as a second job for about three years.
Before I go any further, I think I should explain the milieu in which it was all engendered. During the 1920’s, in New York City, Boxing was controlled by the Irish, or at least that part of the Irish-American population that could control things like the sport of boxing, with some Mob intrusion. If a young man wanted to pursue a successful career in boxing, the word on the street was that if he didn’t have an Irish name, he could just forget about it. In Hoboken at that time, there was an Italian-American young man who felt he had the skills and courage to battle for the Lightweight title; his name was Anthony Sinatra,. Unfortunately, as stated previously, there was no way he could vie for that title with a name like Sinatra. In a stroke of genius, his Manager stepped up and for the purposes of fighting the good fight, changed his ring name to Marty O’Brien Sinatra, which he used during his career of over 40 bouts. He also later became a captain in the Hoboken Fire Department and had 24 years of service before his retirement. Parenthetically, he was also the Father of Frank Sinatra, world renowned singer and entertainer. He died January 24, 1969 at 74 years of age. ,
Pete Hamill, long a chronicler of the Irish in America, also created what is considered to be the definitive book about Frank Sinatra, Why Sinatra Matters. While Liam McCormick was thinking about a name for the Pub he was about to open on Second Avenue, between 87th and 88th Streets, he was filling in his down-time by reading the Hamill book on Sinatra. After reading about Anthony Sinatra’s tenacity in pursuing a boxing career, Liam slammed the book down, leapt, laughing, to his feet and allegedly thanked God, Sinatra and Pete Hamill, for he had just found the name for his pub: Marty Obrien’s Pub. Affixed to the wall, right inside the front door, is a black plastic plaque explaining the significance of the Marty O’Brien name, and when the unsuspecting visitor reaches the part about Anthony Sinatra, it usually elicits something approaching a squeal.
Liam is glad to have created a memorial for that extraordinary step taken by that young man from Hoboken.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Up Offaly by Brendan Loonam
Classifying a story that is situated in a small town in Ireland as urban legend may sound like it is overstating the case, but after all, it does fall into that category, so I will play it as it lays. When I asked my brother Peter, a few weeks ago, how Offaly was doing in Sports, that is to say, how are they doing in hurling and football; for Americans, that’s Gaelic football, which is like a form of soccer, though most non-Irish soccer enthusiasts would be loath to admit that connection, seeing it as a total bastardization and corruption of soccer. Hurling, which I think it is one of the most exciting games out there, even surpassing ice hockey, is another story entirely, and will have to be dealt with separately.
Anyway, Peter told me that we were “out of it on both counts for the season,” meaning that our county, i.e. Offaly, hurling and football teams, had been eliminated from National contention for the season. The county teams are basically all-star teams, being made up from the best town and parish team players, so he was happy that he would be able to go see some good local games, with all of the best players playing with their own teams. I asked if he wasn’t disappointed that Offaly wouldn’t be playing for the All-Ireland titles, and he answered, “No; the local games are much more enjoyable.” But it wasn’t always thus
September has always brought exciting times for fans of Gaelic Football, particularly at the end of the month, when the two best county teams battle it out for the title of All-Ireland Football Champions. There are those in the sporting world who consider the G. A. A title to be more pure than that of the English Premiership Soccer League for example, or even the NFL and the NHL, for the most distinctive characteristic of the Gaelic Athletic Association players is that they play strictly for the love of the game and the pride of their team and hence, their county. No GAA player receives any money for participating in their sport.
At the time that the story referred to took place, in 1961, there was incredibly high unemployment in Ireland, so the more ‘wily,’ shall we say, among the townsfolk were usually on the lookout for ways to, in some small manner, increase their disposable income. The possibilities for doing so were extremely limited, of course, but that just called for the players to be more assiduous in the application of their skills. For example at the same time that the football championship rivalry was heating up between Offaly and County Down, situations of previously established political and sociological density were being re-stirred in Kenya and also in Kuwait and they were all being given full rein in the British tabloids; nevertheless, pundits such as Boss Daly, in Banagher, were slogging their way through the informative and politically dense News pages and were staying meticulously abreast of the activities of both the Offaly and Down teams that were being reported in the Sports pages, so that an intelligent and therefore profitable wager could be placed on the day of the big game.
That Big Game, the 1961 All Ireland Football Championship, between County Offaly and County Down, played at Croke Park in Dublin, at 90,564, had the largest Attendance for a game at the Dublin venue before or since. But, in a big, big world, the events of amateur athletic associations amount to but little. President Kassem of Iraq claimed that Kuwait was part of his country, and announced that he was going to annex it. On the 27th of June, 1961 the Amir of Kuwait appealed to both Britain and Saudi Arabia for help. Reports indicated that Kassem was assembling an armored brigade for a swift dash to Kuwait, but they continued their battles throughout August and into September; coincidentally, on the Friday before the game, Kassem was doing a lot of “saber rattling,” trying to further intimidate the Kuwaitis, who were waiting for promised British Commando aid, that had been stymied by Turkey’s refusal to grant them access to their Air Space. On Saturday, September 20th, a breakthrough was negotiated and the Commandos were able to arrive “in the nick of time,” to stave off the invasion. Britain was very proud, and justifiably so, of their Commandos.
Sunday morning, the 9:00 A.M. bells of St. Rynagh’s Church roused the Boss from his sleep and his carefully constructed dreams involving the stunning upset of the Favored County Down Football Team by the upstart County Offaly footballers. Secondarily in the dream-queue hall-of-fame, jumping up-and-down for attention was the brilliantly conceived and placed dream-wager which brought the happily sleeping Boss untold wealth and unimaginable satisfaction.
The Boss did not even bother with a cup of tea, but simply got himself up and dressed and slipped out the front door. He headed for Bourque’s Sweet Shop, where he could check the morning line on the Football Match and also pick up another pack of fags; he kept telling himself that he would quit; the shaggers had him burned, but he would have to wait on that. On the way down the hill, carloads of Offaly fans, bound for Dublin passed him by. When he saw the team colors flying from the car antennas, he would shout and wave to them, eliciting a torrent of horn blowing and shouting from the sport fans. This would urge any other travelers, auto or pedestrian, within earshot, to join in the din. He hurried past the church before anyone could think him in any way responsible for the madness going on outside mass.
Reaching the front of Bourque’s, the Boss was happy, first of all, to feel confident enough to light his last cigarette; he would never do that without a replacement at hand, and second, to see many of his fellow bettors with the papers opened. The Boss first lit his cigarette, then carried a copy of The Irish Independent to the counter, calling out, “A pack of Woodbine’s, please, Mrs.” holding up the paper as he did so.
Holding up the paper was for the benefit of Mrs. Bourque, so that she could add that in with his pack of Woodbines; however, as he held it up, he saw a headline which profoundly affected his feelings about the Big Match. As soon as the Boss got the paper, he had intended to turn immediately to the Sports Pages, but before he could even open it, he was struck by the Front Page Headline and what it had emblazoned in extra-large print: IRAQ BACKS DOWN Seizing his paper, the Boss headed immediately for his fellow bettors, grumbling loudly,
“What in the ---- do they know about football?”
Anyway, Peter told me that we were “out of it on both counts for the season,” meaning that our county, i.e. Offaly, hurling and football teams, had been eliminated from National contention for the season. The county teams are basically all-star teams, being made up from the best town and parish team players, so he was happy that he would be able to go see some good local games, with all of the best players playing with their own teams. I asked if he wasn’t disappointed that Offaly wouldn’t be playing for the All-Ireland titles, and he answered, “No; the local games are much more enjoyable.” But it wasn’t always thus
September has always brought exciting times for fans of Gaelic Football, particularly at the end of the month, when the two best county teams battle it out for the title of All-Ireland Football Champions. There are those in the sporting world who consider the G. A. A title to be more pure than that of the English Premiership Soccer League for example, or even the NFL and the NHL, for the most distinctive characteristic of the Gaelic Athletic Association players is that they play strictly for the love of the game and the pride of their team and hence, their county. No GAA player receives any money for participating in their sport.
At the time that the story referred to took place, in 1961, there was incredibly high unemployment in Ireland, so the more ‘wily,’ shall we say, among the townsfolk were usually on the lookout for ways to, in some small manner, increase their disposable income. The possibilities for doing so were extremely limited, of course, but that just called for the players to be more assiduous in the application of their skills. For example at the same time that the football championship rivalry was heating up between Offaly and County Down, situations of previously established political and sociological density were being re-stirred in Kenya and also in Kuwait and they were all being given full rein in the British tabloids; nevertheless, pundits such as Boss Daly, in Banagher, were slogging their way through the informative and politically dense News pages and were staying meticulously abreast of the activities of both the Offaly and Down teams that were being reported in the Sports pages, so that an intelligent and therefore profitable wager could be placed on the day of the big game.
That Big Game, the 1961 All Ireland Football Championship, between County Offaly and County Down, played at Croke Park in Dublin, at 90,564, had the largest Attendance for a game at the Dublin venue before or since. But, in a big, big world, the events of amateur athletic associations amount to but little. President Kassem of Iraq claimed that Kuwait was part of his country, and announced that he was going to annex it. On the 27th of June, 1961 the Amir of Kuwait appealed to both Britain and Saudi Arabia for help. Reports indicated that Kassem was assembling an armored brigade for a swift dash to Kuwait, but they continued their battles throughout August and into September; coincidentally, on the Friday before the game, Kassem was doing a lot of “saber rattling,” trying to further intimidate the Kuwaitis, who were waiting for promised British Commando aid, that had been stymied by Turkey’s refusal to grant them access to their Air Space. On Saturday, September 20th, a breakthrough was negotiated and the Commandos were able to arrive “in the nick of time,” to stave off the invasion. Britain was very proud, and justifiably so, of their Commandos.
