Best of the Fray

From your title, Fritz

Ex-fed — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:51:11 GMT

I thought you were supporting the bigots who think that being Irish is a choice, and can be "cured." But we know that it's just something you're born with. Even when very young, I always knew...

Seriously, some story. So good that, on behalf of my people, I'll give you a pass on the title.

Thanks for a really interesting story.

Fritz Gerlich — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:14:32 GMT

I see in the villages that nobody has more power than a grandma. They are the ones that really hold it together.

I'm sorry to hear that your son has continued health problems. I hope his treatment is successful. I know you will support him in whatever comes. When, long ago, I had a shaking experience of that sort, I drew great courage and comfort not from my father but from my father-in-law. (My relationship with my own father was rather conflicted and I never took personal matters to him.) My father-in-law was not a special man in most ways, but he had been badly wounded during the war and I knew he had quietly come to terms with his own mortality. That was the sort of a steady presence I needed then. He didn't have to say anything in particular. I wasn't expecting him to explain it or make it better. His just being there as reminder of courage made a world of difference to me. I know that for your son, and I have some idea of the pain of a parent who wishes he could work a miracle. My best wishes.

Re: Why I am not Irish

DrNo — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:55:39 GMT

Fritz: I am so sorry I missed this wonderful remembrance first time around. It echoes some of the experiences of my own great-grandmother.

Grandma T was full-blooded Indian, though nobody is sure of her exact parentage, since she looked more like Sitting Bull than the interior B.C. natives along the banks of the mighty Fraser River who made their living hunting and fishing the enormous salmon runs of the late 1800's

We suspect she was born in a fishing camp in the deep gorge carved by the Fraser, somewhere between the notorious Hell's Gate and the precariously perched little town of Pavilion. She was unsure herself, but so the legend runs.

She had a facility for language, and though she spoke English with the heavy accent peculiar to natives of that area, she commanded a considerable English vocabulary and would effortlessly switch to foreign native languages when speaking with an occasional visitor from the east.

She died in the 1960's at about age 100.

One of my fondest childhood memories is the yearly pilgrimages our family would make from our northern B.C. town to her lovely, perfectly manicured estate with the little cottage in front and the orchard out back, shared by Gramma T and Daddy Tom, an English remittance man (black sheep of minor British nobility sent to the colonies with a quarterly stipend to mend his ways).

They had been married for some 50 years when we kids would walk up from the back orchard entrance and she, with failing eyesight, would appear on the back porch of that perfectly British cottage furnished with ancient overstuffed chairs and couches and exquisitely knitted doilies and beadwork "Home Sweet Home" and such on the walls, and admonish we intruders with "You boysh! Get out of my yard!" till we approached near enough for her to recognize us, whereupon she would exclaim "Oh! It'sh my boysh! My boysh! Come! Come!", and we'd be wafted into that overstuffed 19th century coziness and plied with candy from Daddy Tom's full sea-chest, which he kept just inside the front door specifically for these occasions.

Gramma T's early history remains largely unrecorded, but considering the brutalization of Amerindians of the time by insurgent whites and the Catholic Church, and the occasional hint of story she let slip, it was not pleasant, nor was the residential school experience of my grandmother (as distinct from my great-grandmother).

Gramma T was more adept in English than many of the white settlers of the era, though her formal schooling was limited and she shpoke with a pronounced accent. I suspect she probably acted as translator, had familiarized herself with white laws and customs and politics, as she seemed well versed in these seemingly arcane subjects by the time we grandkids appeared, and I suspect that is what led to a near lifetime affiliation of two black sheep.

I recently read a history of Lewis and Clarke's Sacajewea, that other translator and facilitator of white expansionism. I doubt she realized what that 1805 expedition would engender, and I doubt my great grandmother realized what her later involvement in the newly settled west would engender, especially as she was co-habitant of a respectable British something-or-other noble whose facility for language and attention to politics was less than her own.

But those early years remain clouded in myth and legend and probably barbarism not unlike what you outline in your wonderful narrative, Fritz, though probably more from her own people than anything Irish, and the Catholic Church came later, at my grandmother's time, which is another story.

My grandmother died at a documented age of 98, so the estimate of my great-grandmother's age at time of death is probably accurate; 100ish.

