Susie's Son

Susie’s Son

_________________________________

A memoir in verse and prose

TOM McCARTHY

Copyright (c) Tom McCarthy 2014

First published in Ireland by

The Limerick Writers’ Centre

12 Barrington Street

Limerick, Ireland

www.limerickwriterscentre.com

www.facebook.com/limerickwriterscentre

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Book design: Lotte Bender

Cover Image: Author

Ebook Formatting: Máire Baragry

Available as an e-book at www.smashwords.com

A CIP catalogue number for this publication is available from The British Library

I dedicate this book to my mum and dad for the trials and tribulations they both endured in difficult times

INTRODUCTION

Starting my memoir with a poem may seem odd or out of context but odd and out of context may be a good description of what you are about to read!

The poem itself depicts a conception of the early days, not only of my childhood years, but the childhood years of many children that were born into the forties. To say that we were poor back then would be an over statement compared to children in war-torn countries, living under the stars, not knowing where their next meal might be coming from. I would have known nothing of such poverty but for the introduction of television into our homes in the very late fifties into the early sixties. It opened my eyes to the real poor, living in the slums, in the third world, in shanty towns, without any kind of sanitation, without electricity, without running water. We on the other hand had all those amenities and by hook or by crook my mother always managed to put three meals a day on the table.

Go Easy on the Butter

‘Go easy on the butter’, my mother would say,

‘There’s another day tomorrow!

I've already pawned your father suit,

There's no more I can borrow’.

I'd reach for the butter under a watchful eye,

And spread it as good as I could,

But no matter how hard I scraped it on,

I always took more than I should.

‘Your eyes are bigger than your belly’, she’d say,

‘Don’t you know money is scarce?’

But my jawbones were working overtime

As I was stuffing my face!

Now the slice-pan wasn't around,

'Twas ‘cottage’ sliced up on a plate

And when it was fresh with plenty of butter,

By God 'twas lovely to ate.

Now a pound of butter was one and nine,

But a pound was seldom seen,

Two ounces or a quarter we got off Junior Keane,

The sugar, milk and bread would cost us two-and-six,

Sometimes we'd get it on the book off of Mrs Fitz.

But don’t forget the eye-bones, the breastbones or the tails!

Mattie Connery was the man to throw them on the scales.

‘Go easy on the butter, tomorrow is another day!’

When we all sat down to ate,

'Twas the first thing my mother would say.

My story starts the same way as every living thing on this earth starts out in life, at birth. If I had been born in the wilds of Africa as a sick animal that needed to be able to move quickly after birth, like a wildebeest or a buffalo, I would have been devoured. I was lucky, you might say, that I drew a ticket with human race written on it! And a second ticket with the name Mother, Mrs. Susan McCarthy!

If my mother had birthed me as a sick wildebeest calf, or a buffalo, I could never imagine her leaving me there to be devoured by a pride of lions or a venue of vultures. In my mind’s eye, I can see her fighting them off, with all her might, in a bid to save her calf.

Tom McCarthy

Nov 2014

Chapter 1

Early Days

I was born with some kind of glandular malfunction in the stomach, resulting in my being unable to digest my food. My mother took me to every doctor in town, hoping to find some kind of medicine to help me keep a bottle down. I could say that those first two lines were the start of a poem but it was far from poetry in motion for my mother back then. Of course I could never have known that at the time, because I was only a few weeks old. As I got older I would hear my mother tell the story time and again. She told it so many times I was beginning to believe that I had remembered fighting for my life as an infant. In her little grocery shop on Ballygrennan Road in Ballynanty in Limerick City, Ireland, I would hear her tell the story time and again to some of her regular customers, about my quest for survival as a new-born. Each time she told the story, she would start the sentence with, ''Do you know, Missus, my Thomas broke my heart? He was the most miserable baby you ever saw. He was born with some kind of glandular malfunction in the stomach. I brought him to every doctor in town hoping to find some kind of medicine to help him keep a bottle down. She would continue by telling the customers that Doctor Liddy, in the clinic on Gerald Griffin Street, was her last hope. He prescribed a bottle containing a white liquid and lo and behold, Missus! He kept a full bottle down that night! She would carry on the conversation by telling the customer, He was so sick Missus he had to be anointed, and I had arranged with the man living beneath our two-roomed flat, at Number 14, Hall's Range, Edward Street, that I would tap on the floor when he died. My mother would finish the conversation with an air of humorous laughter by telling the customer, But the little bastard is still here, Missus."