Sunday morning, the 9:00 A.M. bells of St. Rynagh’s Church roused the Boss from his sleep and his carefully constructed dreams involving the stunning upset of the Favored County Down Football Team by the upstart County Offaly footballers. Secondarily in the dream-queue hall-of-fame, jumping up-and-down for attention was the brilliantly conceived and placed dream-wager which brought the happily sleeping Boss untold wealth and unimaginable satisfaction.
The Boss did not even bother with a cup of tea, but simply got himself up and dressed and slipped out the front door. He headed for Bourque’s Sweet Shop, where he could check the morning line on the Football Match and also pick up another pack of fags; he kept telling himself that he would quit; the shaggers had him burned, but he would have to wait on that. On the way down the hill, carloads of Offaly fans, bound for Dublin passed him by. When he saw the team colors flying from the car antennas, he would shout and wave to them, eliciting a torrent of horn blowing and shouting from the sport fans. This would urge any other travelers, auto or pedestrian, within earshot, to join in the din. He hurried past the church before anyone could think him in any way responsible for the madness going on outside mass.
Reaching the front of Bourque’s, the Boss was happy, first of all, to feel confident enough to light his last cigarette; he would never do that without a replacement at hand, and second, to see many of his fellow bettors with the papers opened. The Boss first lit his cigarette, then carried a copy of The Irish Independent to the counter, calling out, “A pack of Woodbine’s, please, Mrs.” holding up the paper as he did so.
Holding up the paper was for the benefit of Mrs. Bourque, so that she could add that in with his pack of Woodbines; however, as he held it up, he saw a headline which profoundly affected his feelings about the Big Match. As soon as the Boss got the paper, he had intended to turn immediately to the Sports Pages, but before he could even open it, he was struck by the Front Page Headline and what it had emblazoned in extra-large print: IRAQ BACKS DOWN Seizing his paper, the Boss headed immediately for his fellow bettors, grumbling loudly,
“What in the ---- do they know about football?”
Sunday, August 1, 2010
The Way West by Brendan Loonam
When one is trying to put together one's family history, lacking any substantial evidence to do so, one has to rely on the bits and pieces one accumulates as one is growing up; one then takes the family legends that have been repeated and embellished upon until they become ones own, and they, too get added to the mix. I have found that, for the purposes of achieving the truth of the story one can do just as well by telling the story as an outright fiction. That has been the case for me when trying to imagine the passage of my father and eldest brother, who were the first of my family to come to this country.
My name is Sean Larkin, and in 1949, I remember well, my father, Tom Larkin, was thirty five years old and steaming for a change. I can remember this very clearly for several reasons, even though I am now seventy five, myself. I had just turned fourteen, which is a most important achievement in the journey of one so young, although the news that my father gave me at the time took the shine off of it and nearly overwhelmed me with its portents.
He told me that he would be going to America; his sisters had sent him a letter telling him they had got him a job over there and he said that I was going to have to go with him; since I was the eldest of five, I could not even question that; it was my responsibility to accompany him.
When I expressed my fears before the rest of the family, he told me that I need not worry, that we would all be back together very soon, and it was also when he told my mother that with the job his sisters had got him, he’d be able to start saving right away to bring her over, too. When my mother heard that, she looked away, tipping her head up slightly, and muttered, more or less to herself, “Muryah,” which loosely translated, means, "you will in my arse.”
My father, though thirty five, was as ignorant of the ways of the world, or possibly even more so, than I was. His family had all gone off to America fifteen years earlier, but because he had dropped out of school at his first opportunity, and could not read or write much more than his own name, he realized he had better stay with the devil he knew and try to pick up what work he could locally. He was fortunate enough to be hired on to the estate of the closest we ever came to English gentry, Major Owen Bowles. His good fortune, if it could be designated as such, embraced my mother also, who was brought into the staff for cleaning and serving in their three story manor house. My parents met there and married within the year, moving into the Gate House, the cottage just inside the main gate to the property and they were very happy there, despite the fact that they had neither running water nor electricity, until too many children forced them to move into a slightly larger cottage, provided for them by the County Council.
It would take the breath of you to think of it now, but everyone on the Major’s property referred to him as “Master” and his Mrs. as “Mistress”:
“Are the cows in, Tom?”
“Yes, master.”
“*Is the turf turned, Tom?”
“Yes, master;”
that sort of nonsense. And, if the master and mistress were going out for a walk after supper, they would stop outside the cottage, and we would be trotted out to see them.
“Good evening, master.”
“G’devening.”
We were well shut of them the last time we saw them and we never missed them for an instant.
My fathers had got a letter from his younger sister, Dymphna, saying that everyone was working over in New York and that he should go over and start setting things up for the rest of us. After hearing that, he began walking around, lost in thought, often looking off into the distance and my mother, watching him, said, “Oh, Janey, we’re done for, now.”
Dating back to the early nineteenth century, when the lucky ones fled to America to escape the Famine, there was never any thought of being able to come back, so their friends, family and neighbors would give them, before they left, what came to be known as an “American Wake, so that everyone they knew would be able to say goodbye to them before they “died” to Ireland.
We had an American Wake given for us at the beginning of June, 1949 in Quigley’s Dance Hall, and we had all the usual elements: The music was provided by Paddy Connolly, with his Button Accordion, and his wife, Nellie, who, when she wasn’t step dancing around the stage to Paddy’s music, was sawing away on a fiddle to create her own, and Brian Johnson, who kept the pulse of the party throbbing by banging away on his bodhran; as uncle Paddy said, “By Jaysus, you wouldn’t hear better in the Philharmonic Hall in Dublin.”
My father was an able and enthusiastic dancer and A Hogshead of Porter kept the likes of Dell Cummings lining up for a last go ‘round the dance floor with him. My brothers and I used to love to watch him dance and we’d be in hysterics, laughing, because he always had this way of holding his right hand behind the woman that pulled her dress up in the back and if you got in the right position you’d be able to see her knickers as they passed. Sitting on the edge of the dance floor, I caught Mammy’s eye as he spun past us one time, and she just tipped her head back, almost imperceptibly, but she was already seeing him dancing in America.
The conclusion of these wakes was generally a pile-up of the drink, the songs and the tears, followed by heart-felt goodbyes and that would usually be the end of it. The only variation here was my father’s declaration to everyone in earshot, this time, for my mother’s benefit, of course, that we would all be together in no time atall. He was also singing as many sad songs as he could remember and aiming them at her.
Low lie the Fields of Athenry (athenrye)
Where once we watched the small free birds fly.
Our love was on the wing; we had dreams and songs to sing.
It’s so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry.
Seeing her sobbing for those songs, it occurred to me that they would probably be the only goodbyes he would be expressing.
We were booked to leave for America two days after the wake, so we had to leave home the next day, to get down to the seaport of Cobh, in County Cork, using one of the two cars in the town that were available for hire.
I had a new white shirt to put on, so I started to put the kettle on the fire to wash my hands and face before we left, but my father tossed me a washcloth and set the kettle aside. “Come on, you’re finished with that, now,” He said. “There’ll be plenty of hot water beyond.”
Tommy Jameson had the car waiting at the gate, while we all said our goodbyes by the front door. My mother, holding my youngest brother, who was only three, was weeping in streams, and so was I, both of us brokenhearted; but, how much deeper would our grief have been that day if we had known that we would not see each other again until I had a wife and two children of my own at my side.
I knelt on the back seat of the car and waved through the tiny rear window at them standing by the gate until we dipped below Cassidy’s hill, and then they were all gone.
It was dark when we arrived in Cobh and my father said we’d have to get a “kip” for the night. When we entered a dreary looking house near the waterfront, he gave the manager Half a Crown and he opened a room for us and said, “If ye can find a good one, y’ere welcome to it.” My father said to me, after rooting around, trying to find a mattress that wasn’t fully spent, “Be the Jaysus; If we could find a good one here, we’d be magicians.”
I took our bag and my two Hurleys, while my father dragged the mattress up one flight of stairs, to a big room with three mattresses already on the floor and we found a spot for ours. The only light was coming in from the hallway, and I thanked God for that. Seeing that the others had stowed their things against the walls, we did the same and lay down, back-to-back, with our coats covering us to try to get warm. We didn’t speak a word, and I tried to sleep, in the middle of that mad snoring, terrified of what was ahead of us.
When we got down to the dock in the morning, I was surprised at how small the boat was, without even a name on its prow. It looked like it would be barely able to accommodate all of us who were waiting to go. We were bewildered by the size of it, and I asked a man who was in front of us on line,
“How are we going to be able to stick crossing in this little yoke?”
He looked at me for a moment, to see if I was putting him on, “Are ye coddling me?”
But when he realized that I was serious, he threw his head back and erupted in derisive laughter,
“This fuckin’ thing wouldn’t get us across the street.”
I was embarrassed in front of the people around us who joined him in laughing at my foolishness, but I was relieved to learn, while we were loading, that this was just the Tender, which would take us out to the actual ship in the harbor.
There was a real crush of Irish immigrants at that point in time, so the Shipping Lines were temporarily leasing the troop ships that had brought the soldiers home from the war in Europe and were using them as passenger Liners. My father and I, for our first venture beyond Ballyfeeny, were to be borne o’er the waves by the redoubtable ERNIE PYLE.
We found that our compartment on the Ernie Pyle was no bigger than a walk-in closet, with two bunks, one on top of the other. We only lasted long enough to put the bag and the hurls on the top bed, and then we fl ed from it, just to be able to breathe.