I like to think I inherited some of my great-grandmother's intelligence. I like to think that had she been born of less obscure origins and educated, she'd be of historical note.

More, I'd like to have preserved some of that historical handiwork which decorated her walls and sheds, including ancient basketwork from the mid-1800's and detritus and artifacts which now command hundreds of thousands of dollars at auctions.

Most, I'd like my son, who is scheduled for more surgery, to have inherited the immunity from disease and longevity of that side of our family, and, if you read this Iso, please link me to your website.

Thanks.

Isonomist — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:11:01 GMT

You know it's good, so I won't waste time telling you so. The only thing that needs some help is when you switch to her POV on the day of the fire; it's a little abrupt and out of keeping with the rest of the narrative. Easily fixable any number of ways, though. And I wouldn't leave it out for the world. Not just because it puts us (and you) in her shoes for that morning, but because it reveals a kind of intimacy between you and her. Like a peek into a lit window of an anonymous house: suddenly it's no longer just a house in the night, it's a whole world we didn't know.

Why I am

ducadmo — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:53:57 GMT

it's on me Mother's side.

That was extraordinary writing.

hemingway-esque

baltimore aureole — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:10:46 GMT

wonderfully written

but i'm hoping that "why i'm not irish" is simply a title, and doesn't convey any antipathy towards the irish in general.

full disclosure - i'm not irish either.

Did he have to be Irish?

daveto — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:25:33 GMT

I mean, that is a gripping rendition and I ached for her and feared that things would get worse before they got better though somehow knowing they would get better ..

But I'm personally missing this whole Irish thing. Maybe I haven't known enough of them. Like couldn't the guy have been German, or Scottish, or Polish, or Italian? I really just assumed the drunken Irishman thing was a myth, perpetuated as much by the Irish as anybody else (kind of how everybody wants their home campus to be the #1 drinking campus in the nation as ranked by Playboy Magazine).

And not to take away from the story, which I read again and again.

It is for reasons like this

Sawbones — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:42:27 GMT

that I wish I hadn't been so young when my grandparents died. So many things worth knowing that I can't. I'm glad you know them.

'tis a long road that brought us to this place, all of us.

MichaelRyerson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:38:26 GMT

Long road, indeed. Fine, fine tale, Fritz and I'm glad you know it. Thanks.

Re: Why I am not Irish

Dawn Coyote — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:38:41 GMT

How fortunate that she survived.

Why I am not Irish

Fritz Gerlich — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:47:50 GMT

My grandmother, at the age of 16, married an Irishman who was 39 years old. This was before World War I, in a miserable, rain-sodden little town on the Washington coast. The local industries were logging, whoring and booze. The Indians, of which my grandmother was one, did a little of each, but survived mostly by fishing, which they had always done. They lived in shed and shacks and tents and dugouts. The scrounged the detritus of white “civilization” for what they needed. They had no past, they had no future. Those were luxuries for whites. Indians survived, waiting for nothing.

Actually, my grandmother was a half-breed. She grew up with her Quinault mother and never knew her father. By the time she was twelve, though, she knew one thing: she didn’t want any kind of life she had ever seen. She wanted out. The Irishman promised to take her away. He was big and talkative and sometimes wore a suit. He said they would go to Ireland, where she would live in a city. She would know ladies and gentlemen, church-going and socials, streetcars and restaurants. She would live in a kindly society, where children had a future. The Irishman waxed eloquent about the glories of a land that far surpassed not only this miserable logging town, but the whole United States.

In truth, they weren’t going anywhere. The Irishman couldn’t stay sober long enough to find his way out of even such a pathetic town as this. To this day I am puzzled how someone I knew as a canny old woman could have made such a mistake, even at that tender age, but make it she did. And it was a horrible mistake. The Irishman raped her when he pleased and beat her senseless if she resisted. He made her work as a dishwasher in a camp kitchen and collected her wages directly from the foreman, after which he drank them up. He forced her to beg food from her family. He ridiculed her because she was Indian, and illiterate. He told her every Indian woman was a whore in the eyes of the whites.

