(Belfast Born, Bred And Buttered By Joe Graham)
Chapter Sixteen
The Road Of Life
The road of life, just like any other road, is marked by milestones, incidents, people and things you recall to mind so vividly. I remember walking down Kilburn High Road a few years ago, it was about 11 o’clock at night, the bars were getting out. There was laughing voices everywhere the bright neon lights of the fast food bars added a kind of holiday aspect. Standing by a lamp post hoaking through the contents of the litter bin affixed to the post was a tall badly dressed man, He lifted out a discarded Kentucky Chicken box and took from it the half eaten food that someone had thrown into the bin. Holding the box in his right hand he stood eating from it with his left, had you not seen where he got the box you would have thought he had just bought it from the Kentucky Fried Chicken shop nearby. I stood back and watched him from a discreet distance, he was Irish, probably from the West, aged about fifty, he had been a worker, I wondered what tragic event brought him to eating discarded half eaten food and obviously homeless and no doubt friendless. As he ate he gazed up into the dark skies, he stood as if alone in a deserted street and yet surrounded by milling pedestrians, some would simply have described him as “out of it”. With his eyes transfixed on the sky I quietly walked up to him... He never heard me coming, quickly I snatched the box of half eaten food from his hand... and ran like hell down the street with it... I was starving’. No.. I did not, I done the same as you would have done.??
Pat Larkin
I met a man in London one time called Pat Larkin, he immigrated to there from Crossmaglen about 1940, he was a lovely man, great conversationalist and I used to sit with him and his wife, Joan, a liverpudlian and yarn and craic for hours. A story he told me I will always remember. He was about eleven years of age living in Crossmanglen Co. Armagh. One morning very early he and his mother walked down to the town square to the hiring fair. Pat was to go off and work for a farmer for a month, his mother would be paid ten shillings. “Joe”, he said, ”They were sad days, but before my mother left me she put a comb in my top pocket and said, ’always comb your hair every day Pat’, and with that she gave me a hug and a kiss and walked off without looking back. Then I put my hand to my face and I felt a wetness, she had left a tear on my face , she was a lovely mother ,Joe”.
I would always drop in to visit Pat, and on a visit back to London some months later I sat down again to enjoy his craic, says he, “Joe, I will miss your visits.” I was puzzled, where was he moving to that was so far that I wouldn’t be able to visit him?. “Why, were are you going, Pat.?” He laughed and pointed up to the ceiling then down at the floor, “It can only be to one of two places, Joe.” then pointing back at the floor he said, “most probably down there,” He then patted his stomach and said “Cancer Joe, they say I should be here for another two months.” Pat died two months later and after the funeral his wife Joan gave me his little missal prayer book, in the blank fly leaf he had written many many years before, he would have been seventeen at the time, “My name is Pat Larkin, it is April 10th 1939, tomorrow I leave for England, God Protect me.” I have no doubt Pat ‘went up there’.
THE WANDERLUST
My mother used to always say, “Do you see our Joe, he will never die in the asylum, he changes his mind too often,” and I must admit I am quite prone to mind changes, in fact some times I think my mind has a mind of its own ..if that makes sense?
I remember one morning walking down the Cotton Mill Lane to St. John’s School with Eamon McLaughlin, Liam Green and Gerard McGlade, we would have been about ten or eleven it was a bright sunny morning. We were talking about what we were going to do when we grew up , Liam said his piece, then Gerard and Eamon, and I said, “You know what I am going to do...I am going to get a car and drive all over America.”
The years came and went, I got married we had three children, Deborah, Joseph and Sean, I got a car alright but had not got to America.
Then one day, it was 1980, I had completed a biggish building job I had undertaken and had just collected the payment, a considerable sum of money and was driving through the town when that old video recorder in my head clicked in automatically to ’rewind ’mode, then ’pause ’, then ’play’ and there I saw these four little boys walking down a cinder lane talking about what they were going to do when they grew up. The wee dark one said, “I am going to get a car and drive all over America”. I parked the car and walked to the nearest Travel Agents and asked for five return tickets to California, two adults and three children. The girl took the money and gave me a receipt and a date of departure, which was in three weeks time. I didn’t even know I needed pass boards or visa’s, I just didn’t think about that. Off I rushed home , the kids had just got home from school “Quick Ann, get the kids into the car we have to get photographs and pass boards”. Ann looked stunned, “What are you talking about Joe”. I stayed by the door “C’mon, I will tell you in the car”
Three weeks later we landed in California, hired a big Malibu car and hit the road, Disneyland here we come, we just drove and drove and drove and seen a lot of California, but we never got out of California for no one told me just how big California was, let alone America.
