CHAPTER 7.
“MY FIRST TRIP TO IRELAND….WHAT A TRIP!”
In August of 1972, Mom, Dad, Coley and I took a trip to Ireland. It was a very interesting 4 weeks. And it was such a shock to see it.
When we took off on Sunday July 30th.(I guess t hat was the night), we were going on a charter with the Irish Music Club. And I got scared as the plane took off. I’d never been on a plane before(well, I’d been on 2 planes before when I’d gone to League School, but this is the first time I was actually flying in one). And I was a nervous wreck.
I still am a nervous wreck every time I’m on a plane. When I made my 3rd. trip in 1996, I had a panic attack just before we took off. Earlier in the day, one of the staffers at Mullen & Company(the predecessor of McGladrey, where I still work today) asked me if I was flying on ValuJet. A ValuJet plane had crashed earlier in the month and that really got me upset.
Hey, I get upset easily when I get teased; being autistic makes me prone to teasing. I’ve never known whether one is kidding or deadly serious.
Well, we got over to Ireland early the next morning(their time) and we took a long 2 or 3 hours journey to Killarney. While everyone regards it as a tourist trap, it’s where my Dad came from in 1949. Growing up in Ireland was tough for him and his family. Most of the people lived in poverty back then while Europe was growing into a massive industrial and artistic machine. In the 1840s, the potato famine came to Ireland, killing over a million people and forcing another million to emigrate across the seas.
When many of these Irish immigrants arrived in Boston or New York, people would insult them and put up signs that said “No Irish Wanted Here!” They would be the ones doing the hard labor and long hours. But thanks to gentlemen like John Boyle O’Reilly and Richard Cardinal Cushing, the Irish would prosper and become an important force in American society. All this climaxed in the election of John F. Kennedy to the Presidency in the year 1960, months before I was born. Mom told me that she went to his JFK’s final campaign rally the night before the election…and I was developing in her belly.
In the 4 weeks I was over in Ireland, I can remember some fantastic times that defined my love for my Dad’s ancestral country: traveling the Ring of Kerry, driving cross country to Dublin, playing those one armed bandits-yes, I’m talking about slot machines-at the arcades in the Salthill section of Galway, having dinner at some of the country’s best restaurants at the time: the Colleen Bawn in Killarney, the Harp in Dublin, and some other great places I can’t recall at the top of my head.
For the first few days there, all I could eat was grilled cheese sandwiches(I was so homesick, since this was my first trip out of the USA). And my brother Coleman always says that there’s a statute of me having grilled cheese sandwiches in the centre of Killarney. I’ve yet to find it.
Traveling through Ireland was an experience altogether different: they drive on the left side of the road, they call soft drinks “minerals,” and, at the time, TV didn’t broadcast until the evening. Also, in many towns, there’s a singing pub that does business with talented musicians from around the areas they live in.
My brother once joked, “They sing from opening to closing and in the morning they wake up with laryngitis!” I don’t know if that’s true, but…
One of the highlights of my trip was going to Dublin where we walked down O’Connell Street and soaked in the city center of the Irish capital. On the Friday night, the whole family and I saw an Irish revue called “Gaels Of Laughter,” which starred comedian and actress Maureen Potter. What a fantastic experience that was with music, comedy and dance. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
The next day, we went to Bray on the Northern edge of the city itself. And what was a big highlight was when Dad, Coley, Dicko and I climbed 1,000 feet up Mt. Brayhead. It was a very long and difficult climb; you have to be really fit and sturdy to climb up the mountain. Anyway, when we got up to the top, we had a spectacular view of the ocean and the surrounding area.
I remember bringing down some bushes to my mom as a birthday present. As I gave them to her, I said, “Happy Birthday from Mount Brayhead!” She was delighted with them. And then we went back into town to see a movie.
Several times while we were in Dublin, we went to the General Post Office where the Irish Rebellion started. It is a working post office, but it’s also the place where the Irish began their ill-fated campaign to drive the English out of Ireland. It was there that Padaric Pearse proclaimed Ireland as “a sovereign, Independent State.”
“The only thing that can stop Irish Independence,” he said that day, “is the destruction of the Irish race itself.” And thank God we haven’t been destroyed. We never will be. Like the Jews, the Irish have been persecuted for no reason whatsoever by the British. And still, Northern Ireland is under British control. I look forward to the day when they’ll head home from the North and let the two sides become one.
On our final day in Dublin, I went to Croke Park where we saw an All Ireland fooball playoff between the counties of Offaly and Donegal. Mom and I cheered for Offaly, while Dad, Coley and Dicko cheered for Donegal. I can’t believe how passionate the Irish are at their Gaelic sports. Like the Americans who love baseball and football, and the English who cheer at soccer matches, the GAA is the sporting force that binds the Irish together. It’s a combination of rugby, soccer and football, but it’s a style that’s altogether different from all the other sports in the world.
By the way, the match ended in a draw.
The night before I left for home, I shared with my cousins in Killarney a fantastic song called “Let There Be Peace On Earth.” This song was performed at a youth conference in 1955 when the attendees all walked arm in arm up a mountain in California and shared that song with each other.
The simple lyrics of peace on Earth beginning with each of us is fantastic. I first learned it the previous winter at St. Coletta’s and decided to share it with Uncle Dicko’s family. The song had only been 15 years old when we first learned it, but it had already made an impact around the world.
When we flew home the next morning, Dad said a tearful goodbye to his brother Dicko, not knowing it would be the last time he would see him again. He would see him many times when he came over to America in the intervening years, but he was always worried he’d never see him again. After all, when the Irish came over to America in the 19th. century, the families and friends of those who were leaving would send off with an American Wake party. Although those immigrants would probably never see their families again, it was clear that they were part of each other for all eternity.
Because I had a summer job in 1985 with the Massachusetts District Commission, I wasn’t able to go with my parents to Ireland that summer. It would be the last time that Dad would ever go over, since he’d been diagnosed with mesothelioma, an incurable cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. 3 years later, he’d die of the disease on July 23rd., 1988. Ironically, it would be less than 24 hours after I’d been fired from Putnam Investments, a world famous financial firm headquartered in Boston.
I won’t go into that part of it, or the MDC job I worked on for the 2 summers of 1984 and 1985, because those kids were spoiled brats who got their jobs as special favors by their friends in the government. No wonder the Commonwealth is so screwed up these days! And ever since Governor William Weld introduced “privatization” of State government in the 1990s, it’s only gone from bad to worse.