My vague memories of that two-roomed flat were the barking of a German shepherd dog, a potty in the corner and worms - for some reason. I can still see the street in an opaque hazy distance. However, I do remember clearly a quarry and some lad shooting a crow from the sky with a bow and arrow made from a sally tree. The arrow had a nail tied to the tip and I can still see the crow scuttling from the sky. I was amazed at the accuracy of the shot but I remember feeling sad for the bird sprawled out on the ground, with the arrow piercing his little body.

We moved from Hall's Range to Ballynanty in 1950. I was three years old and I can remember the Mulcahys on the corner in Number 22, Moylish Road, who were there before we arrived. Mr. Mulcahy was an army man like my Dad. He and Mrs. Mulcahy had three children at the time, Eileen, Liam, and Thomas. Back then, I was the youngest of the three in our family. Paddy was the eldest and Ann was the second eldest. Both families having the same structure was relevant because a married couple had to have three children or sometimes four before they could acquire a Council house. Ballynanty was still under construction and the steps to the entrance of our new house at 3, Moylish Ave. were temporary, constructed from cement blocks and wooden planks. The weather on the day was miserable, wet, cold and blustery.

I remember my Mum and Dad splitting some cardboard boxes and laying them on the fresh concrete floors. They also put some newspapers on the steps of the wooden staircase, in a vain attempt to keep the steps clean, but the newspapers stuck to the mud on the soles of our shoes. Newspapers were a bit like stale bread back then. They were never discarded. Stale bread would always be used to make bread pudding and it was also soaked in boiling water and used as a poultice to draw poison from boils that grew on the back of one’s neck.

When my Mum and Dad had finished reading the newspapers, my Mum would cut them into square sections and bundle them neatly together. She would then pierce a hole through the bundle in one of the corners with a scissors and run a piece of twine through the hole, hanging the paper from the handle on the toilet cistern. You can use your own imagination as to what it was used for.

Back in those times we knew nothing of firelighters. It was paper and a penny bundle of dried sticks that were used to start the fire. There were times my mother would break up a timber orange box. I can still see the penny bundles of sticks piled up on the floor in Mrs Fitz's and Junior Keane's shop. Mrs. Fitz also sold coal by the stone and paraffin oil by the pint.

Calor gas and briquettes were luxuries we didn't have back in the early fifties, but that was back then. Now when attending customers in my mother’s grocery shop I see them purchasing a bag of dried sticks for two Euros forty and on top of that they will also purchase a large box of firelighters at the cost of three Euros twenty, a total cost of five Euros sixty. When placing such items on the counter one thing comes to mind -they must have money to burn! The same people will argue about the price of a loaf of bread or if you’re a cent dearer than the supermarket on the price of a packet of cigarettes. Paper was also used for a lot of little insignificant things, like stuffing an old sock to make a football. It was placed on a washed floor or into a pair of shoes to soak up the damp and stuffed into gaps on window frames to stop a draught.

I think, but I'm not sure, that it was in the back of an army truck with my parents’ worldly possessions, that I made my entrance into Ballynanty. My parents' worldly possessions consisted of one straw mattress, four wooden chairs that were painted at least twice a year, a small kitchen table, a paraffin oil heater that was moved from room to room in a bid to generate some kind of warmth, one set of bedsteads with four brass knobs, one fold-up bed spring that my mother had pawned from time to time and a pram. Our new house was like a mansion compared to the two-roomed flat in Edward St. At least there was room for the pram down stairs. In Hall's Range, my Mother had to drag that pram up and down the stairs. God only knows how many times she did it!

Our new house was a three bedroom dwelling with a built in bathroom. A bathroom was a luxury that many of the earlier housing estates didn't have. I remember a feeling of delight when I saw the new bathroom because, back in Number 14, Hall's Range, we shared the toilet with the downstairs tenant. He had a German shepherd dog that barked at the slightest noise and I would have to sneak down the stairs to go to the toilet and run back up as fast as I could (hence the potty in the corner).

Even though the house in Ballynanty was a new house, it was cold because it didn't contain the heat generated from the single fireplace in the kitchen. There was a small green cast iron oven attached to the side of the fireplace, designed for cooking purposes but it never generated enough heat to boil an egg so my mother used it for drying small items of clothing, such as underwear and socks.