I had to dive for the doorway, or the hatch, or whatever the fuck they call it, to keep from covering myself with that soup; fuckin mushroom soup. The old man kept telling me it’d be fine and that should have been my first hint; from a man who’d be able to eat the ass off a dead rabbit and say it was good. “Break the crackers into it,” says he, as he’s handing a packet over to Francis; Francis fuckin McNally, who’s sitting there with one of my hurleys at his feet, getting god-knows-what all over it, and not a bit afraid of the mushrooms. I headed outside, and when I hit it with my shoulder, the door burst open with a rush of wind and rain, blown in by the storm.
Incredibly, half-way through the Twentieth Century, a Liner, albeit a temporary one, of the Cunard Line, was lost at sea for a week. This was chiefly due to the weather; howling winds of gale force tossed the ship about like a toy boat; furthermore, massive delays in ship arrivals made shipping companies, already overburdened, even less conscientious about scrutiny of their adherence to schedules.
Everyone on the ship was vomiting and crying and praying and fasting, for, if you ate anything, you would be walking on it before long. My father, currying favor with the first family we took up with, Americans, gave one of my hurleys to the son, who didn’t even know what it was, to help him stop crying. I was upset, myself, but I worked my way out onto the deck, choosing to suffer the buffeting of the hurricane rather than contemplate the implications of my father’s disloyalty and what it might portend for my future.
Every small town is like a central nervous system, with every resident another tendril, all tied in together. Within hours of the knowledge that there had been no communication from our ship, everyone in Ballyfeeny had heard about our disappearance, and they were offering Novenas by the score. My mother thought she had lost us and was inconsolable
We limped into New York Harbor eight days after we had left Cobh, and we thanked God for our deliverance. When we finally got around to sending a telegram, he dictated it to me: “Arrived safe, will mark, Love, Tom.” It rattled like a marble in a boxcar.
When we were brought home to the Bronx, our dreams of American luxury were shattered on the shoals of a crowded apartment in a fifth floor walk-up with four aunts, two uncles and my father’s parents, all of them wondering where they were going to put us. We tried to settle in, but I soon found out that my chief occupation was going to be running down to the candy store to buy cigarettes and gum for my two teenaged aunts.
In a week, my father started his job in a Manhattan office building, and he brought me with him the first day, to help him fill out the forms for the Personnel Office. He was elated when I said I would tell them that he was a natural Gaelic speaker and that was why he was unable to read or write very much in English. He was going to be sweeping and mopping offices at night in a place he reached by a baffling arrangement of subway trains. He did this for two months, at the end of which, he had a heart attack, which, I’m sure, was induced by stress, and which landed him in the hospital for two weeks.
There was a lot of movement at the apartment, trying to prepare a space for my father to recuperate in, culminating in the thought that it might be better if they got me out from underfoot. My uncle Peter, who lived just outside Chicago and had three teenagers, was deemed to be the best choice for me to go to live with. Dymphna brought me into Manhattan and bought me the ticket for the Trailways Bus. She said that Uncle Pete had been called and would be expecting me. She also said that she would get word to my mother so that she wouldn’t be worried
The road west in 1949 consisted of a series of connected Turnpikes, until you got through Chicago, and then you had access to the legendary Route 66. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was a revelation for me: besides opening up heretofore unimaginable distances, there were tunnels through mountains, some of them twenty five miles long, and we drove into and out of rain storms that we saw, away ahead of us on the road, and then we were through them and back in the sunshine before long.
By the time we got through Pennsylvania and then Ohio, I felt like I had passed through a lifetime, and in truth, I had, for when I arrived in the suburb of Chicago where my uncle and his family lived, I began a new life. Uncle Pete saw to it that I went to high school and even arranged for my father to fly out here with Aunt Dymphna for my graduation in 1953. My mother arrived in America, finally, in 1956 and I was able to bring my wife, my son and my daughter to New York on vacation a year later, to meet her.
My three brothers and my sister all came over to New York City, separately, and they all eventually shared an apartment in The Bronx with my mother and father,
One can often restore many of the strands of a fabric which has been rent by time and the trials the immigrant class is subject to, but it would have taken a tailor of rare skill, indeed, to bring that fabric back to any sort of wearable condition.
My name is Sean Larkin, and in 1949, I remember well, my father, Tom Larkin, was thirty five years old and steaming for a change. I can remember this very clearly for several reasons, even though I am now seventy five, myself. I had just turned fourteen, which is a most important achievement in the journey of one so young, although the news that my father gave me at the time took the shine off of it and nearly overwhelmed me with its portents.
He told me that he would be going to America; his sisters had sent him a letter telling him they had got him a job over there and he said that I was going to have to go with him; since I was the eldest of five, I could not even question that; it was my responsibility to accompany him.
When I expressed my fears before the rest of the family, he told me that I need not worry, that we would all be back together very soon, and it was also when he told my mother that with the job his sisters had got him, he’d be able to start saving right away to bring her over, too. When my mother heard that, she looked away, tipping her head up slightly, and muttered, more or less to herself, “Muryah,” which loosely translated, means, "you will in my arse.”
My father, though thirty five, was as ignorant of the ways of the world, or possibly even more so, than I was. His family had all gone off to America fifteen years earlier, but because he had dropped out of school at his first opportunity, and could not read or write much more than his own name, he realized he had better stay with the devil he knew and try to pick up what work he could locally. He was fortunate enough to be hired on to the estate of the closest we ever came to English gentry, Major Owen Bowles. His good fortune, if it could be designated as such, embraced my mother also, who was brought into the staff for cleaning and serving in their three story manor house. My parents met there and married within the year, moving into the Gate House, the cottage just inside the main gate to the property and they were very happy there, despite the fact that they had neither running water nor electricity, until too many children forced them to move into a slightly larger cottage, provided for them by the County Council.
It would take the breath of you to think of it now, but everyone on the Major’s property referred to him as “Master” and his Mrs. as “Mistress”:
“Are the cows in, Tom?”
“Yes, master.”
“*Is the turf turned, Tom?”
“Yes, master;”
that sort of nonsense. And, if the master and mistress were going out for a walk after supper, they would stop outside the cottage, and we would be trotted out to see them.
“Good evening, master.”
“G’devening.”
We were well shut of them the last time we saw them and we never missed them for an instant.
My fathers had got a letter from his younger sister, Dymphna, saying that everyone was working over in New York and that he should go over and start setting things up for the rest of us. After hearing that, he began walking around, lost in thought, often looking off into the distance and my mother, watching him, said, “Oh, Janey, we’re done for, now.”
Dating back to the early nineteenth century, when the lucky ones fled to America to escape the Famine, there was never any thought of being able to come back, so their friends, family and neighbors would give them, before they left, what came to be known as an “American Wake, so that everyone they knew would be able to say goodbye to them before they “died” to Ireland.
We had an American Wake given for us at the beginning of June, 1949 in Quigley’s Dance Hall, and we had all the usual elements: The music was provided by Paddy Connolly, with his Button Accordion, and his wife, Nellie, who, when she wasn’t step dancing around the stage to Paddy’s music, was sawing away on a fiddle to create her own, and Brian Johnson, who kept the pulse of the party throbbing by banging away on his bodhran; as uncle Paddy said, “By Jaysus, you wouldn’t hear better in the Philharmonic Hall in Dublin.”
My father was an able and enthusiastic dancer and A Hogshead of Porter kept the likes of Dell Cummings lining up for a last go ‘round the dance floor with him. My brothers and I used to love to watch him dance and we’d be in hysterics, laughing, because he always had this way of holding his right hand behind the woman that pulled her dress up in the back and if you got in the right position you’d be able to see her knickers as they passed. Sitting on the edge of the dance floor, I caught Mammy’s eye as he spun past us one time, and she just tipped her head back, almost imperceptibly, but she was already seeing him dancing in America.
The conclusion of these wakes was generally a pile-up of the drink, the songs and the tears, followed by heart-felt goodbyes and that would usually be the end of it. The only variation here was my father’s declaration to everyone in earshot, this time, for my mother’s benefit, of course, that we would all be together in no time atall. He was also singing as many sad songs as he could remember and aiming them at her.
Low lie the Fields of Athenry (athenrye)
Where once we watched the small free birds fly.
Our love was on the wing; we had dreams and songs to sing.
It’s so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry.
Seeing her sobbing for those songs, it occurred to me that they would probably be the only goodbyes he would be expressing.
We were booked to leave for America two days after the wake, so we had to leave home the next day, to get down to the seaport of Cobh, in County Cork, using one of the two cars in the town that were available for hire.
I had a new white shirt to put on, so I started to put the kettle on the fire to wash my hands and face before we left, but my father tossed me a washcloth and set the kettle aside. “Come on, you’re finished with that, now,” He said. “There’ll be plenty of hot water beyond.”
Tommy Jameson had the car waiting at the gate, while we all said our goodbyes by the front door. My mother, holding my youngest brother, who was only three, was weeping in streams, and so was I, both of us brokenhearted; but, how much deeper would our grief have been that day if we had known that we would not see each other again until I had a wife and two children of my own at my side.
I knelt on the back seat of the car and waved through the tiny rear window at them standing by the gate until we dipped below Cassidy’s hill, and then they were all gone.
It was dark when we arrived in Cobh and my father said we’d have to get a “kip” for the night. When we entered a dreary looking house near the waterfront, he gave the manager Half a Crown and he opened a room for us and said, “If ye can find a good one, y’ere welcome to it.” My father said to me, after rooting around, trying to find a mattress that wasn’t fully spent, “Be the Jaysus; If we could find a good one here, we’d be magicians.”
I took our bag and my two Hurleys, while my father dragged the mattress up one flight of stairs, to a big room with three mattresses already on the floor and we found a spot for ours. The only light was coming in from the hallway, and I thanked God for that. Seeing that the others had stowed their things against the walls, we did the same and lay down, back-to-back, with our coats covering us to try to get warm. We didn’t speak a word, and I tried to sleep, in the middle of that mad snoring, terrified of what was ahead of us.
