My Neighborhood was Irish

My neighborhood was Irish.  My uncles, a little removed from Ireland by time and distance, would sing Irish tunes in the Irish bars in the South Side Chicago. My Irish grandmother on my father's side had stopped by England with her parents before swinging over to America.  She was at home here with her Mc's and O'this and O'that. My mother's parents were from Ireland as well, and they were part of a migration of Irish who went to Scotland's shipbuilding centers and then on to America to make their new lives.  

My dad was a big husky man with reddish hair and a big smile that masked an Irish temper.  He was an Irish Policeman and happy to gab with those on the beat.  But he never played the Irish card. He was who he was and he kept it simple.

Being Irish in my neighborhood was like having two hands or two legs, not much to brag about with everyone being Irish! I did come to appreciate it later in life.  As an adult, when I read the Breastplate of Saint Patrick and I felt the fear and the desperate need for God from the words of a desperate shepherd boy and slave, I appreciated my Irish roots.  You could throw away all the male tenor versions of Danny Boy I heard as a child in heap, but when I heard Jamie O'Reilly sing it purely and sweetly, I felt the song and felt the Irish and the sadness of having to leave their land. 

But I want to tell you about  the time that I went to Billy Donovan's house, the most Irish of all Irish boys in the neighborhood. His parents were so new to the America that they had brogues.

But first I must tell you that my family, the Callaghan's, had a kind of shabby house that was suitable for a family with one child and we had six.  My brother and I slept on the unheated back porch and one of my sisters often slept on the front porch, which was technically enclosed in windows but had been an outdoor space.  The other girls in the family shared a room and when the weather changed, the cold-room kids slept on the dining room floor and on the living room couch.  Luckily, there was a bit of space between the oldest three and the youngest three, and before long the older moved out to nurses training and the convent. So we lived in shifts.

We were growing up with a little bit of Eisenhower and then John Kennedy.  Some of my neighbors were sporting new cars and few bucks in their wallet so it was not quite "in" to be shabby. We were what Americans called  "shanty Irish," some of our neighbors were trying to be more like the "lace curtain" Irish. Aside from our friends on the block who had known us since we were very young, it was a little more difficult to reach and touch some of the others in the neighborhood who might be a step above our lowly socioeconomic rung on the ladder.

But Billy Donovan had been a good school friend and he had invited me over to his house.  Billy was the most decent guy you would want to know. Never course or unkind, a good student and good baseball player. Billy had a younger brother and sister. He lived in a very nice little brick house that was a block away from Saint Cajetan School. Everything about Billy's house was what our house did not have.  It was brick.  It had a second floor where there was three bedroom in which the family could fit comfortably.  It was decades newer than our house and the grounds were neat and trim.  So my entry into the Donovan's house had expectations. I knew it would be just like the Cleavers' of Leave it Beaver and ours was like the Beverly Hillbillies before the move out west. But I was wrong.

You see Billy's dad had come over to America with some baggage.  Not suitcases and trunks, but the baggage of pain, anger and alcohol. And Billy's mother was what today would be called an enabler. As I entered the living room, any joy that I had in my soul left me. The room was tidy and clean enough, but completely devoid of furniture except for a few pieces that were used by Mr. Donovan in the center of the room.   A TV set stood on a table opposite Mr. Donovan.  The "King of the Castle" was sitting in a brown reclining chair. A tray table was at his side with an open bottle of beer. Upon our entry into the house, Mrs. Donovan came into the room carrying the King's dinner and another beer.  Billy Donovan and I were like flies in the room; worth a few seconds of Mr. Donovan's annoyance, but little else.  Mr. Donovan said nothing to us, but nodded and went back to some television program.  This was the Donovan's nice house. 

Billy and I ran up the stairs to the room he shared with his brother.  We sat around for a few minutes and talked.  I was nervous and jumpy.  And then it was time for me to leave and never come back to the Donovan's house.  I wanted to get home to our shanty Irish home and the people I loved. 

Copyright 2016, Sporting Chance Press
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Lawrence Norris is the publisher of  Sporting Chance Press Books and the author of the eBook, The Brown and White. The Brown and White is a fictionalized memoir that tells the story of Collin Callaghan's freshman year at a Chicago Catholic High School. Collin is a white boy who is living in turbulent times in a changing city. He clings to his neighborhood and his family as he heads out each day with his classmates on the Brown and White, the ancient school bus driven by free-spirited Willie. Memorable characters abound as this story unfolds. Collin's loveable family, especially his Irish Catholic policeman father and his immigrant mother face life together.