Midlife Irish
Authors: Frank Gannon
“An engaging travelogue…[that] takes readers on a captivating cultural journey of the identity crisis less traveled…certain
to entertain.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“MIDLIFE IRISH took me for an easy-chair tour through the old sod. There is an invisible but priceless cord that attaches,
unalterably, the Irish in America to Erin, and you can see why in the pages of this book.”
—Dennis Smith, author of
A Song for Mary
“If you can’t book your own trip to the Emerald Isle, spending a few hours reading Gannon is as good a substitute as you’re
likely to find.”
—
Denver Post
“Quirky and insightful.…Gannon offers a witty, entertaining guide to a complex and contradictory place. MIDLIFE IRISH makes
an eminently worthy addition…to Irish literature.”
—
Courier-Post
(NJ)
“I’m not Irish, but after reading Frank Gannon’s hilarious and heartfelt book, I wish I was.”
—
Metro West Daily News
(MA)
“Touching and humorous.”
—
Irish Echo
(NY)
“Frank Gannon has a gift of words. He writes with humor, intelligence, and, at times, a touch of sadness.”
—
Dothan Eagle
(AL)
“Subtle and insightful…full of humor and guile.…This is Ireland without blarney.”
—
Star-Ledger
(NJ)
“Both humorous and touching, MIDLIFE IRISH is one of the best new Irish memoirs. Whatever your ethnic or geographical origins,
you’ll be wondering about the untold stories lurking in your family’s past after reading this book.”
—
BookPage
Copyright © 2003 by Frank Gannon
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56727-5
For my sister Mary and her parents
I’d like to thank David Greene, a great dining companion and a great genealogist. I’d also like to thank Dennis Shue, Jr.,
who read the manuscript when it was a big stack of poorly Xeroxed pages. Thanks also to the fine Irishman John Aherne for
a great job. Also thanks to Rob McMahon, who helped me a great deal before he embarked. Much thanks to Scott Waxman, who helped
me with the birth of this. Much thanks to Bob Castillo and Sean Devlin, who did a great job. May the road rise to meet all
these people, whatever that means. Finally, I’d like to thank my children, Aimee, Anne, and Frank, and my wife, Paulette,
for making my time on the planet brilliant.
Contents
9. What Are You Doing for Potatoes?
11. Alcohol and the Irish Person
On the Beach
I am six years old. I am sitting on the beach in Ocean City, New Jersey. My brother and sister are in the water. My mom and
dad are sitting on the beach chairs behind me. We have an umbrella that my dad rented, and Mom and Dad are doing what they
usually do at the beach. They are sitting still. It is a perfect cloudless day in the middle of July.
I am using a plastic device with a spring-loaded plunger to make “bricks” out of wet sand. I am building something. I don’t
know what it’s going to be. My mom asks my dad something. I remember this conversation very well.
“You miss it?” My mom had her serious look.
“No, I don’t,” my dad answered. He didn’t have to think about it. “Do you?”
“Sometimes,” said Mom. “You
never
miss it?”
Again, he didn’t have to think at all. “Never,” he said.
I didn’t understand what they were talking about. When I looked at them, they were staring straight out at the ocean.
IcebergsI’m a middle-age guy, if I’m going to live another forty-nine years. I know this isn’t going to happen. There’s nothing “middle”
about this. If I get the same deal as my dad, I am left with sixteen years. I’m a three-quarters-age guy, which is a more
accurate word than “middle.”
I live in Demorest, a little town in the mountains of northern Georgia. There are about seven hundred other people who also
live here. I think I know most of them. I would say that Demorest is like Mayberry on that Andy Griffith show, but Mayberry
appears to be a much more complex place.
The most famous person ever born in Demorest is Johnny Mize, the Hall of Fame baseball player. He was born here, played for
the Giants, the Cardinals, and the Yankees. Then he came back to Demorest and died. When I first moved here, there was a sign,
“Demorest, home of Johnny Mize.” They took the sign down when he died.
I am a married man with three kids. My full name is Francis Xavier Gannon. Like almost everybody named “Francis Xavier,” I’m
Irish.
I’ve never thought much about that.
My mom was born in Anne Forde in Ballyhaunis, a little town in the West of Ireland, County Mayo. My dad, Bernard Gannon, grew
up on a farm near the city of Athlone near the center of Ireland. They came over to America long before I was born. They didn’t
know each other in Ireland, but by the
time I was born, they had known each other almost twenty years.
My parents were pretty old when they started a family. World War II started right after they got engaged, so they had a long
engagement. Knowing my dad, I think they probably would have had a long engagement without the war.
My mom was born in 1908, my dad four months later. They came to America for many reasons. The main reason was money. They
became American citizens. They never seriously considered going back to Ireland. My father did go back to the Old Country,
for two weeks in 1968, when he knew he had cancer. My mom may have visited Ireland again when she was young, but during my
life, she only went back that one time with my dad.
By the time I came around, Dad owned his own little business, a workingman’s bar. So if they had wanted, they could easily
have afforded to go back. My dad never mentioned going back, and my mom never mentioned it when he was around. After she knew
about the cancer she mentioned going back a lot.
My parents weren’t that interested in Ireland, at least as far as I could tell. They never discussed “the troubles” or anything
else that was happening on the island. I never heard them mention anyone they knew who had stayed in Ireland. The people back
there were history for them, history they didn’t want to hear about.
The category “Irish people in America,” however, was a subject of extreme interest in the Gannon house. When they saw anyone
on television who had “gotten off the boat,” they had to discuss just how Irish the guy still was. Someone like Bing Crosby
was vaguely Irish. He talked American. You would have to know about his “people” to nail him as Irish. Someone like the singers
Carmel Quinn and Dennis Day, people just off the boat, still sounded Irish. Crosby was better because he was more American.
There was some debate just how Irish the off-the-boat
talkers were. Although they spoke with a brogue, my father suspected them of “putting it on.” He had a very good ear for someone
pretending to be more Irish than thou. Sometimes when Dennis Day or Carmel Quinn talked, my dad would close his eyes and shake
his giant head. To pretend that you talked with a brogue when you really were Americanized was a truly appalling practice.
Sometimes my dad would have to leave the room after they said something “Irish” that smelled of phoniness. My mom was more
tolerant than my dad, but she also hated “pseudo-Irish.” She just wasn’t as demonstrative as Dad.
My parents had a thick brogue. My sister Mary, my brother Bud, and I sound more like a standard television announcer than
someone who’s “Irish.” My dad liked this. My mom had no comment, but she didn’t seem to think it was bad that her children
sounded American. Once I pretended I had an English accent, and they really didn’t like it, so I stopped.