When we got down to the dock in the morning, I was surprised at how small the boat was, without even a name on its prow. It looked like it would be barely able to accommodate all of us who were waiting to go. We were bewildered by the size of it, and I asked a man who was in front of us on line,
“How are we going to be able to stick crossing in this little yoke?”
He looked at me for a moment, to see if I was putting him on, “Are ye coddling me?”
But when he realized that I was serious, he threw his head back and erupted in derisive laughter,
“This fuckin’ thing wouldn’t get us across the street.”
I was embarrassed in front of the people around us who joined him in laughing at my foolishness, but I was relieved to learn, while we were loading, that this was just the Tender, which would take us out to the actual ship in the harbor.
There was a real crush of Irish immigrants at that point in time, so the Shipping Lines were temporarily leasing the troop ships that had brought the soldiers home from the war in Europe and were using them as passenger Liners. My father and I, for our first venture beyond Ballyfeeny, were to be borne o’er the waves by the redoubtable ERNIE PYLE.
We found that our compartment on the Ernie Pyle was no bigger than a walk-in closet, with two bunks, one on top of the other. We only lasted long enough to put the bag and the hurls on the top bed, and then we fl ed from it, just to be able to breathe.
I had to dive for the doorway, or the hatch, or whatever the fuck they call it, to keep from covering myself with that soup; fuckin mushroom soup. The old man kept telling me it’d be fine and that should have been my first hint; from a man who’d be able to eat the ass off a dead rabbit and say it was good. “Break the crackers into it,” says he, as he’s handing a packet over to Francis; Francis fuckin McNally, who’s sitting there with one of my hurleys at his feet, getting god-knows-what all over it, and not a bit afraid of the mushrooms. I headed outside, and when I hit it with my shoulder, the door burst open with a rush of wind and rain, blown in by the storm.
Incredibly, half-way through the Twentieth Century, a Liner, albeit a temporary one, of the Cunard Line, was lost at sea for a week. This was chiefly due to the weather; howling winds of gale force tossed the ship about like a toy boat; furthermore, massive delays in ship arrivals made shipping companies, already overburdened, even less conscientious about scrutiny of their adherence to schedules.
Everyone on the ship was vomiting and crying and praying and fasting, for, if you ate anything, you would be walking on it before long. My father, currying favor with the first family we took up with, Americans, gave one of my hurleys to the son, who didn’t even know what it was, to help him stop crying. I was upset, myself, but I worked my way out onto the deck, choosing to suffer the buffeting of the hurricane rather than contemplate the implications of my father’s disloyalty and what it might portend for my future.
Every small town is like a central nervous system, with every resident another tendril, all tied in together. Within hours of the knowledge that there had been no communication from our ship, everyone in Ballyfeeny had heard about our disappearance, and they were offering Novenas by the score. My mother thought she had lost us and was inconsolable
We limped into New York Harbor eight days after we had left Cobh, and we thanked God for our deliverance. When we finally got around to sending a telegram, he dictated it to me: “Arrived safe, will mark, Love, Tom.” It rattled like a marble in a boxcar.
When we were brought home to the Bronx, our dreams of American luxury were shattered on the shoals of a crowded apartment in a fifth floor walk-up with four aunts, two uncles and my father’s parents, all of them wondering where they were going to put us. We tried to settle in, but I soon found out that my chief occupation was going to be running down to the candy store to buy cigarettes and gum for my two teenaged aunts.
In a week, my father started his job in a Manhattan office building, and he brought me with him the first day, to help him fill out the forms for the Personnel Office. He was elated when I said I would tell them that he was a natural Gaelic speaker and that was why he was unable to read or write very much in English. He was going to be sweeping and mopping offices at night in a place he reached by a baffling arrangement of subway trains. He did this for two months, at the end of which, he had a heart attack, which, I’m sure, was induced by stress, and which landed him in the hospital for two weeks.
There was a lot of movement at the apartment, trying to prepare a space for my father to recuperate in, culminating in the thought that it might be better if they got me out from underfoot. My uncle Peter, who lived just outside Chicago and had three teenagers, was deemed to be the best choice for me to go to live with. Dymphna brought me into Manhattan and bought me the ticket for the Trailways Bus. She said that Uncle Pete had been called and would be expecting me. She also said that she would get word to my mother so that she wouldn’t be worried
The road west in 1949 consisted of a series of connected Turnpikes, until you got through Chicago, and then you had access to the legendary Route 66. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was a revelation for me: besides opening up heretofore unimaginable distances, there were tunnels through mountains, some of them twenty five miles long, and we drove into and out of rain storms that we saw, away ahead of us on the road, and then we were through them and back in the sunshine before long.
By the time we got through Pennsylvania and then Ohio, I felt like I had passed through a lifetime, and in truth, I had, for when I arrived in the suburb of Chicago where my uncle and his family lived, I began a new life. Uncle Pete saw to it that I went to high school and even arranged for my father to fly out here with Aunt Dymphna for my graduation in 1953. My mother arrived in America, finally, in 1956 and I was able to bring my wife, my son and my daughter to New York on vacation a year later, to meet her.
My three brothers and my sister all came over to New York City, separately, and they all eventually shared an apartment in The Bronx with my mother and father,
One can often restore many of the strands of a fabric which has been rent by time and the trials the immigrant class is subject to, but it would have taken a tailor of rare skill, indeed, to bring that fabric back to any sort of wearable condition.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Heads a Bob by Brendan Loonam
Just up the road from our house in Banagher, there was a Crossroads that was an important presence in our lives. It was the convergence, first of all, of the Birr Road, our main connection to points east, most particularly, Dublin, but also the eponymous Birr, and its famous Castle. Angling off from the Birr Road, in a slightly Northeast direction, was the Middle Road, which, a mile or so out of town, became the Bog Road, and was, at that point in time, for its entire length, unpaved. Next up running North and just West, was the Back Road, or was called thus by everyone in town; the chief benefits of the Back Road seemed to be: an easy way of reaching the Sportsfield and also, a connection to the village of Cloghan, though God only knew why anyone would want to do that. On one side of the square formed by this confluence was the Banagher Church of Ireland. St. Paul’s church, and on the other side, across from the church, sat The Pump, which, it is safe to say, supplied the water needs of everyone within a mile, outside the town, of the pump. The first chore of the day for me and my sister was to take a bucket to the pump, fill it with water, and then carry it home using a broom handle between us. On Sundays, the crossroads was important chiefly for one reason; it was the site of a Toss Pit, a circle four to five yards in diameter that was a harmless gambling institution and was in fact by and large a social tradition. The Toss Pit has been out of operation for decades, now, but, for a time there, you
A critical tool at the Toss Pit, and one that those who had nothing better to do could spend their time whittling into a thing of beauty was the Tosser. Now, those who didn’t have the time to waste on such trifling simply took their pocket comb out, possibly wrapping some paper tightly around its center to prevent embarrassing slippage mid-toss, and waited patiently for the sacred pennies to come around to them.
At that point in our history, the Tiger had not yet arrived on our shores with the much more simple Euro monetary system; we were still wrestling with the Pound Sterling, which could be broken down into an amazing number of coin combinations. Each Pound was comprised of Twenty Shillings, a Shilling also being referred to as a “Bob;” each Shilling had twelve Pennies, or Pence, each Penny having within it two Half Pennies, or ”haypennies” and four very tiny quarter pennies, or Farthings; Shillings could be on the other hand broken into two sixpenny pieces; tiny, like a Dime, they were referred to as “Tanners;” the Tanner could also be broken in half, to two Three Pence coins, which were always referred to as “Thruppeny Bits,” which were the only coins in the lot that were not circular, but hexagonal. There were also the “big money” coins, such as the Crown, which was Five Shillings, but so rare that it might as well have not existed and the much more familiar “Half Crown,” worth two and six, or two shillings and sixpence. There were Pound Notes, which were equaled by two Ten Shilling Notes.
So, Sunday, mid-day, the toss-pit was formed, and I would stand with my brothers, and if things went well, I would be given a few “coppers,” slang for pennies, and then the possibility arose that I could begin to make side bets with other young lads lucky enough to be enriched by their father or brothers. Any repetitive gathering of men, especially one formed for any kind of gambling, is bound to develop some hard and fast rules and the Sunday toss-pit in Banagher was no different. I’ve already mentioned the Tosser, used to flip the coins into the air, whose form was not important, as long as it got the job done. If it was your turn to toss the coins, only two things were required of you: the first one was to toss both coins so that they rose and fell together, and second was to build into the toss the turn in air at a certain, understood point above your head. This toss was so important that it deserved a special name of its own. This name was “the Berl” and the tosser, whatever you were using to send them airborne, was called “the berler.” The berl was so important to the process that the men standing in the circle, if they approved of the form, would call out things like, “Lovely Berl, Christy,” which would encourage follow-up exclamations, like, “Good man,” or “Good berl.” My brother Tommy was a great berler, and he would always be pushed forward by his friends, even giving their money to increase his bet, as if getting aboard a “sure thing.” I can’t remember how often those bets paid off, but I can clearly remember his form. Tommy was left-handed, in Irish, a (ciotogach, or kitt-oeg) and his berl was immediately identifiable; when the two pennies rose into the air, the calls rang out, as if he had done it against all odds. All eyes were on the berler, and the left-handed toss, when it began, looked like it couldn’t possibly succeed, but when the coins began the “berl” or curve in mid air, it was a thing of beauty. Meanwhile, on the circle, people were making bets and side-bets, all of which, to the casual observer, were always interesting and quite often baffling: “Heads a bob;” would mean that a shilling was bet on two Heads turning up. The opposite of a Head would be a Harp. “Head n a Harp, a bob.” “Head n a Harp, sixpence hapenny.” “Harps a tanner.” Nobody got rich; nobody went broke; everybody had a grand time.
