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
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