We landed back home, skint, not a penny, but sun tanned, Ann went to make a cup of tea, I turned on the television, it gave a bang and died right before my eyes. “Ah well ” thought I, and leaned my head back in the chair and would you believe it, that bloody video recorder clicked on and there was those four kids walking down that cinder lane again. Over the next twenty odd years the wee guy did eventually get to drive ‘all over America’, from east to west, north to south and all in between, Some dreams don’t die and dreams can become a reality, never give up on your dreams. Keep your options open to change your mind though.
SPOOKS AT THE DOOR
I was in a motel cafe in Georgia one morning. Me and Ann, sitting alone at the next table was a black guy, immaculately dressed and in a pure white shirt, he looked a bit out in that very rural area where we were, he would have looked more at home in Atlanta City. He suddenly, very politely asked , “Would you mind if I joined you .?” I looked at his plate, he had more scrambled egg and bacon left that I had, so I felt at least he wasn’t after my grub, “Yes sure, if you like” I said. He moved to our table and explained that he had heard Ann and I speaking and realised we were from Ireland and ‘hoped peace would come to our troubled country ’, yanks talk like that, don’t they?, “have a nice day”, and all that, like as if they mean it. “Our country isn’t troubled, says I, only the little six county corner occupied by the British is.” Well, unwittingly I had handed him the magic key, the key that opened up his wealth of knowledge of politics in the North Of Ireland. His name was John, a ‘travelling Minister’, whatever that is. I think it is a kind of a missionary.
He spoke of “Spooks at the door”, I first thought he was going to tell ghost stories but he was referring to a different kind of spook altogether. and then explained what they were. I found it very interesting and told him I think could identify with what he was saying....what he was saying was....Not a lot has changed in life style or opportunities for the masses of black American people, although everyone hailed the Civil Rights campaign a great success, a street here and there was named after the murdered champion, Civil Righjts leader Martin Luther King, a few got jobs, jobs on the front desks he stressed , they were ‘spooks’ , they were black people who sat at the ’welcome desk or reception desk as you walked through the door of big business premises but these black people emulated their former white ‘masters’ and usurpers so well one would nearly think they were white, hence ‘spooks’, once you past them he said then there was the whites still in the power jobs, still controlling everything, the spooks had ‘token’ jobs!, then came the punch line.. “and you can bet your boots the spook forgets where he or she came from, and what it took to get them their petty little job. “ Yes”, I said, “I think I understand what you are saying John.”. So I will pass it over to you readers what do you make of what John was saying?.
A HOUSE AS BIG AS ALEC GRAHAM’S TOMB
We went to Selma, Alabama, now there’s a town with history, and no history. Alexander Graham an ancestor of my own, he went there in the early 1700’s and I heard he had a tomb there, that would be interesting to see, but after spending some time walking around the “Old Section” of the cemetery, I just could not locate it, so over to the City Hall I went. They were nice there, gave me a map of all the historic graves and pointed out “The Graham Tomb” and beside an arrow pointing to it on the map it said, ‘the oldest grave in Selma.’ I casually said Alexander was of my family.. or I of his, what ever way it goes. We returned to the cemetery and located the tomb, it was big and built from brick with a huge steel door with a massive padlock on it, No one was going steal Alec’s bones.