A critical tool at the Toss Pit, and one that those who had nothing better to do could spend their time whittling into a thing of beauty was the Tosser. Now, those who didn’t have the time to waste on such trifling simply took their pocket comb out, possibly wrapping some paper tightly around its center to prevent embarrassing slippage mid-toss, and waited patiently for the sacred pennies to come around to them.
At that point in our history, the Tiger had not yet arrived on our shores with the much more simple Euro monetary system; we were still wrestling with the Pound Sterling, which could be broken down into an amazing number of coin combinations. Each Pound was comprised of Twenty Shillings, a Shilling also being referred to as a “Bob;” each Shilling had twelve Pennies, or Pence, each Penny having within it two Half Pennies, or ”haypennies” and four very tiny quarter pennies, or Farthings; Shillings could be on the other hand broken into two sixpenny pieces; tiny, like a Dime, they were referred to as “Tanners;” the Tanner could also be broken in half, to two Three Pence coins, which were always referred to as “Thruppeny Bits,” which were the only coins in the lot that were not circular, but hexagonal. There were also the “big money” coins, such as the Crown, which was Five Shillings, but so rare that it might as well have not existed and the much more familiar “Half Crown,” worth two and six, or two shillings and sixpence. There were Pound Notes, which were equaled by two Ten Shilling Notes.
So, Sunday, mid-day, the toss-pit was formed, and I would stand with my brothers, and if things went well, I would be given a few “coppers,” slang for pennies, and then the possibility arose that I could begin to make side bets with other young lads lucky enough to be enriched by their father or brothers. Any repetitive gathering of men, especially one formed for any kind of gambling, is bound to develop some hard and fast rules and the Sunday toss-pit in Banagher was no different. I’ve already mentioned the Tosser, used to flip the coins into the air, whose form was not important, as long as it got the job done. If it was your turn to toss the coins, only two things were required of you: the first one was to toss both coins so that they rose and fell together, and second was to build into the toss the turn in air at a certain, understood point above your head. This toss was so important that it deserved a special name of its own. This name was “the Berl” and the tosser, whatever you were using to send them airborne, was called “the berler.” The berl was so important to the process that the men standing in the circle, if they approved of the form, would call out things like, “Lovely Berl, Christy,” which would encourage follow-up exclamations, like, “Good man,” or “Good berl.” My brother Tommy was a great berler, and he would always be pushed forward by his friends, even giving their money to increase his bet, as if getting aboard a “sure thing.” I can’t remember how often those bets paid off, but I can clearly remember his form. Tommy was left-handed, in Irish, a (ciotogach, or kitt-oeg) and his berl was immediately identifiable; when the two pennies rose into the air, the calls rang out, as if he had done it against all odds. All eyes were on the berler, and the left-handed toss, when it began, looked like it couldn’t possibly succeed, but when the coins began the “berl” or curve in mid air, it was a thing of beauty. Meanwhile, on the circle, people were making bets and side-bets, all of which, to the casual observer, were always interesting and quite often baffling: “Heads a bob;” would mean that a shilling was bet on two Heads turning up. The opposite of a Head would be a Harp. “Head n a Harp, a bob.” “Head n a Harp, sixpence hapenny.” “Harps a tanner.” Nobody got rich; nobody went broke; everybody had a grand time.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
A History of Media in the Midlands
By Brendan Loonam
The first time I heard music from an electronic source, it was at The Pictures; great, swirling curls of orchestral drama accompanying one of His or Her Majesty’s ships as it was being tossed about by the temperamental waters of the Spanish Main. Or, possibly, it was the deep, heaving strings complementing Audie Murphy as he crept stealthily up the hill that hid Cochise and his warriors from view. One grew to expect music that stirred the satisfied soul, craned the neck and at the very least, left one sitting up upon one’s foot.
The only thing we had beyond that, in that it supplied music from a spring that wasn’t human, was the gramophone in the corner of Maloney’s kitchen, a heavy, ponderous-looking machine, that appeared likely to be anything but a producer of music. The playing arm, when it was swung out over the record, looked like it might be a winch, being used to unload a cargo ship, rather than a needle, freeing the sweet sounds of Mendelsohn from that hybrid, metallic disk that weighed a good pound and one half. And how was this musical marvel powered? Sticking out of the side of the gramophone was a suitably heavy handle which was used to crank up enough friction to play a disk at least half-way through, at which point, the person closest to it would quickly crank it up again and get it through to the finish. I marveled at the music whenever I happened to be there to enjoy it and one thing it was truly responsible for was to make me truly grateful and properly filled with awe when we were finally lucky enough to get a machine in our house that could produce its own music and more.
But, before we could even think about the kind of technology that could furnish us with music in our repose, we would have to provide that great precursor of such a tool, which most of the western hemisphere had been enjoying for half a century, but we on the Birr Road held onto the nineteenth century until it absolutely had to be released.
Everyone on our road was treated to the joys of the Electric Light within a three-week period and when ours was finalized, it was hung from the ceiling over the kitchen table, near the back door. The work was done by a pair of men from the CIE and finished off by the one man, who screwed a ceramic fixture into the ceiling and ran a tightly twisted set of wires from it across the ceiling and down the wall, where they were affixed to a switch which was also screwed onto the wall.
As I reflect upon it now, I don’t think any of us ever referred to it as anything other than the “electric light switch” and the bulb which it ignited was always called “the electric light.” It was all so new, then.
My sister, Anne, three years my senior, and I sat at the kitchen table that evening while my mother prepared a treat of potato cakes which she cooked on the griddle that had been placed atop the fire in our fireplace. We were positively basking in the light that illuminated the room around us and we couldn’t wait until our two older brothers arrived home from work and stacked their bicycles against the wall outside the back door. When they rode through the back gate, we could hear them braking on the gravel-covered backyard and we looked at each other excitedly, anticipating how they would feel when they walked into our wonderfully modern kitchen. Mammy was caught up in the excitement, also, and she hurried to get the plate of potato cakes onto the table before the boys entered.
Tommy was the first to come in, and he smiled, nodding his head and turning to wait for Peter, preferring to let him express the wonder they were being confronted with. Peter was also momentarily at a loss for words, finally uttering a joke:
“Be the holy sayman1,” which had the effect of letting us know they were impressed, while saving them from becoming mawkish. They walked to the opposite end of the kitchen, only a few steps, and drank in how the light had permeated the entire room. To emphasize how the electric light had taken over, Tommy lifted the paraffin lamp, sitting idle on the window sill, showed it to us and, shrugging, replaced it on the window.
They joined us at the table and we slathered the potato cakes with butter. We looked at each other as we ate them under our brilliant new electric light and we agreed that no potentate was as well off as we were.
Peter and Tommy were given the money that evening for the final payment for the new wireless, and when the tea was drunk and savored, they went off downtown to pick it up. We learned, later, that anyone who was around the shop stopped to take a look at what we were getting, as nearly everyone in the town would be going through the same process. Liam Hertnan put the radio into its delivery carton and taped the lid and the boys were off on their way to Paradise.
The radio, which was universally referred to as “The Wireless,” was plugged into the outlet that held our electric light and set upon a cupboard that was about five feet high and positioned against the back wall. This turned out to be an ideal height for manipulating the radio dials while looking directly at the wireless. We felt we had more than enough choices for our entertainment; in fact, we thought there weren’t enough hours in the day to explore them all: B.B.C., R.T.E. Radio Luxemburg, Armed Forces Network; there was no end to it!
Every evening, during supper, we listened to The Archers, an English family who were landed gentry and always had to deal with intrigues involving stablemen, vicars and Protestant ministers; it was all very other-worldly. Before the Archers came on, I was able to explore other worlds guided by Dan Dare, his assistant, Miss Peabody and his overweight, but loyal, slightly goofy underling, Digby. Dan Dare was an officer in service to The Planetary Federation and was in constant conflict with a green, saucer-flying, absolutely untrustworthy creature named Mekon, who spoke with a buzzing resonance that served only to make him more distasteful.
On Saturday evenings, Peter and Tommy’s friends would gather at our house before going to dances, or whatever else was going on, to make their “Windsor” knots on their ties and comb their “quiffs” using our mother’s pomade. While all this was going on, those “in the know” would be mining A.F.N.or Radio Luxemburg for the latest songs by Johnny Ray, Frankie Laine, Ruby Murray or whoever was topping the charts at the time.
At other times, during “family hours,” Radio Telefis Eireann would be the goal, and the entertainment would be provided by shows such as “Take The Floor With Dinjo,” which had a tag-line that became part of our everyday language:
“Oh, def’ny, Dinjo, def’ny,” as in: “Did you say your prayers today, Paddy?” “Oh, def’ny, Dinjo, def’ny.”
In the early afternoon on Sundays, particularly if there was an important hurling or football match scheduled, we would be joined by close friends who did not have their own wireless, but had to hear the athletic feats of such as Christy Ring and the rest of the Cork hurlers as described by the magnificently eloquent Miceal O’Hehir. After hearing a match called by O’Hehir, you were left with the distinct impression that you had watched it rather than simply heard it, so vivid was his play-by-play announcing.
Posted by Banagheroffaly at 7:37 PM 1 comments
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A History of Media in the Midlands
By Brendan Loonam
The first time I heard music from an electronic source, it was at The Pictures; great, swirling curls of orchestral drama accompanying one of His or Her Majesty’s ships as it was being tossed about by the temperamental waters of the Spanish Main. Or, possibly, it was the deep, heaving strings complementing Audie Murphy as he crept stealthily up the hill that hid Cochise and his warriors from view. One grew to expect music that stirred the satisfied soul, craned the neck and at the very least, left one sitting up upon one’s foot.