My grandmother lived with the Irishman for two years. She didn’t know what else to do. Her family didn’t want her back. They had worries of their own, and in that world you were old enough at 16 to bear your own troubles. She was afraid to run away, not only because she feared he would catch her and inflict awful punishment, but because she knew nothing of the world beyond this one soggy town. She had never traveled more than 20 miles from her birthplace. She had never been to school. She couldn’t read. She didn’t know a thing about the state she lived in, much less the country. Above all, she feared being an Indian alone in a white man’s world. In this godforsaken town, at least she knew who would help her and whom to avoid. What if the world out there turned out to be full of Irishmen, with no Indians even to look on her with pity?

She thought about killing the Irishman. She would say he was going to kill her. It was believable—he often left her face bruised. And she knew that no one respected him. But an Indian did not lift his hand against a white man. He was sure to hang if he did. Lummi Bob killed a white man in a drunken brawl. He said the white man was trying to kill him. They hanged him anyway. My grandmother had not seen it, but she had heard about it. She could scarcely rely on the understanding of a white court (about which she had only the foggiest ideas). The whites had no reason to fear Indians, but they did.

The town policeman picked up the Irishman often, and let him sleep it off in the jail, which was merely a room with some bars in the back part of a wooden storefront. My grandmother had often gone there to get him and take him home, hung over and snarling. The policeman was young, not from the area. He looked kindly at her, as if he understood her predicament. But he never said anything. It wouldn’t be proper for a policeman, she thought. After all, he’s white, too.

One night—it was in April—the Irishman didn’t return to the hovel they called home. But that was not unusual. She preferred it that way. She could sleep alone and relax. There would be no stink of whiskey in the bed (which wasn’t really a bed, but only some boards nailed together and set across some crates). She would have to deal with him in the morning, but that way many hours away so she didn’t care. Now, she would have time without him, and that was like a gift. She washed herself with water warmed on the woodstove. She always felt so nice after wiping her body down with warm water. She had coffee. The Irishman would have belted her if he knew that. Coffee was expensive, and it was for him. She didn’t care. If she was careful, he wouldn’t know. She wrapped the tattered blankets around her and snuggled into warmth. She had no past and no future, but right now, she was warm, and warmth was happiness.

People were pounding at the door. What was it? She staggered out of bed. There was no light. She opened the door, and there were people there, but she couldn’t see their faces. She wasn’t afraid, just puzzled. Nobody ever came here. A man spoke. She knew his voice but couldn’t recall his name. He was saying something about a fire at the jail. Her husband—the Irishman—he had been in the jail. He might be dead. She had to come.

There was an explosion inside her. Something said, be afraid. Something else said, you are free. She dressed quickly and went with them. There were still flames, but the jail building had mostly burned by the time they got there. There was no sign of any life in the wreckage. She could see nothing. The policeman was there, cursing. She asked him, what happened? The policeman scarcely heard her. He was cursing and cursing. “The goddamn bastard,” he said. “The goddamn bastard started a fire in the cell. He thought he could get out if the place was burning. He thought we’d let him go.”

My grandmother left town the next day. She had no idea where she was going, but now it didn’t matter. This was a sign. She was being given another chance. Go. Go. Go. Whatever it is, will be better than this.

Eventually, my grandmother ended up in western Oregon. We know nothing about the intervening years, except that in part of that time she broke horses. She was an admired horsewoman into her seventies. I’ve never known anybody who had her feeling for animals. When I have a difficult dog, I always think of her. She would have known what to do.

She went to work for my grandfather, a lanky graduate of the University of Minnesota who had finagled his industrialist father into buying him a ranch. My grandfather was not necessarily the world’s greatest catch. He was something of a ne’er-do-well, always trying to make good for last year. He was easy-going, always popular with hired men (many of whom were Indians) because they could sweet-talk him. But he was a gentle man. He never struck anybody, that I know of. Nor did he drink. They were married sometime in the 1920’s, after my mother was born. They made a life together. It wasn’t always peaceful, and it certainly wasn’t always easy. One morning my grandfather woke up to find everything he owned frozen in the ground, worthless. My grandmother sold eggs and sorted potatoes. From that, she got Social Security in her old age. She was pathetically grateful for those monthly checks. She lived in a trailer with several dogs and cats. She told the most spell-binding stories. At least, I thought so.

He always called her Nita. Only many years later did we learn that she had told everybody—including him—that her name was “Juanita.” She said her mother was Spanish, from down in California. I don’t know whether my grandfather believed it or not. My mother did. She was older than I am now when she learned that her mother was Indian, and that she had once been married to an Irishman.