“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” ― William Butler Yeats
I grew up in a fish ‘n’ chip shop on James’s Street in a section of Dublin, Ireland called the Liberties. Actually I grew up in a Georgian-era house beside the chipper, which my father owned in partnership with a family named Cafolla. However, our lives revolved around the chipper. It was in the 1950s, not the best of times or the worst of times in Ireland. The country was suffering severe economic malaise and still feeling the deprivation caused by World War II. My parents met during the war when my father, who was in the Italian Merchant Marines, was stranded in Dublin.
Apparently my Irish mother charmed my father into abandoning his Italian fiancée.
If you have read the label on a bottle of Guinness, you have heard of James’s Street. Saint James’s Gate is the official home of the Guinness Brewery. The Gate marked the separation of James’s and Thomas Street, one of the oldest and most historic streets in the city. Saint James’s Gate is a posh-sounding name and perhaps the neighborhood was somewhat posh when Guinness was founded in 1759. The 18th century was the high point of the Irish economy when Dublin was the second city in the British Empire. Money was flowing to the gentry from agriculture and the import and export business from the British colonies in the New World. This was the era of Georgian architecture: grand mansions, elegant streets, and large government buildings: the image tourists think of as the real Dublin when they visit the city. However, by the 1950s whatever poshness that might have existed on James’s Street and in the Liberties had long since vanished.
The Liberties are the oldest sections of Dublin. Settlements date back to the Vikings who established villages on the river Liffey in the 8th century. The Liberties get their name from a law established by Henry II of England, the first English ruler to conquer Ireland in the 12th century. He decreed that certain sections of the city would have their own jurisdictions or “liberties” from certain aspects of direct rule. Henry’s conquest marks the beginning of the complexities of Anglo-Irish relations, which continue to the present day. That’s a lot of history.
The Liberties are the heart of Dublin. The people who live in the Liberties are the “real” Dubliners. It has always had colorful characters like Johnny Forty Coats, the most famous character from the 50s. It was traditionally the home of tradesmen, the center of wool and linen weaving, and, in addition to Guinness, it was the location of many breweries and distilleries. Guinness brewery and Powers whiskey, both founded in the 18th century, survive to the present day. By the time I was growing up in the 1950s, the Liberties, like most of Ireland, were in economic distress. Regular jobs were scarce. Most people worked “casual,” and much of that work was as porters or dockers in the harbor. Getting a job at a place like Guinness would have been like winning the lottery.
Much of the housing in the Liberties had deteriorated and become workers’ lodging or tenements. It was not uncommon for a large tenement to have as many as sixty or more people living in one house with seven, ten, or twelve people from one family living in one room. The front door was unlocked so homeless people would come in and sleep on the stairs and landings. They all would have shared one toilet, which was usually outside in the back of the house. Tenement conditions existed in certain parts of the city up until the 1970s.
The tenements in our immediate neighborhood were relatively small. I do remember that my school friend, Shamus, lived in one room with his mother, father, and sister. They did everything in that one unheated room—cooked, bathed, and slept. Fortunately, my family was relatively well-off. We had a fish and chips business and lived in our own home. My friends were often surprised that we were the only family living in such a “big” house. The house had a center hallway with one large room on either side, two large rooms on the second floor, and an attic with a small room and a toilet.
Most of James’s Street is on a hill, and from the back of the house, there was a view of the Phoenix Park and the Wellington Monument, an English monument erected to commemorate the victory of Wellington over Napoleon. Down the hill there was an alleyway with forty steps leading to a lane and an open field. Legend has it that during Cromwell’s brutal suppression of Ireland in the mid-17th century, the blood of the people flowed down the Forty Steps like a river.