The only thing we had beyond that, in that it supplied music from a spring that wasn’t human, was the gramophone in the corner of Maloney’s kitchen, a heavy, ponderous-looking machine, that appeared likely to be anything but a producer of music. The playing arm, when it was swung out over the record, looked like it might be a winch, being used to unload a cargo ship, rather than a needle, freeing the sweet sounds of Mendelsohn from that hybrid, metallic disk that weighed a good pound and one half. And how was this musical marvel powered? Sticking out of the side of the gramophone was a suitably heavy handle which was used to crank up enough friction to play a disk at least half-way through, at which point, the person closest to it would quickly crank it up again and get it through to the finish. I marveled at the music whenever I happened to be there to enjoy it and one thing it was truly responsible for was to make me truly grateful and properly filled with awe when we were finally lucky enough to get a machine in our house that could produce its own music and more.
But, before we could even think about the kind of technology that could furnish us with music in our repose, we would have to provide that great precursor of such a tool, which most of the western hemisphere had been enjoying for half a century, but we on the Birr Road held onto the nineteenth century until it absolutely had to be released.
Everyone on our road was treated to the joys of the Electric Light within a three-week period and when ours was finalized, it was hung from the ceiling over the kitchen table, near the back door. The work was done by a pair of men from the CIE and finished off by the one man, who screwed a ceramic fixture into the ceiling and ran a tightly twisted set of wires from it across the ceiling and down the wall, where they were affixed to a switch which was also screwed onto the wall.
As I reflect upon it now, I don’t think any of us ever referred to it as anything other than the “electric light switch” and the bulb which it ignited was always called “the electric light.” It was all so new, then.
My sister, Anne, three years my senior, and I sat at the kitchen table that evening while my mother prepared a treat of potato cakes which she cooked on the griddle that had been placed atop the fire in our fireplace. We were positively basking in the light that illuminated the room around us and we couldn’t wait until our two older brothers arrived home from work and stacked their bicycles against the wall outside the back door. When they rode through the back gate, we could hear them braking on the gravel-covered backyard and we looked at each other excitedly, anticipating how they would feel when they walked into our wonderfully modern kitchen. Mammy was caught up in the excitement, also, and she hurried to get the plate of potato cakes onto the table before the boys entered.
Tommy was the first to come in, and he smiled, nodding his head and turning to wait for Peter, preferring to let him express the wonder they were being confronted with. Peter was also momentarily at a loss for words, finally uttering a joke:
“Be the holy sayman1,” which had the effect of letting us know they were impressed, while saving them from becoming mawkish. They walked to the opposite end of the kitchen, only a few steps, and drank in how the light had permeated the entire room. To emphasize how the electric light had taken over, Tommy lifted the paraffin lamp, sitting idle on the window sill, showed it to us and, shrugging, replaced it on the window.
They joined us at the table and we slathered the potato cakes with butter. We looked at each other as we ate them under our brilliant new electric light and we agreed that no potentate was as well off as we were.
Peter and Tommy were given the money that evening for the final payment for the new wireless, and when the tea was drunk and savored, they went off downtown to pick it up. We learned, later, that anyone who was around the shop stopped to take a look at what we were getting, as nearly everyone in the town would be going through the same process. Liam Hertnan put the radio into its delivery carton and taped the lid and the boys were off on their way to Paradise.
The radio, which was universally referred to as “The Wireless,” was plugged into the outlet that held our electric light and set upon a cupboard that was about five feet high and positioned against the back wall. This turned out to be an ideal height for manipulating the radio dials while looking directly at the wireless. We felt we had more than enough choices for our entertainment; in fact, we thought there weren’t enough hours in the day to explore them all: B.B.C., R.T.E. Radio Luxemburg, Armed Forces Network; there was no end to it!
Every evening, during supper, we listened to The Archers, an English family who were landed gentry and always had to deal with intrigues involving stablemen, vicars and Protestant ministers; it was all very other-worldly. Before the Archers came on, I was able to explore other worlds guided by Dan Dare, his assistant, Miss Peabody and his overweight, but loyal, slightly goofy underling, Digby. Dan Dare was an officer in service to The Planetary Federation and was in constant conflict with a green, saucer-flying, absolutely untrustworthy creature named Mekon, who spoke with a buzzing resonance that served only to make him more distasteful.
On Saturday evenings, Peter and Tommy’s friends would gather at our house before going to dances, or whatever else was going on, to make their “Windsor” knots on their ties and comb their “quiffs” using our mother’s pomade. While all this was going on, those “in the know” would be mining A.F.N.or Radio Luxemburg for the latest songs by Johnny Ray, Frankie Laine, Ruby Murray or whoever was topping the charts at the time.
At other times, during “family hours,” Radio Telefis Eireann would be the goal, and the entertainment would be provided by shows such as “Take The Floor With Dinjo,” which had a tag-line that became part of our everyday language:
“Oh, def’ny, Dinjo, def’ny,” as in: “Did you say your prayers today, Paddy?” “Oh, def’ny, Dinjo, def’ny.”
In the early afternoon on Sundays, particularly if there was an important hurling or football match scheduled, we would be joined by close friends who did not have their own wireless, but had to hear the athletic feats of such as Christy Ring and the rest of the Cork hurlers as described by the magnificently eloquent Miceal O’Hehir. After hearing a match called by O’Hehir, you were left with the distinct impression that you had watched it rather than simply heard it, so vivid was his play-by-play announcing.
Posted by Banagheroffaly at 7:37 PM 1 comments
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Night Flight by Brendan Loonam
My Grandmother was called “Moddy” by her children and also by friends and neighbors in their rural Irish Midlands community. The name seems to have been derivative of “Daddy” and fulfilled any familial requirements, while at the same time it was abstract enough for use by outsiders. This had the effect of helping all her acquaintances, apart from her grandchildren, who called her Granny, refer to her as if she were family, an endearing quality. My Grandfather was called “Daddy” by his children, my mother and aunts and uncles, but his grandchildren always referred to him as “Grandfather,” a rather aloof-sounding title, even though he was a most charming and gentle man. Between their house and ours, there was close to ten miles of bad road, and whenever we visited them we always had a feeling of great accomplishment upon our safe arrival at our destination. In recollecting the seemingly innumerable times we did visit that house, I can’t remember ever having done so in a rainfall, although such is a statistical improbability.
Grandfather kept an extra walking-stick, a lightweight blackthorn, outside the front door, and, as soon as we arrived for a visit, I would take it in hand, as my brothers had before me, and, with his pipe in one hand and his own stick in the other, he’d say to me, “We’ll walk the land.” I can still vividly recall the sensory wonderland of those walks: the rain barrel at the gable end of the small house, which had an aura, an aroma, that bespoke centuries of saving such water, with its dark green depths and its mossy edges; there was the “clamp” of turf, the house-shaped collection of bricks of peat, the only source of fuel for heating and cooking, which was another connection to the lost and forgotten past. Out in the “big” field were the haycocks, with the smell of the wet hay emanating from their centers, the outside layers dutifully drying in the sun before their winter storage in the shed.
There was the fetid busyness of the henhouse, with the cock strutting back and forth outside, guarding his harem. There was the rich, clear smell of the well from which the water for the tea and cooking and washing was drawn. There were the ripening hazelnuts in the bushes around the perimeter of the “land”, so easy to pop from their shells, and such a meaty snack in the afternoons; there were the currants, the tart green ones and the sweet red ones; there were the “goozers,” the sharp-tasting, hairy gooseberries, and the blackberries, which, in the autumn, were said to have been violated by the Pookah, that dark and mysterious creature who was said to have poisoned the berries by, dare I say it? Peeing on the bushes with the arrival of October, and, thus, they were left, rotting on the branch. All of these would be touched, tasted, inhaled, filed away during these walks, and grandfather would watch, puffing on his pipe. Then he would wink and smile, to let me know he was proud of the way I had conducted myself, and say, “sound man.”
We would return to a house abuzz with preparations for the Sunday dinner. The blackthorn would be replaced at the front door, and grandfather would turn me over to the ministrations of the women in the house, who revolved around granny, seated at the table, cutting the bread baked that morning. Whatever foods made up those meals are generally lost to me now, all except for a glorious Trifle, made by aunt Mary, with jell-o, sponge cake, gooseberries, sherry, bird’s custard and fresh whipped cream. I can still taste its wonderful richness.
The chat, throughout, on those days, as I recall it now, was light and positive, which is interesting, since the only thing all the adults had in abundance was hard work; but there was a joy in each other’s company that was tangible, and it enveloped us all.
By the time the lamp in front of the kitchen window was being lit, the big pot of tea would be brewing on the hob of the fireplace, and the breads and butter and jams would be paraded out, until, sated, the company would direct its eyes and commentary to the glowing fire, a place where dreams were lived, and hope rekindled, and cigarettes and pipes would be lit and savored, and no royalty could have claimed such comfort.
The ride home in one of the two cars that could be hired for that purpose in the town would be dark, warm and crowded. My brothers would sing songs full of remorse and loneliness and pity that were beyond their years: “Oh, father, father, dig my grave. oh, dig it deep and narrow. Sweet William died for me today, and I will die tomorrow.”
Late one afternoon, when I was about six years old, our postman, Paddy Mahon, appeared at our garden gate. The sight of that man, at that hour of the day, after he had completed his appointed rounds, always struck fear in the hearts of the recipients of his visit, for it could mean only one thing: a wire, a telegram, and this, in turn, could only mean the sickness or death of a family member at some distance from us. On this particular day, my mother was especially frightened, thinking it might be bad news from my father and my oldest brother, John, in America, and I am sure she was totally unprepared for what she found when she tore open the envelope in the doorway. She fell back against the door and exclaimed, “Oh, Jesus!” as she read the three words printed on the yellow paper: MOTHER VERY SICK.
