I am not tethered to my phone, and so I miss a few calls. One such recent call was from my 13-year-old granddaughter. I was thrilled to see her name among the list of callers.
“Evie is trying to reach me,” I said to my wife. “She either needs a ride or she wants to talk.”
That last was a joke. Why would a 13-year-old who has the modern world pretty well figured out want to talk to somebody who is stuck in the past?
I understand. I was once on the other side of this equation. My grandmother lived with us. She was my mother’s mother, and the only grandparent I had. My mom’s dad disappeared when she was young — lost to drink, the theory was — and my father’s parents both died before I was born.
My parents were married in December 1935 and my grandmother moved in with them immediately. She stayed with them until she died 30 years later. Her presence allowed my mother to work, which is something I think she wanted to do. I never asked. She worked as a secretary at the nearby Chicago Bridge and Iron Co. My father seemed to have mixed feelings about it. He was not a prideful man, but he didn’t want people thinking that his wife had to work. He was a union electrician.
People are also reading…
Most wives stayed home. All of the kids at the local grade school went home for lunch. So my sister and I went home to our grandmother, at lunch and then again after school.
I was not a curious child. It did not occur to me to ask my grandmother questions about her past. I knew bits and pieces. She was born in Belfast and came to this country when she was small. She supported my mom and uncle by working at a Fannie May candy store. She retained the ability to look at a box of chocolates and determine which of the pieces had coconut filling. I hated those.
Also, she was an Orangeman. One day I mentioned a girl and said I thought she was pretty. My grandmother knew the girl and her family.
“She’s Catholic, isn’t she?” my grandmother said.
Yes, I said.
“Well, that would never work, would it?” she asked.
No, it wouldn’t, I said, although I wasn’t exactly sure why.
I grew into an incurious adolescent. I picked up bits and pieces about my father’s parents. Reginald was a railroad man. He hated the National Guard. He considered them strikebreakers. He became disabled in the days before a safety net and my father, as the oldest son, had to work to support the family.
During high school, my father delivered groceries. One of his regular stops was the apartment my grandmother shared with her two kids. That’s how my mom and dad met.
Did she feel an immediate attraction to the delivery boy? Did he for her?
I never asked.
My grandmother died late one night in an easy chair in the living room. She was 83, elfin and ancient. I was in high school.
Many years later, I was in Belfast and went to Kirkistown, the village where my grandmother was born and spent her early years. I visited the local Church of Ireland where her mother and father had been married. I touched headstones of long-gone relatives in the church cemetery. I visited the Orange Lodge of her father and grandfather. I met a relative. He reminded me of my grandmother’s sister, who also lived with us for a short time.
I tried to learn a little bit about my father’s dad, Reginald. He was born in Detroit, and moved to Chicago just in time for the Great Railroad Strike of 1894. It started in Chicago.
There were riots in the rail yards. Hundreds of rail cars were set afire. One reporter wrote about rioters silhouetted against the flames, dancing. “It was pandemonium let loose,” he wrote.
I wondered if my grandfather was one of the dancers.
Perhaps my dad knew, but I never asked him.
By the time I developed a sense of curiosity, it was too late.
I think the totality of my lack of knowledge struck me after my parents died — first my mom, shortly thereafter my dad — and I found boxes of photographs. They were old photos of mostly unknown people. Unknown to me, is what I mean. My sister had died years earlier. She was 34 when she died of breast cancer. So there was nobody to help identify the people in the photos.
There were papers, too. Among them was a commission for Reginald’s father in a Canadian militia. He lived in Montreal. He received his commission in 1866.
That was the time of the Fenian Invasion of Canada. Thousands of Irish immigrants who had fought on both sides of the U.S. Civil War found themselves unemployed — and unemployable — at the end of the war. The Fenian Brotherhood — forerunner to the Irish Republican Army — decided if they could invade Canada and grab a province or two, they could trade those provinces for Ireland. After all, Canada and Ireland both belonged to the British Empire.
Had Reginald’s dad enlisted to fight the Catholics?
Oh, how I would like to have an afternoon to talk with Reginald. Gertrude, too. I know nothing of her. I’d love to have a chat with my mom’s father, as well. His name was Arthur. He was a streetcar conductor. Did he keep track of his family?
My grandmother used to sit in the easy chair, lost in thought. It never occurred to me to intrude.
Most of us are so enthralled with the present that we only become truly interested in the past as we get ready to fade into it.
By the way, my family made peace with the Catholics. After meeting Mary, my mother gave me a diamond stick pin. “Have this diamond put into a ring and give it to that girl,” my mother said. I had never seen my mother wear a diamond stick pin. I asked about it. “I had an uncle who worked at a speakeasy,” she said.
I wish I had asked for details.