I Survived Being Irish!

True Tales of My Family

Meeting Grandpa

The first time I remember meeting my maternal grandfather he was sleeping. I was three years old, which meant that I only thought he was sleeping.

Actually, he was dead.

But there he was: next to the player piano. He was puffy amidst an ocean of flowers.           Tom Bennett had died of a desiccated liver at 63, which everyone assured everyone else was not because he was an alcoholic, although everyone knew that he was. But this was an Appalachian village and nobody wanted to speak the truth about someone else for fear that others would speak the truth about them.

Perhaps Grandpa’s “condition” explained why my Grandma purposely had dropped her last baby head-first on to the rotting linoleum floor of her under-equipped kitchen. Clara Bennett was getting back at drunken Tom Bennett for getting her pregnant after she was 40.

Tom’s alcoholism also explained why their 7 children were big drinkers.

One of these was my ever-inebriated Aunt Mabel. She showed her grief over her father’s death as if he were the first human being to die. Perhaps her theatrics had been learned from her once-best friend Ruby with whom she had worked as a dancer. Ruby would eventually change her name to Barbara and go on to major Hollywood stardom. Her last name became Stanwyck.

Mabel, instead, married a Greek.

On the day I watched Grandpa sleeping, my drunken Aunt Mabel was slipping, sliding, slurring and sloshing all over the stinking, rotting flower-infested parlor. But then this was a week-long Irish wake, and just about everyone else was doing the same thing. So she decided to up her game a notch and prove to one and all that she, not Barbara Stanwyck, was the better dancer and actress. She also was proving that like my own Mommy Not So Dearest, she could be a child abuser.

Picking me up by my chubby little arms and dangling me over “sleeping” Tom Bennett, she demanded, “Kiss Daddy, baby! Kiss him goodbye!”

But being a diva even then, I decided that I didn’t want to kiss a sleeping, old man goodbye. So I squirmed in her arms. Then I wailed. Then I kicked. Nevertheless, my soused auntie would not have her wishes rebuffed and held me tighter. I retaliated with more squirming, wailing, and kicking.

Despite this, nobody came to my rescue. They were too busy gorging on fried chicken legs, potato salad, coleslaw, National Bohemian Beer, and local moonshine. They were too busy gnashing their teeth, beating their breasts, tearing out their hair, cursing and accusing each other. Even though Grandpa had passed into the waiting arms of Our Beloved Savior and was therefore “in a better place,” a good show of great sadness had to go on! Sadness based on fear that Jesus was coming for them next. After all, most of us in that room were Irish. And drunk.

From a dangling position, I suddenly found myself being tilted upside down and being lowered closer to Tom Bennett’s ever-smiling countenance. Aunt Mabel was now even more forceful and was demanding that I kiss “Daddy” goodbye. But I knew that my daddy wasn’t this pasty white-skin railroad conductor.

“Kiss him, Donnie!” she screamed, now holding me by my heels, and swinging me back and forth before Grandpa’s face. “Kiss him! Kiss him! Kiss him….or I will kill you, you little sissy!” 

I decided I had a lot more music left in me to play, so I gave him a brief kiss on his cheek, an action which would come back to haunt me in nightmares for the rest of my life.

When my mother, also drunk but eating potato salad saw what her sister was doing, she screamed, “Let my baby alone or I’ll kill YOU!” Then she threw the potato salad at her. It missed Mabel, but splattered the flowers.

This finally got the attention of everybody in the room.

Mabel was so startled that she dropped me on top of Grandpa.

People screamed in horror!

I was just glad the lid didn’t shut.

******

What the Bloody Hell!

If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent. Bette Davis

If anyone looks closely at my bald head they will see bumps and indentations.

The notches on my head began at an early age. The first two accidents occurred only six months apart when I was six and thought I was invincible.

My mother was driving me to parts unremembered. Although I do remember she was always driving me crazy. It could have been to Bingo at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church.

Or maybe we were just going shopping for her booze.

The car was a Studebaker. But then all my father’s cars had been Studebakers. This one was either a 1950 or a 1951 model. He never kept his cars more than two years, one reason being that he never had them serviced so they broke down after a couple years. Another reason had to do with the image he wanted to maintain as a successful man.

The day was cold. I do remember that because of all the blood that poured out of my head and on to my winter cap, the one with the big floppy fake fur ears that made me look like a miniature Flying Ace. 

So Mommy Not So Dearest was driving someplace and I was in the so-called “suicide seat” in front, when some big frump wearing a real mink stole complete with tiny, terrified mink faces (albeit deceased ones), and driving a black Packard, hit our baby-blue Studebaker hard. It was a good thing both cars were only driving on Ely Place because they were probably not going faster than five miles an hour.

But that was fast enough for me to hit the metal dashboard with my head. Of course, this was the good-times era after World War II when there were no seat belts, air bags, or polyurethane dashboards.

But lots of baby making.

“Goddamit!” my mother shouted when the impact occurred. She stopped the car and was ready to open the door and beat to death the offending driver. Mommy Not So Dearest was already calling her bad names. For hadn’t the frump purposely attempted to slaughter her precious and plump six-year-old diva who she was raising to be another Patsy Cline?

But before Mommy could open her door, she saw the blood streaming from the puppy dog ears of my hat and screamed, “Oh, my precious baby! You’re gonna bleed to death!” and with that she started the car again and drove the eighty yards to the doctor’s office, going through a red light in the process. It didn’t matter to her that he wasn’t our regular family doctor. She would have gone to Dr. Doolittle if he had been the closest physician, because her child was near death, or so she thought.

And it didn’t matter to her that a policeman had seen her go through the red light and was attempting to reprimand her as she was helping me out of the car. “Leave me alone, you stupid, stupid man. Can’t you see my child is about to bleed to death!” and with that the fellow went all soft and volunteered his assistance. Together they hauled me out of the car, although I could have easily gotten out of it myself, but then I would have stolen Mommy Not So Dearest’s dramatic moment.

Nor did I protest that I wasn’t really hurt all that badly when we arrived in the doctor’s office and were told that we would just have to wait because there were all these other patients before me. That was all my mother needed to set off her Irish temper! It was as if the receptionist’s words were some divine power applied to the big hammer at the carnival that could ring the bell at the very top: RING A DING! My mother picked up that hammer and struck it like Thor.

When we Irish are sweet we are, indeed, the sweetest wee urchins cavorting on God’s green acre, but cross us and the Earth itself better take cover. And so it was in the office of that anonymous doctor that day 70+ years ago. The Earth shook and opened huge fissures causing the receptionist and all those suffering people waiting patiently to be sucked into the bowels of Hell.

But I did not have to wait my turn to see the doctor!

Motherly love is such a precious gift…..

Six months later while attempting a handstand on our front porch glider, I fell over backwards, with my legs going through the screen and the rest of me following. Tumbling over and over in mid-air I went, until I landed on my head with a THUNK on the sidewalk!

Suddenly I was in need of Mommy, a not so dearest one or whichever one was around! I stumbled into the house where the aforementioned parent was watching “Queen for a Day” on television and probably imagining that she was the actual woman on the tube who was receiving a new Westinghouse Refrigerator as an indicator of her royalty. Mommy Not So Dearest was once again intoxicated and therefore anything was possible in her special world. But this didn’t matter to me, she was my mother and I was bleeding.

So I said: “I think I got hurt, Mommy!”

It took a few moments for her Majesty of Mayhem to realize what I was saying: that her little boy was once again bleeding profusely from a head wound.

We were at that same anonymous doctor’s office about eight minutes later and this time the receptionist did not argue with my mother.

Yes! There is great power in being Irish!