The Auld Sod

I was standing on the deck of a ferry out of Holyhead in Wales. It was my first trip to Ireland and I was eager for the first sight of land. I’d heard the phrase "my heart lept up," of course, but I never realized that a heart could really do that. But as the shore began to come into view, my heart really did leap up. I was about to set foot on the land of my ancestors. My mind was full of thoughts of the great-grandmother I never met, who left Ireland as a girl and traveled around the world to make a better life for herself. To my knowledge, she never returned to Ireland and I felt I was looking at the country for her.

My ancestry is Scottish on my mother’s side and Irish and German on my father’s. But the roots I have always felt the strongest were my Irish roots. My great grandparents came from Ireland and my grandfather was an Irish tenor in vaudeville and throughout my childhood, some of my fondest memories involve listening to him singing the Irish Songs I knew so well--Rose of Tralee, Tumbledown Shack in Athlone, Mother Machree, Galway Bay, and other songs.

This was our first trip out of the United States. My father died the year before and left a small savings account. We split it in half, divided half of it among the kids and took the other half to pay for a big vacation for the whole family. It was the last year that we would be able to travel together as a family--Ned would be getting married the next year and all the kids were beginning to make their own adult lives.

We had already spent a great week in England and now we were going to Ireland. A friend in San Francisco had a small cottage on the west side, which we had rented for the week, and Walt’s mother had a cousin living in Dublin whom we wanted to meet. Other than that, we had not a single clue of anything we wanted to do in the country and my search through guide books hadn’t really left me with any "must see" sights. Something about kissing the Blarney stone was about all I could think of. (Four trips later, we still have never visited Blarney Castle!)

The boat docked in Dun Loaghre and the trip was off to a bad start when the "van" I’d booked weeks before turned out to be a compact hatch back station wagon. Trying to fit seven full sized adults and all their luggage into a car built for 5 was an experience. But we were determined to enjoy ourselves and so we folded up long limbs, packed luggage in, under, and around all of us, and we headed off to the hotel where we would spend the first night.

We met cousin Nora and formed an instant friendship, which has lasted to this day. She took us out to have our very first Irish meal: McDonald’s (the only restaurant open at that hour of night). 

The next day, following a stop at the Guinness brewery for a tour and tasting, we folded all the body parts back into the tiny hatchback (to the great amusement of the guard in the parking lot) and started on our five hour drive to Mayo Abbey, in County Mayo on the west side of the country.

The "town" consisted of one long building--one end was the pub, in the middle was the grocery store, and at the other end was the undertaking parlor. Across the street was the cemetery and nearby the old abandoned abbey from which the town took its name. We were told that to find the cottage we should stop "anybody" and ask direction to "The Yanks’ house." 

Walt stopped a white-haired old couple walking by the side of the road and the brogue was so thick they were almost impossible to understand. I got a terrible case of the giggles. But they did direct us to "The Yanks’" place. 

We lived in the cottage, cooked on a stove heated by bricks of peat, which were stored in the barn. We heated the water for our shower when we needed it, and we hung our clothes on a clothesline to dry. 

We spent a week driving around western Ireland. We found the people warm and accepting everywhere. And we fell in love with the country. From the majestic Cliffs of Mohr to the rustic altars to the Virgin Mary you found in the most unlikely places, to the stone fences and the abandoned thatched cottages, a sad reminder of another family whose dreams died in the harsh terrain of Western Ireland.
 
Walt and the kids climbed Crogh Patrick, that holy mountain where pilgrims walk in procession on St. Patrick’s day to a small chapel at the top dedicated to St. Patrick (a clerk in a store, on hearing the plans, looked at my out of shape body and said "YOU’re not going to climb, are you??" I assured him that I’d be sitting in the car reading.)
 

After Climbing Crogh Patrick (in back)

We had a memorable "Irish experience" at the tiny pub in Mayo Abby. We were invited by the caretakers for the cottage to a benefit for a man with leukemia who was trying to raise money for a bone marrow transplant. People came from all over the county and the fiddlers struck up lively tunes. We sat in a booth with our host family and drank beer, watching the activity on the dance floor. An elderly man came up and told Jeri he was going to teach her to dance an Irish dance. Soon, all the kids were out on the dance floor. Tom dragged me out to dance a waltz (and I thanked his jazz choir instructor for teaching our son to waltz). The hour got late, the laughter was plentiful and by the end of the night, the kids got everyone in the place dancing a circle dance that they made up on the spot. 

We were told a year later that the folks who were there that night still remembered the night the "yanks" took over Malachai Burns’ pub. We couldn’t have planned it if we’d tried.

Paul and his bride returned to Mayo Abbey for their honeymoon and found that the magic was still there and they were the toast of the town again. People in the town sent us condolences on hearing of Paul's death.

We were invited to another pub the next night--the Squealing Pig, which wasn’t quite as memorable, but the kids did make friends with a man who was so drunk they couldn’t understand when he told them his name (for years we called him "Southern Ireland" because that how it sounded...several years later we discovered his name was really "Sonny Nyland")

Paul and David with "Southern Ireland"
all 3 of them are dead now.

We visited the 300 year old family farm, which was still occupied by Walt’s distant cousin Ned. Though we had not named our own son after this man, we still made a big deal about having two Neds in the same place. Cousin Ned was generous with the Irish whiskey too, pouring tumblers full for all of us.