On one occasion when I came across a little miserable black kitten at death’s door, frozen and soaked to the skin, too weak to sup some milk, my mother laid it on a piece of blanket and placed it in the warmth of the oven overnight. The next morning, the kitten lapped up a saucer of milk and she became our first family pet in Ballynanty.

We had our own front garden and a much larger back garden. As a three-year-old I was curious as to what went on outside the house, watching the labourers and the tradesman laying the roads and the footpaths from inside the sitting room-window. I seem to have been fascinated with the brick-layers and the carpenters, shouting and laughing with each other as they went about their daily chores. But most of my curiosity was focused on what lay behind the big wall at the top of the avenue.

As I grew older, my curiosity became more intense, until at last I was old enough to be able to climb the wall. What lay before my eyes was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen. I can still feel the soft summer breeze blowing gently on my face as I sat on top of that wall, with the warmth of the summer sun resting on my forehead but I was only six years old and the sight of a corn field was something I had never seen before. I was too young to know that the corn was almost ready to harvest with the sun beating down on it turning it to gold, and a soft summer breeze swaying it from side to side as if it was rocking a baby to sleep. It was magic to my eyes. Now it sways from side to side in my memory from time to time and I can honestly say that that field of corn is one of my most treasured childhood memories.

I learned later on in life that it had been compulsory for farmers to grow so many acres of corn to boost the food supply after the Second World War. Sitting on top of that wall through my childhood years became my haven and the source of my knowledge of farming, a knowledge I transferred from my mind on to the written page in the form of poetry.

A Lasting Impression

With the tumbling paddy and the horse drawn plough,

The reek, the wind and the cock,

With the sheaf of corn and the trashing flail

Farming now seems mock

When the milking herd was milked by hand

And the harvest cut by scythe

I helped my father work the land

Under all four seasons’ sky

With the planting in the spring

And the digging in the fall,

With the saving of the harvest

I could hear the corncrake call

But the winter months were long and hard

I watched my father age

With the grubber and the harrow

With the ragwort he would rage

With his old clay pipe you'd hear him think,

He'd check the clouds above

And with a smile he'd turn the soil,

With the land he was in love.

But time will wait for nobody

And the mowing bar came next,

With the tractor and the combine,

The corncrake lost its nest.

And I often heard my granddad,

To my father he would say,

‘'T is nature that will suffer

With the chemicals and spray’

But I myself have memories

Of my mother making bread,

With the oven on the fire

And the crane overhead,

With the kettle and the skillet

Hanging side by side,

‘Fetch some water for your mother’,

My grandma often cried.

With the churning of the butter

And the shaving of the pig

With the curing of the bacon

And the skimming of the milk,

With the feeding of the chickens

And the baking of the bread,

When my mother’s day was done,

It was time to go to bed.

She no sooner touched the pillow

Than the cock began to crow,

She no sooner had her children

When they began to go,

And one by one they left the land

In search of better ways,

But what they learned on the farm

Stayed with them all their days,

Now that I'm a granddad,

My son works the land

With his tractors and machinery

And his pipe in his hand,

With my grandson there beside him,

He'll check the clouds above,

And with a smile he'll turn the soil,

On the land my father loved.

Watching Luke McMahon and his son Martin work the land. I could feel a hint of farming in my blood. At times I fantasized on what life might be like if I had my own farm, if the cornfields were mine, on how I would work the plough horses and milk the cows. As I got older, I would avoid trampling the corn by walking around the edges of the field, giving out to the younger children for doing what I had done when I was their age. As children, we flattened the corn and damaged Luke's crops and I could feel Luke’s frustration in my bones, even though I was very young. I could sense that there was no future for his farm in this newly built up area.

Ballynanty was an invasion into Luke McMahon's way of life and I couldn’t help wondering if Luke had any knowledge of what the future had in store for his land. There were well over three hundred houses under construction in Ballynanty at the time and I tried to imagine the number of children that was about to rain down on the immediate area within the next five to ten years.

The construction of Ballynanty commenced in the forties and it was commonly known that a married couple had to have at least three, even four children before they could acquire a council dwelling. It was also known that sometimes, a child was passed on to a relative, a family member, or even a friend, to make up that magic number, in a bid to secure a place to live.

Hence the destruction of Luke’s farm!

It was by chance one afternoon, when crossing Luke’s land that I saw a hearse make its way out of the boreen. Later I was to learn that Luke had died. I felt very sorry for all the grief I had caused him and his son Martin. Martin inherited his father’s land. I