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| Electric Acorn 8 : Short Stories: |
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Nostalgia
O'Briens on 42nd Street was buzzing as one would expect on St. Patrick's Day in the Big Apple. The old man has seen forty of these celebrations and was not enthused. He remembered the old days of beer and sawdust, hard hands and lived-in faces. As he climbed upon his accustomed stool by the bar, the knotted groups of Westchester-Irish drinkers on their annual pilgrimage paid him no heed but reminisced loud and long on inherited memories of the grandness of the Old Country, the beauty of its landscapes and the ancient nobility of the people.
His reedy voice cut through the noise. "New York"' he announced, "is the greatest place on earth". A moment's quiet, then with exquisite timing, "but God be with ould Connemara, where a man could stand in his own door of a bright summer morning and piss out and fart in to his heart's content and no body to bother him".
The crowd was thoughtful and respectfully silent for fully thirty seconds. This, they agreed was the Real Thing, the Holy Grail they had come to meet in person; the Sean Nos resurrected among them. As if by magic, six pints of black, cream-collared Guinness appeared on the bar by the old man's elbow, which he studiously ignored.
"Geez", said the barman, "but you're an evil little git. And you never closer to Connemara than Searsons in Terenure". The old man didn't argue. "Works every time", he murmured, as he carefully arranged the glasses of nectar around him in a mathematical semicircle, smacked his lips and set to his evening's work.
I was born in Ballon Co Carlow 1929. I joined the diaspora as a ship's radio officer (ditditdah stuff!) and have been moving around ever since with some years in Peru and since 1965 in New Zealand. Don't write a lot but occasionally an idea won't let go until I put it on paper. I had two lovely brothers, one still farming and foresting in Carlow; the other Thomas P (Tom) wrote the biography of Devalera and was highly esteemed professor of history at Galway for years. His widow, Marie, has also published with many papers and a biography of Jennie Wyse-Power. I get home at every diminishing opportunity.
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