A toast, with Cousin Ned
(Cousin Ned has since died, unfortunately)

By the time we left Ireland, I felt like I had become part of the land. It’s a strange experience. I love England and have been there several times, but nothing has ever hit my soul the way Ireland did. We’ve been back four more times, and each time I feel like I’m stepping back into part of my history.

And when I stood on the shores of Galway Bay and watched the sun go down, I could hear the echoes of my grandfather’s voice singing off in the distance.

Cliffs of Moher

In preparation for St. Patrick's day, I changed my Facebook page to reflect my Irish roots.  I thought about what I could use from Ireland and decided that a photo of the Cliffs of Moher would work perfectly,

 The cliffs are located in County Clare on the west side of Ireland.   They rise 390 feet from the Atlantic Ocean and are magnificent.  If you saw the movie Ryan's Daughter, you saw the cliffs in the opening scenes. Apparently they were used as the "Cliffs of Insanity" in Princess Bride and were seen in one of the Harry Potter movies.

It was definitely one of the things I wanted to see when we traveled to Ireland with the kids in 1988.  

The kids remember that day mostly because it took us 3 hours to get there and something like half an hour to get home.  They were folded up like pretzels in the tiny hatchback that we rented (we had ordered a van and were only told when we got there that there were no vans for rent).  We were sightseeing and so took the scenic route, hence the 3 hours.

When we finally got to the cliffs, I remember that there was a parking lot off away from the ciffs and you walked up to the center of the U-shaped bay around which the cliffs stood.  The cliffs had a low fence with a sign warning people not to go beyond the fence because bits of the cliffs were always falling off.

To the right of the center was a tower, off a short hill.  Walt and I decided to investigate the tower and we left the kids to do their own exploring.

You can see that the road circles off to the right and up to the tower.  It looks a lot more built up today than it was in 1988. As you came down the road you came back to the center again.

You can see how wide the area is.  You can barely see the tower off on the right cliff and then to the left are the really steep cliffs.  Here is a guy looking over the edge.

So Walt and I got all the way to the top of the hill and investigated the tower.  When we emerged and looked waaaay down the hill and off to the magnificent 390 feet tall cliffs with the walls that are always crumbling into the ocean and what did we see?  Our children, who had stepped over the fence and were looking down, much like this guy is.

They were much too far away to yell at them.  I told Walt then and there that if they didn't fall off the edge, I would kill them.  I could hardly breathe as we rushed down the hill and got to the kids who, by the time we got to them, were back on terra firma again.

When I got angry with them, they protested that they really weren't that close to the edge and that it was just an illusion on my part, but when we got home and they got their pictures back, there were the toes on the very edge of the cliff.

Maybe it was the price I paid for making them ride like pretzels for 3 hours, but still today, whenever I look at pictures of the cliffs, my heart begins to pound all over again, even though it has been 25 years since that day.

I would love to go back to the Cliffs of Moher again some day and just enjoy it, and not spend half of the time in fear of my children falling off into the Atlantic Ocean.

Another Victim of Harsh Times

It was a huge shock this morning when Regis Philbin mentioned that Waterford Crystal was going out of business. He was corrected by his director, Michael Ghelman, who said that there was going to be "restructuring." But it sent me to the internet to find out what's going on.

Apparently they have been losing money for the past five years and filed for bankruptcy on January 5, after attempts to restructure the business or find a buyer failed.

According to the MSNBC web site, The U.K. joint administrators said they intended to continue to run the business as they seek a buyer. Trading in the company's shares was suspended on the Irish Stock Exchange where they languished at just one-tenth of a euro cent and the company's directors — including Anthony O'Reilly, the Irish publishing magnate who along with his brother-in-law Peter Goulandris owns more than half of all Waterford Wedgwood shares — handed in their resignations.

Waterford opened for business in 1783, failed in 1850 and was reopened in 1947.

We toured the Waterford factory in 1996 when we were traveling around southern Ireland. What a fascinating place! It was, perhaps, the most interesting factory tour I've ever taken. Each piece of Waterford crystal is hand made and the workers serve a 10 year apprenticeship before they actually begin to work. The cutters have to memorize hundreds of designs and hold them in their head -- they cut from memory, not from any sort of pattern.

The tour starts in the glass blowing room, which is a show all unto itself. A team of guys working with red hot molten glass are waving these balls around seemingly inches from each other, molding the glass into shapes.

The glass is so hot that if I recall correctly it takes two days for it to cool down to a temperature where it can be handled safely with bare hands.

The most fascinating part of the tour, of course, was going through the cutting room. I sat there fascinated watching this whole room full of men all intently cutting glass, while the lead-laden powder from the glass piled up around the table and onto the floor at their feet. Literally little piles of glass dust all over the place. If I'm remembering correctly from the tour, Waterford has the highest percentage of lead of any crystal.

Do you notice anything interesting?

No face mask. All these guys lined up at work tables, breathing this fine glass dust and very few wore face masks.

At the conclusion of our tour, we had the opportunity to meet with a cutter and ask questions and I asked about that. It turns out that (at least at that time--perhaps things are different now) Ireland had no safety requirements and yes, the cutters were had health insurance. BUT, if they wore face masks and got sick, they were covered; if they chose not to wear face masks, they were not. The guy did not know of any statistics of lead poisoning among glass cutters in the Waterford factory, but I can't believe that it's not very high, given what I saw in the cutting room.

I own one or two pieces of Waterford crystal, which have been given to me as gifts, but we never bought anything while at the factory because it was just too damn expensive. Still, Waterford has become such a "name" in the world of fine crystal that it's sad to see that this company, too, is a victim of the bad economic times.