She gave instructions to my sister, who was nine, as to the preparations to be made for my brothers’ dinner, cautioned me to be good and say my prayers, then got on her bicycle, with tears rolling down her cheeks, and set off to conquer the miles that usually brought us such joy. Two days later, we received another message, this time from a lorry driver who stopped at our gate. He told us that Granny was very bad, and that Tommy Jameson would be picking us up at 8:00 on sunday morning, which was the next day. We were to be ready for mass when he arrived.
After a mass filled with tears at Eglish church, all of the aunts, uncles and cousins were gathered back at Grandfather’s house, and because of space considerations, all of the youngsters were given our freedom. We played cowboys and Indians, football, hurling with makeshift sticks, called “crookys”, and rounders, which, although I didn’t know it at the time, was one of the precursors of baseball. We ran, climbed, jumped and expended ourselves in every way possible until we were called to come in to our supper. The adults who were not in the sickroom moved outside for a smoke while the “childer” ate, and we could see immediately that there was not to be even a hint of any further frivolity from us.
Our mother, indeed all the women left in the house, immediately took in hand squares of washcloth, painstakingly dried and raised to a number 10 sandpaper finish, and, after a perfunctory dab at a washbasin, proceeded to scour the dirt and whatever skin we had left from our faces. We knew enough to be silent from that point on. All of the adults, when they spoke at all, whispered, so we followed suit, for we knew, without being told, that something heartbreakingly sad was going to happen.
While we were still eating, the traffic between the bedroom and the yard outside increased, with the women taking shorter, quicker steps and the men, longer, slower strides. Gradually, Aunt Nell, the eldest, began marshaling the grandchildren, youngest first, into the bedroom to say goodbye to Granny, and in hushed tones, her throat catching on her tears, she explained the procedure to us. We were to go in, two at a time, bless ourselves, say the “Memorare,” give Granny a kiss goodbye and leave the room.
My sister and I were partnered, and I thought, no problem, until we stood together next to the bed, for I was thinking about us saying goodbye to her, rather than about her saying goodbye to us. As we said the prayer, she had her head turned to us, and, although I had said the prayer scores of times before, I had never heard the abject plea for mercy that it is, something that still affects me to this day. “Remember, o most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided...” When I bent to kiss her cheek, she put her hand to the side of my head, a feather, and smiled a smile that seemed to me, even then, heroic. Anne, crying uncontrollably, had to be comforted by my grandmother, “Whisht, acushla”, patting her cheek. Aunt Nell brought us out of the room, past the adults with their hands to their eyes. While the other youngsters took their turn, there grew the sound of feet shuffling in the doorway, aching for another peek at her, and the sniffling and the whispering. And finally, her own children gathered around her, with her husband standing at the head of the bed, while we standing outside had our hearts broken anew by the sounds of the cries and the calls upon god and his holy and blessed mother not to take her, to spare her, to be good to her. Then, the sound crashed to an almost-silence, and we caught our breath, thinking she was gone, and waiting for the next crescendo of sorrow that would surely come. But that eruption did not happen, and we searched each other’s faces for answers. Had god saved her? Now, craning around the doorjamb, I could see Uncle Paddy had sunk to his knees, with his head on his mother’s legs. Grandfather also had his head down to hers, and they were all crying, softly, now, wordlessly, to themselves.
When my mother came out of the room, my sister and brothers and I went to her and she clung to us. When she was able to compose herself to speak, she told us something so striking that I will never forget it. She said that, just before Granny died, she opened her eyes wide and a smile lit up her face. Her eyes roamed the room, and she said, “The room is filled with beautiful butterflies.” She was still smiling at the sight when she died.
Grandfather kept an extra walking-stick, a lightweight blackthorn, outside the front door, and, as soon as we arrived for a visit, I would take it in hand, as my brothers had before me, and, with his pipe in one hand and his own stick in the other, he’d say to me, “We’ll walk the land.” I can still vividly recall the sensory wonderland of those walks: the rain barrel at the gable end of the small house, which had an aura, an aroma, that bespoke centuries of saving such water, with its dark green depths and its mossy edges; there was the “clamp” of turf, the house-shaped collection of bricks of peat, the only source of fuel for heating and cooking, which was another connection to the lost and forgotten past. Out in the “big” field were the haycocks, with the smell of the wet hay emanating from their centers, the outside layers dutifully drying in the sun before their winter storage in the shed.
There was the fetid busyness of the henhouse, with the cock strutting back and forth outside, guarding his harem. There was the rich, clear smell of the well from which the water for the tea and cooking and washing was drawn. There were the ripening hazelnuts in the bushes around the perimeter of the “land”, so easy to pop from their shells, and such a meaty snack in the afternoons; there were the currants, the tart green ones and the sweet red ones; there were the “goozers,” the sharp-tasting, hairy gooseberries, and the blackberries, which, in the autumn, were said to have been violated by the Pookah, that dark and mysterious creature who was said to have poisoned the berries by, dare I say it? Peeing on the bushes with the arrival of October, and, thus, they were left, rotting on the branch. All of these would be touched, tasted, inhaled, filed away during these walks, and grandfather would watch, puffing on his pipe. Then he would wink and smile, to let me know he was proud of the way I had conducted myself, and say, “sound man.”
We would return to a house abuzz with preparations for the Sunday dinner. The blackthorn would be replaced at the front door, and grandfather would turn me over to the ministrations of the women in the house, who revolved around granny, seated at the table, cutting the bread baked that morning. Whatever foods made up those meals are generally lost to me now, all except for a glorious Trifle, made by aunt Mary, with jell-o, sponge cake, gooseberries, sherry, bird’s custard and fresh whipped cream. I can still taste its wonderful richness.
The chat, throughout, on those days, as I recall it now, was light and positive, which is interesting, since the only thing all the adults had in abundance was hard work; but there was a joy in each other’s company that was tangible, and it enveloped us all.
By the time the lamp in front of the kitchen window was being lit, the big pot of tea would be brewing on the hob of the fireplace, and the breads and butter and jams would be paraded out, until, sated, the company would direct its eyes and commentary to the glowing fire, a place where dreams were lived, and hope rekindled, and cigarettes and pipes would be lit and savored, and no royalty could have claimed such comfort.
The ride home in one of the two cars that could be hired for that purpose in the town would be dark, warm and crowded. My brothers would sing songs full of remorse and loneliness and pity that were beyond their years: “Oh, father, father, dig my grave. oh, dig it deep and narrow. Sweet William died for me today, and I will die tomorrow.”
Late one afternoon, when I was about six years old, our postman, Paddy Mahon, appeared at our garden gate. The sight of that man, at that hour of the day, after he had completed his appointed rounds, always struck fear in the hearts of the recipients of his visit, for it could mean only one thing: a wire, a telegram, and this, in turn, could only mean the sickness or death of a family member at some distance from us. On this particular day, my mother was especially frightened, thinking it might be bad news from my father and my oldest brother, John, in America, and I am sure she was totally unprepared for what she found when she tore open the envelope in the doorway. She fell back against the door and exclaimed, “Oh, Jesus!” as she read the three words printed on the yellow paper: MOTHER VERY SICK.
She gave instructions to my sister, who was nine, as to the preparations to be made for my brothers’ dinner, cautioned me to be good and say my prayers, then got on her bicycle, with tears rolling down her cheeks, and set off to conquer the miles that usually brought us such joy. Two days later, we received another message, this time from a lorry driver who stopped at our gate. He told us that Granny was very bad, and that Tommy Jameson would be picking us up at 8:00 on sunday morning, which was the next day. We were to be ready for mass when he arrived.
After a mass filled with tears at Eglish church, all of the aunts, uncles and cousins were gathered back at Grandfather’s house, and because of space considerations, all of the youngsters were given our freedom. We played cowboys and Indians, football, hurling with makeshift sticks, called “crookys”, and rounders, which, although I didn’t know it at the time, was one of the precursors of baseball. We ran, climbed, jumped and expended ourselves in every way possible until we were called to come in to our supper. The adults who were not in the sickroom moved outside for a smoke while the “childer” ate, and we could see immediately that there was not to be even a hint of any further frivolity from us.
Our mother, indeed all the women left in the house, immediately took in hand squares of washcloth, painstakingly dried and raised to a number 10 sandpaper finish, and, after a perfunctory dab at a washbasin, proceeded to scour the dirt and whatever skin we had left from our faces. We knew enough to be silent from that point on. All of the adults, when they spoke at all, whispered, so we followed suit, for we knew, without being told, that something heartbreakingly sad was going to happen.
While we were still eating, the traffic between the bedroom and the yard outside increased, with the women taking shorter, quicker steps and the men, longer, slower strides. Gradually, Aunt Nell, the eldest, began marshaling the grandchildren, youngest first, into the bedroom to say goodbye to Granny, and in hushed tones, her throat catching on her tears, she explained the procedure to us. We were to go in, two at a time, bless ourselves, say the “Memorare,” give Granny a kiss goodbye and leave the room.