In the middle of James’s Street were two churches both called the Church of Saint James. One was Protestant Church of Ireland; the other across the street was Roman Catholic, a microcosm of the religious conflict in Ireland since the Reformation. The Protestant church has since closed; ironically it has recently been converted to a craft distillery. But the Roman Catholic church is still stamping pilgrims’ passports for their first stop for the Camino on their Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Although Saint James Catholic Church is still operating, it is not as vibrant as it was in the 1950s when it was standing-room-only on high holy days. Indeed, on an important holy day, the church, which probably seated 800 to 900 people, was packed, and many parishioners had to stand outside the church doors to participate in the service. The situation would have been the same at the three other large Catholic churches within a mile of Saint James’s. The Roman Catholic Church was the center of everyone’s life and the supreme power in the country, dictating everything from political life to conjugal relations in marriage.
Dublin in the 1950s was very much a small city with a small-town feeling. The suburbs were just beginning to be developed. There was definitely a walkabout feeling to the town. Few people had cars. In certain neighborhoods, cars were still a novelty and children would flock around one when it drove up the street. People would take the bus, bicycle, or walk everywhere. The city felt safe, and parents didn’t worry about leaving their children to play unsupervised on the street or to walk to the store or to school. Since it doesn’t get dark until about 10:00 p.m. in the summertime, children might be outside unsupervised until about 11:00 p.m. Growing up with such freedom was terrific.
Because we were relatively well off and because of our Italian heritage, there was some resentment towards us in the greater community. Unlike the Ireland of today, which has become open and multi-national, the Ireland of the 1950s was pretty homogenous. Italians stood out with our black hair and dark complexions, and at times we were easy targets for the anger that people must have felt about their own circumstances. In the Dublin lexicon, the “F word” is like a punctuation mark, spelled “feck” for a comma and “fuck” for a period. Dubliners do not flinch from using language others would find offensive such as “The F-in Italian” or “The F-in Jewman,” another visible minority in the neighborhood.
However, in general, my family was well regarded and well treated in our immediate neighborhood. There might have been some occasional comment from someone after last call at O’Malley’s pub next door when patrons would come into the chipper at about 11:00 p.m. for their after-drinking snack of greasy chips. Dubliners also don’t mind a good fight, so it was not unusual for a fight to break out outside the pub or occasionally in the restaurant. My mother would be the one to break it up since she didn’t want the anger of the moment to be redirected at her husband, the f-in Italian.
Discrimination at school was more likely. I went to Saint James’s School; my sisters went to the Holy Faith Convent in the Coombe. Schools were separate by gender and although they were state funded, they were usually operated by a Catholic religious order. In my case, the school was run by Christian Brothers; my sisters’ school was run by nuns. At the convent, my older sister was referred to as “the mulatto” by one of the nuns who also admonished the staff to watch out for those dark-skinned girls because they mature early. In many ways, the lay teachers were worse than the nuns or brothers. One time a lay teacher lined up all the boys in our room to hand out some marbles to everyone. When it came my turn, I walked up and extended my hand, but with a smile she said, “we don’t have any for Italians” and left me empty-handed.
Other than a few instances like that, I generally have very fond memories of early school. My school was situated on the edge of the Guinness Brewery. On certain days of the week, the smell of Guinness brewing filled the air with a sweet, rich smell. Around the corner from the school was a harbor, somewhat incongruously located inland away from the port. This was a harbor for barges that travelled the canals to bring product to and from the brewery. Draught horses and carts were often used to transfer barrels of beer to or from the harbor. We would dare each other to go “scutting” by hanging from the back of the carts for a cheap thrill and a free ride down the street. There was a great feeling of camaraderie among the kids, and, as with boys everywhere, we were always looking for ways to get in and out of trouble.
Of course, the Christian Brothers indoctrinated us into the rules of Catholicism through daily prayer and religious rituals. But in subtle ways they also indoctrinated us into the nationalism of Irish culture of this newly independent state. Every morning after prayers, one of the brothers started class by asking us to recite the colors of the Irish flag. The right answer was green, white, and yellow even though orange is the last color, not yellow. For him, and consequently for us, orange miraculously became yellow as a way of avoiding any acknowledgement of the Orange Men of Protestant Ireland. Similarly, Saint Patrick was abducted from the coast of France and not the coast of England when he first came to Ireland. It would not do for the patron saint of Ireland to have had English origins. Colors and history did not stand a chance when faced with the wrath of the Christian Brothers.