Suddenly a car and a pick up truck pulled up beside us in the cemetery pathway. “Mr Graham?”, asked the white shirted and tie guy who got out off the car, he was white, the check shirt and jeans guy who got out of the pick up closely followed behind him, he too was white, “Yes” says I. The white shirt reached out his hand, I shook it, the check shirt too reached out his hand I shook that too. “I was told in the office you had been in and I just had to meet you ”, I thought “Jesus, I am known in Selma Alabama, and by someone from the City Hall too”, The white shirt continued, check shirt looked on ,“ As you can see from the map there is very little known about the Graham Tomb, in fact we didn’t even know the name of the person buried there, there is no historic reference on him at all , you said in the office his name was Alexander ?”. ach, he didn’t know me at all, I remembered then I had gave my name to the girl in the office, never the less I quickly told him the history of Alec , “The Sovereign Graham”, who it is said went to Alabama and became a cotton plantation owner, of his life in America I knew nothing. “Would you like to look into the tomb?”. before I could say, “Are you kiddin, are you nuts?”, check shirt had grabbed a big pair of bolt cutters out of the back of the pick up and was cutting off the huge pad lock on the tomb door. “Phew”, I thought, “Alec will go mad”.
He got the big steel door opened with a bit of effort and we were standing about four foot from the entrance, me and Ann, well I swear to God, all of a sudden thousands of coach roaches as big as your hand came scattering out of the tomb in every direction, Ann screamed and, to be honest, I just held my self back from screaming with her. It was the most horrific thing I seen in my life. White shirt and check shirt didn’t seem a bit took back, White shirt entered the Tomb , “would you like to have a look, Mr. Graham,” I nearly said, “You f...ing well are nuts, both of ya”. But because all of the trouble they had went to I thought I would be polite and pretend I was interested in 300 year old coffins of Graham’s. I wondered were these two guys body snatchers in a former life. I peered in and there was this big oak coffin that was falling apart, but inside it was a big what looked like a zinc or lead box, a coffin within a coffin, some one didn’t want Alec to get a cold, I wondered was he wearing a woollen shroud.
We managed to get away on a promise, that I would drop into white shirt’s City Hall office for a chat before we left Selma, which I had no intention of keeping and furthermore, didn’t.!
We drove over the famous Selma Bridge into East Selma, and if you think you know what a ghetto is, how totally wrong you are, if you think you are hard done by, visit East Selma. Alabama, U.S.A, America, home of the brave, home of the proud. It is the most impoverished place I ever saw, black people, in the year 2,000 living in atrocious conditions, one old man I seen was sitting on an up turned bucket out side his wooden shack which was barely the size of Alec Graham’s brick built tomb, the dead had a more substantial house than the living.
We drove back over the bridge to see the Civil Rights Museum, three black employees I counted, all well fed looking well dressed and with sparkling eyes, not like the forlorn people in East Selma. “How much for this book please,” said I , “Ten Dollars” I paid her, “and for this?”, ”Ten dollars”, I paid her. Then the devil in me came out, as usual, “Do you know of any motels in East Selma?”, She looked quite shocked, and said “Oh you don’t want to stop there that is a dangerous place ”, How did I know she was going to say that.?. Here was a person who forgot where she came from. I picked up another book, “How Much for this please”. “Ten Dollars”, I paid her, “Tell me , how much for your soul, 10 dollars?
SOMEONE’S RUINS CAN BE ANOTHERS MANSION
Every day going and returning to school from Ballymurphy to St. John’s we took the short cut through Murphy’s old derelict brickyard, ghostly bogie’s lay rusting on equally rusting rails, the rows of Kiln doorways resembled dark opened mouths, which we knew swallowed up many of the homeless people of Belfast at night and spewed them out to an unwelcoming world each morning. We would see these sad people perhaps gathered round a fire coughing and spluttering, derelicts living in a Murphy’s derelict buildings, a mansion to them.
Now, at that time the various bread servers, which we called ‘bakers’ would deliver bread around the doors very early in the morning, . The customer’s order would be left on the window cill, perhaps a loaf, and a white bag, maybe containing a couple of Diamond Buns, Paris Buns or a couple of Baps. Some of these we would take from the window cills, and of course a couple of bottles of milk and these we would give to “Old Harry”, or “Swagger Bill”, named so because he walked like a sailor, or whoever was seated at the fire when we passed through the brickyard on our way to school. We were proper Robin Hoods, perhaps the English guy who writes the ‘Paddy Irishman Jokes’, would describe us as “Robin O’Hoods”, and maybe he would have been more accurate, for we were robbing the poor to feed the poor, and didn’t know it. The wee men, and the one or two women among them, must have thought the people in the new Ballymurphy housing estate were quite rich for every morning their children brought them white bags with goodies in them. In the afternoon you would never see any of them about, they were still out on their runs, doing what homeless people do before returning to be swallowed overnight up by the gaping mouth of the brickyard kilns.