My sister and I were partnered, and I thought, no problem, until we stood together next to the bed, for I was thinking about us saying goodbye to her, rather than about her saying goodbye to us. As we said the prayer, she had her head turned to us, and, although I had said the prayer scores of times before, I had never heard the abject plea for mercy that it is, something that still affects me to this day. “Remember, o most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided...” When I bent to kiss her cheek, she put her hand to the side of my head, a feather, and smiled a smile that seemed to me, even then, heroic. Anne, crying uncontrollably, had to be comforted by my grandmother, “Whisht, acushla”, patting her cheek. Aunt Nell brought us out of the room, past the adults with their hands to their eyes. While the other youngsters took their turn, there grew the sound of feet shuffling in the doorway, aching for another peek at her, and the sniffling and the whispering. And finally, her own children gathered around her, with her husband standing at the head of the bed, while we standing outside had our hearts broken anew by the sounds of the cries and the calls upon god and his holy and blessed mother not to take her, to spare her, to be good to her. Then, the sound crashed to an almost-silence, and we caught our breath, thinking she was gone, and waiting for the next crescendo of sorrow that would surely come. But that eruption did not happen, and we searched each other’s faces for answers. Had god saved her? Now, craning around the doorjamb, I could see Uncle Paddy had sunk to his knees, with his head on his mother’s legs. Grandfather also had his head down to hers, and they were all crying, softly, now, wordlessly, to themselves.
When my mother came out of the room, my sister and brothers and I went to her and she clung to us. When she was able to compose herself to speak, she told us something so striking that I will never forget it. She said that, just before Granny died, she opened her eyes wide and a smile lit up her face. Her eyes roamed the room, and she said, “The room is filled with beautiful butterflies.” She was still smiling at the sight when she died.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Where's The Electric Light?
People have asked me, “What’s the big deal with this media trip?” and I really, if I am on the move, or at all involved in something, don’t get a chance to elaborate on the reason for my obsession. It might be something that is confined to people of a certain age: those born a decade before or a decade after World War 11, or even to people from a certain area: the counties right in the middle of Ireland; Offaly, Laois and Tipperary. Our corner of the Midlands, Banagher, Co. Offaly, balanced right on the edge of the Shannon, had some peculiarities that made the anticipation, the reception and the consideration of the implications of new media interesting from the very beginning.
Anthony Trollope, one of the most respected, and certainly one of the most prolific Victorian novelists, had been the Postmaster in Banagher in 1850, living in a house down at the beginning of Cuba Avenue Just down the road from where my brother, Peter, now lives. When it got dark in Anthony Trollope’s house, it is presumed that he used a lighting medium of his time, a lamp fueled by paraffin oil, increasing illumination by the use of a glass “hurricane” bulb.
And one hundred years later, in 1950, when it got dark in our house, we used the same method of illumination that had been employed by Trollope: the paraffin oil lamp. When it was time for me to go to bed on a winter night, I was accompanied into the room by my mother bearing the lamp; leaving the door slightly ajar, she would depart, leaving me in a darkness so profound that it is immeasurable, even inconceivable by anyone used to modern lighting.
What had been going on during the intervening 100 years? The rest of the world had not been standing still; they had built and sunk the Titanic. The Telegraph Cable, after great effort, had been dragged across the Atlantic, initiating the deluge of Communication that has grown exponentially ever since. Ahem…even WW1& WW11 had been waged and won or lost, depending on where in the world you were situated. Ireland, of course, with a great deal of pain and difficulty, worked its way through the “Troubles,” and Ireland, England and the rest of the world heard of these things as they occurred. We in Banagher had to depend upon word-of-mouth and the papers for the news. I was eight when we finally got the Electric Light on the Birr Road.
Anthony Trollope, one of the most respected, and certainly one of the most prolific Victorian novelists, had been the Postmaster in Banagher in 1850, living in a house down at the beginning of Cuba Avenue Just down the road from where my brother, Peter, now lives. When it got dark in Anthony Trollope’s house, it is presumed that he used a lighting medium of his time, a lamp fueled by paraffin oil, increasing illumination by the use of a glass “hurricane” bulb.
And one hundred years later, in 1950, when it got dark in our house, we used the same method of illumination that had been employed by Trollope: the paraffin oil lamp. When it was time for me to go to bed on a winter night, I was accompanied into the room by my mother bearing the lamp; leaving the door slightly ajar, she would depart, leaving me in a darkness so profound that it is immeasurable, even inconceivable by anyone used to modern lighting.
What had been going on during the intervening 100 years? The rest of the world had not been standing still; they had built and sunk the Titanic. The Telegraph Cable, after great effort, had been dragged across the Atlantic, initiating the deluge of Communication that has grown exponentially ever since. Ahem…even WW1& WW11 had been waged and won or lost, depending on where in the world you were situated. Ireland, of course, with a great deal of pain and difficulty, worked its way through the “Troubles,” and Ireland, England and the rest of the world heard of these things as they occurred. We in Banagher had to depend upon word-of-mouth and the papers for the news. I was eight when we finally got the Electric Light on the Birr Road.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
New Free Apps for iPhone
When one hears the word "Media," one might very easily succumb to thinking about media in the very traditional terms of Film, Television, Photography, Radio, Recorded Music, etc. But there has been an absolute explosion in the Media platform; it has become infinitely wider and deeper, in the way that these things always "creep up" on us. Like, for example, around the time I was a Senior in college, all were stunned by the latest IBM Selectric typewriter. My God, the Future had arrived;one could type using a ball that seemingly knew which way to turn and impress the letter, once one had pressed the corresponding key on the typewriter! The book and movie about the unimaginable distant Future at that point was...1984! Since then, a lot of magic has been made available to us; things which, if they had been added to any package at the beginning of the '70's, would have cost a pretty penny (something I've never seen). Take a look at the following, some of them formidable, Apps, made available for free to the iPhone: all with the aim of increasing or enhancing one's Productivity
Productivity Apps
* my Homework - Students who need help organizing test schedules and homework assignments will love this free iPhone app.
* To Do's - This free productivity app makes it easy to keep track of items on your to-do list and get things done on time with priority settings for each task.
* iProcrastinate Mobile - Students who like to put off tasks will benefit from iProcrastinate Mobile. The free app offers easy task management for the most daunting of schedules.
* Easy Task Manager - This personal task manager has an easy-to-use interface that can be synched with multiple computers.
* Instapaper Free - Instapaper Free is a handy app that saves web pages, blogs and online articles for later reading.
Homework and Study Help Apps
* World Fact Book Lite - This free version of the World Fact Book is a great reference tool for students who want to learn more about different countries around the world.
* Exam Vocabulary Builder - This free app from AccelaStudy uses a flashcard approach to expand English vocabulary--perfect for students facing standardized tests or university entrance exams.
* Spel It Rite - Spel It Rite is a fun game that teaches students how to recognize misspelled words.
* Math Drills Lite - This interactive application works well for students who need practice with basic math--addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
* Mathemagics Lite - Mathemagics is a free iPhone app that teaches students tricks that can be applied to mental math calculations.
Finance Apps
* Mint.com - This free app makes it easy to manage and budget your money on the go. Mint uses an attractive interface and has a lot of useful features.
* EZ Loan Calc - EZ Loan Calc is a loan calculator than can quickly calculate your monthly payments based on information you enter.
* Pay Pal - This free app makes it easy to access your PayPal account, send money and check your balance.
* ATM Hunter - Students can find the location of any ATM (that works with MasterCard) using this free iPhone app
.
* DailyFinance - This popular iPhone app provides real-time stock quotes, portfolio tracking and finance news from multiple sources.
Miscellaneous Apps
* GMAT PracticeQuiz - The free GMAT practice quiz app from Veritas Prep makes it easy for graduate students to practice for the GMAT.
* Testwiser Vocabulary Preparation - The free Testwiser app has more than 2,700 must-know words--great for students who are preparing for the SAT or GRE.
* iTranslate - This free iPhone app can translate text into 42 different languages.
* MyGPA Calculator - MyGPA can be used to calculate semester and overall grade point averages.
* Free Wi-Fi Finder - This iTunes app is a great way for students to find places to study away from home.
Productivity Apps
* my Homework - Students who need help organizing test schedules and homework assignments will love this free iPhone app.
* To Do's - This free productivity app makes it easy to keep track of items on your to-do list and get things done on time with priority settings for each task.
* iProcrastinate Mobile - Students who like to put off tasks will benefit from iProcrastinate Mobile. The free app offers easy task management for the most daunting of schedules.
* Easy Task Manager - This personal task manager has an easy-to-use interface that can be synched with multiple computers.
* Instapaper Free - Instapaper Free is a handy app that saves web pages, blogs and online articles for later reading.
Homework and Study Help Apps
* World Fact Book Lite - This free version of the World Fact Book is a great reference tool for students who want to learn more about different countries around the world.
* Exam Vocabulary Builder - This free app from AccelaStudy uses a flashcard approach to expand English vocabulary--perfect for students facing standardized tests or university entrance exams.
* Spel It Rite - Spel It Rite is a fun game that teaches students how to recognize misspelled words.
* Math Drills Lite - This interactive application works well for students who need practice with basic math--addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
* Mathemagics Lite - Mathemagics is a free iPhone app that teaches students tricks that can be applied to mental math calculations.
Finance Apps
* Mint.com - This free app makes it easy to manage and budget your money on the go. Mint uses an attractive interface and has a lot of useful features.
* EZ Loan Calc - EZ Loan Calc is a loan calculator than can quickly calculate your monthly payments based on information you enter.
* Pay Pal - This free app makes it easy to access your PayPal account, send money and check your balance.
* ATM Hunter - Students can find the location of any ATM (that works with MasterCard) using this free iPhone app
.
* DailyFinance - This popular iPhone app provides real-time stock quotes, portfolio tracking and finance news from multiple sources.
Miscellaneous Apps
* GMAT PracticeQuiz - The free GMAT practice quiz app from Veritas Prep makes it easy for graduate students to practice for the GMAT.
* Testwiser Vocabulary Preparation - The free Testwiser app has more than 2,700 must-know words--great for students who are preparing for the SAT or GRE.
* iTranslate - This free iPhone app can translate text into 42 different languages.
* MyGPA Calculator - MyGPA can be used to calculate semester and overall grade point averages.
* Free Wi-Fi Finder - This iTunes app is a great way for students to find places to study away from home.
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