The children also did not stand a chance when faced with their wrath. Corporal punishment was an accepted way to mold the behavior and minds of the young. Every brother and lay teacher carried either a cane or a leather strap. The straps had raised stitching and some of them had a weight at the end to make its strike deadlier. A student might be subjected to punishment for the least infraction, such as talking in class or not paying attention to the teacher. The usual punishment was six to ten strikes with the cane or the strap on your hands or your rear end. Even at a young age I could see that certain teachers relished the punishment. One teacher deepened the humiliation by having students bend over in front of the class while he administered the punishment to the student’s rear end with his weighted leather strap. Fortunately, I never suffered that particular humiliation, but I did get my share of punishments with either the strap or the cane, often receiving canings for laughing or for stepping on the grass and not staying in the walkway. Creative teachers would fashion their own implements of punishment out of birch wood or some other sturdy stick with a good spring to it. The swish the stick made as it swung through the air was almost as painful as the strike. At least it made it so to those of us who had to watch.
The IRA and quasi-military organizations were still active in the 1950s although not as much as later on in the 1970s. Symbols of British domination were often the target of late night bombings by the IRA. Nelson Pillar in the center of Dublin’s main street was blown up in the 1960s. The Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park is still standing only because it is too substantial to be taken down by a homemade bomb. I remember hearing a blast late at night on a few occasions, and the next day there was news of a bomb going off somewhere in town. At that time, statues, not people, were often the target of such bombings. The sound came back to me in 2013 when I heard the two explosions of the Marathon Bombing in Boston. I was working outside about a mile and half away from the site of the bombings. When I heard the sound, I instantly thought back to the bombs going off in Dublin when I was a boy. Childhood memories run deep in our psyche. I still remember the sweet smell of brewing Guinness and I still think of orange as yellow from my early indoctrination into the colors of the Irish flag.
Every neighborhood had a small local picture house. The Lyric was ours. It was located at a wide intersection of James’s Street and two other streets. The Lyric showed all of the popular movies although they were probably second- or third-run. First-run pictures were the preserve of the big picture houses in central Dublin. Besides pictures, there might also be a live act of a local singer, dancer, or a magician cutting a woman in half. The Lyric was great. It was cheap, and occasionally for me it was free in exchange for the free fish and chips which the attendant might get from my mother. My memory is mostly of American pictures, especially cowboys and Indians, American classics like The Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello, and, of course, American glamor pictures. America was a fantasy land with big cars, big houses, beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes. Many of my prized possessions were clothes and toys that my “rich” uncle had sent us from America. My mother loved to tell fantasy stories of what it was like living in America where everything in the house was automated. All you had to do was step into the shower and it would automatically spray you from several directions with perfectly warm water. She no doubt got her ideas of America from the glamor pictures of the 1930s.
Near the two churches of Saint James and across from the Lyric in the center of the wide intersection was a triangular shaped island with public toilets for men and women at one end of the island. At the other end was a water fountain with a large drinking trough for horses. The fountain was said to have been the site of a holy well in ancient times. Behind the fountain was an obelisk dating to 1790. The obelisk still stands today, but the toilets are gone and the water fountain no longer works. In the 19th century, during the Period of the Penal Laws in Ireland, the fountain and the obelisk were a focal point for burial and prayer at Catholic funerals since Catholics were not allowed to pray in the graveyard of Saint James. Mourning and prayer usually took place around the obelisk. However, for us the island was a great place to hang out and reenact the cowboys and Indians plots of the pictures we had just seen at The Lyric.