But one afternoon as we played among the ruins one of the boys came out of a kiln and putting his finger to his lips said “Shhh old Maud is sleeping in there”. Maud was a little stout woman with a red face and missing front teeth, a jovial wee woman, we all liked her, so we tip toed off to play elsewhere. Next morning while passing through on the way to school there was a couple of peelers standing at the doorway of the kiln were Maud had been sleeping, an undertakers hearse was parked a little bit away. The peelers ushered us on, “Go on, get on to school”, but before we turned the corner of the kilns, out of one came two men in black clothes carrying a coffin and walked toward the hearse. A peeler let another gulder, “I won’t tell ye again.. get on to school.”
All day long we guessed at what had happened, “I bet it was Maud they had in the coffin, some one murdered her”, that we all accepted was the most probable solution. Passing up through that afternoon we were surprised to see all the Kiln dwellers sat around a blazing fire, more a small bonfire. “Swagger Bill The Dryland Sailor” , greeted us with that big broad smile , which darkened when I asked, “Was Maud murdered, we seen her lying in there yesterday, we thought she was sleeping”. Obviously irritated he retorted, “No , she was not indeed”, his voice softened and he said, “No. Son . She was just so tired she decided not to wake up”, looking back, “Swagger Bill” had a nice way with words, and I bet he could do a great Sailor’s Horn Pipe.
A PLACE CALLED LONSDALE STREET
Away back in the 1950’s there was a street on the Crumlin Road, Lonsdale Street. just below the Mater Hospital on the opposite side. In its earlier life the houses would have been grand indeed, but old age and neglect turned many of them into wrinkled withered forms, suitable only for, among other things, as cheap lodging houses. A man I knew, we will call him Jimmy, you probably knew him too, at that time worked for an undertakers firm. The firm, apparently had a contract with Belfast Corporation to go along when contacted and pick up the corpse of homeless, or people in general who were found dead and had no known relatives. The firm would give them a cheapish funeral and the City would foot the bill, it was very civic minded of them, we couldn’t have decaying bodies lying all over the place, they would attract flies. Anyway Jimmy was an experienced man he knew too well that these corpses were often to be found in the most irregular shapes. Resulting in Jimmy having to break the bones in limbs to straighten the body out, and for this reason he always carried a hurley stick in his hearse. The story goes that one day got a job from the council, “Go to ** Lonsdale street and pick up the remains of ** . ***, he is to be found in bed rear room, top floor, been dead three days.”
Jimmy arrives at the house, then remembering the corpse was in the top room decided he would bring the Hurley stick in case it was needed, so he hid it up his long undertakers black coat and entered the house, went to the second floor and into the rear room. Sure enough there was the body on the bed, and just as Jimmy had suspected the right leg was bent up, tenting the bed clothes. The right leg would have to be broken, so with out much ado, Jimmy give the leg, a right smack on the knee cap, one hell of a clout with the heel of the Hurley stick, so proficient with the hurl was Jimmy that he could have played for Antrim.
Suddenly the body sprang upright and screamed, “AAhh, You dirty bastard, you have broke my leg.” Poor Jimmy had went to the wrong room, had not known there was another floor on the house, the attic had been converted into rooms.
