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?”

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.