Another undertaker story... Years ago in the Belfast tiny little houses, to get the coffin into the bed room to ‘lay out the corpse‘, the front bedroom sash windows had to be removed, a table set on the pavement with two men standing on it and two men above leaning out the window, to lift the coffin in. On the day of the funeral the same procedure was followed, with the copse in the sealed coffin to get it down to the hearse. The reason for this was the narrow little staircase with had very acute turns at the top, impossible to get a corpse round. Anyhow, this old lady died, mother of the seven sons, the biggest lumps of men you ever seen. The old lady was laid out in a shroud on top of a white linen covered bed, so the coffin was not needed until the day of the funeral. On that day two undertakers men arrived, who had never done a funeral from the small houses and had no idea how they were going to get the coffin upstairs. As the time was getting nearer for the funeral, said Tommy to John, “Look I will tell you what to do, we will take the coffin into the wee hall leave it standing upright, close the front door so no one can see in, you stand by the door leading to the living room to make sure none of the family come out to see what is going on” John thought it a great idea and asked the family members could they stay in the living room, then stood guard in the hallway holding the handle of the door so no one could come out unexpectedly. Tommy goes upstairs, lifts the little old lady onto his shoulder and starts off to negotiate the narrow staircase. He loses his balance at the bend of the stairs and down he goes, corpse and all, to land in a heap in the little hallway. The door gets tugged and Billy holds onto it like grim death, the sons are shouting , “What’s happening”. Tommy picks himself up and starts getting the corpse into the coffin “Just a wee moment,” says John to the sons trying to hold a relaxed voice and a tight grip on the door handle. To cut a long story short, the boys got it all sorted with no one the wiser, but can you imagine what would have happened to the two undertakers if the boys had caught on what happened. There would have been two more coffins needed. Lonsdale Street was particularly identified with an old business, or should I say a very old profession. Outside the premises of such a business two little boys were ‘bunking marleys’ on the pavement. A man approached and knocked on the door of the house, a woman with a face that had seen better days opened the door, after a whispered conversation the man handed her a £10 note and entered the house. Shortly after, another man knocked on the door and he gave her a £5 and entered. The boys were taking note of all this and were wondering what was being bought and sold, “How much have you got,” said one, “Tuppence” said the other, “I have four pence”, so they decided to pool their money and went and knocked on the door, one of the boys held out the six pennies in his hand when the woman opened it, and said “Can we have sixpence worth please”, The woman banged their heads together, and slammed the door closed again. When their heads stopped spinning one said to the other , “Thank God, we only had sixpence, I couldn’t have taken a fiver’s worth of that !”. Lonsdale Street disappeared under the redevelopment project a few years ago.
THE CHILD IN US ALL
If there is any thing that can be said about the Belfastman. It is that he has a sense of humour. And always able to laugh at himself and I suppose that shows a sense of humility, and without humility there is little chance of change, we can change and we must change. Robbie Burns once wrote words to the effect, “Wouldn’t it be great if God give us a gift to see ourselves as others see us. we could drop all the foolish notions we have in our heads, be ourselves ”, but you know I would look to God for a gift for us all to see each other as we see ourselves. To see ourselves, not as we want others to see us, at our pompous best or at our egotistical height, but at those moments when we feel most vulnerable, that moment when the child in us comes out, the child that is in every man and woman. It is said we are made in God’s image and if we are, surely we are most God like when the child in us is most apparent.
The story of Roger Casement, is well known, the loneliness of the Banna Strand well visited by song, he was six foot four inches tall, had a full beard, and walked tall among men. Having been sentenced to death by hanging at Pentonville Prison, London, on the eve of his execution he sat in his prison cell to write his last letter to his sister Mary. Taking pen in hand he wrote,..
“ Dear Mary, by the time you have read this I will have gone to meet my maker, Good Lord, they are hanging a child.........”
The prison warders sat across the cell from him would not have seen that child they were guarding, they would only have seen that big man with the beard but I can guarantee you that they have seen the child in themselves many times, we all have seen it in ourselves. It changed nothing that Casement seen the child in himself for no one else had, he was hanged. What if we all saw the child in our ‘enemy’ just as we were about to inflict that grievous wound, utter that terrible hurtful insult ? .
BLACK DAN O’TOOLE
Black Dan O’Toole was a legendry I.R.A man, many are the stories told of his daring and bravery. My favourite one is when he was down at the City Hall he came up behind two peelers leaning on the old then tubular railings that surrounded the grounds. “Don’t move or your dead.. Don‘t turn around ”. The peelers froze. Dan took an open razor from his pocket and cut the gun belts off the two peelers, bundled them under his arm and before moving off warned the two peelers, “Count 100 slowly before you move, for I’ll have my gun trained on you as I back off.” The peelers answered nervously “Okay, Okay” in harmony. Before they got to 80 the bold Dan was half way up the Grosvenor Road with their guns and ammunition. There were red faces in the Barracks that night.