Our house was within walking distance of the Phoenix Park, the largest urban park in Europe. Weather permitting, we would often walk to the park to play soccer, hurling, Gaelic football, or to go the zoo. There were two walking routes to the park. One went by the Fountain and down Stevens Street, a small street that ran beside Saint Patrick’s Hospital. Jonathan Swift, the Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, was instrumental in the founding of this hospital for “fools and the mad.” This was one of the first hospitals to advocate for the humane treatment of the mentally ill. It was only later as an adult that I more fully appreciated Swift’s sympathies for the Catholics and the poor in much of his writing. Perhaps “A Modest Proposal,” a satirical essay about using the flesh of Irish babies as a food source and their skin to make fine gloves for ladies, best illustrates his “compassion.”
Sections of the original hospital buildings are still in operation. There were always rumors going around in the neighborhood about unusual events happening around the hospital, probably more fantasy than fact. Once there was a scandal of a naked patient riding his bike out of the hospital down Stevens Street to Heuston train station at the foot of the hill. Next to the psychiatric hospital was another large Victorian-era hospital originally built for the British garrisons stationed in Dublin. This was the hospital where I had my tonsils removed after the nurses caught me trying to escape the hospital ward before surgery. I would later become a frequent customer of the hospital for treatment of the many cuts and scrapes I suffered from falls and fights.
The other route to get to the Phoenix Park was much more interesting. This was the route down the Forty Steps and up Bow Lane and Kilmainham Lane both of which still have many of the old houses and cottages from the 18th and 19th centuries. This is a narrow lane, and back in the 50s there were still some open fields to stop and play in. At the end of Kilmainham Lane was another large, walled Victorian-era barracks for British troops. Across from the barracks was the infamous Kilmainham Gaol, or jail. This is where the rebels of the 1916 Easter Rising in the fight for Irish independence were held and summarily executed. It became the holding place for many men and women in the struggle for Irish independence. Today the building is held in the highest reverence, and it is a national landmark and a major tourist attraction. The prison itself has also been the setting for several films, most notably In the Name of the Father. However, as I remember it in the 50s, at least for us, it was just another old building that the state could not afford to maintain. We walked by it without the slightest regard for its history in the liberation of Ireland. From Kilmainham Gaol you can see the Wellington Monument which marked the edge of the Phoenix Park. At the time, the Park was still used as a pasture for cows and sheep. Perhaps they were held here on their way to the slaughter houses in the city. There were also herds of deer in the Park. The cows and sheep are long gone, but the deer remain.
In spite of my Irishness, I was still a proud Italian. The Italians during the 1950s were a small but very close-knit community. It seemed as though everyone knew each other, and, perhaps it was my childhood innocence, we all seemed to be part of an extended family. Italian families helped each other, often taking in children from other families or helping out financially. There were many Italian-sponsored events like Christmas parties or costume parties. The Italians we knew were usually in the restaurant business, mostly fish and chips but sometimes cafes, high-end restaurants, or night clubs.
The Italian men socialized together. Bocce ball games were common. The bocce games were often accompanied by drinking and a gambling game called Morra. After the restaurants closed, there might be a game of poker at someone’s house where serious money passed across the table. I once remember four-of-a-kind being beaten by a royal flush. There was a fortune on the table for that one hand.
Besides the profane, the sacred was also important. Italians even had their go-to priest, Father Malone, who would officiate at major life events: baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Father Malone would also organize novenas and Italian pilgrimages to the Shrine at Knock in Ireland where the Virgin Mary had once appeared. I could never figure out if Father Malone was Italian or Irish. The name could go either way, and I would guess that he never pushed the issue and was happy to be treated with reverence by a devoted and fairly well-off community.
It’s also true that I could go either way. When I’m asked if I think of myself as Irish or Italian, I am unsure how to answer. I am Italian in many ways. I value Italian rituals and the primacy of family. However, James’s Street, the Liberties, and Ireland were my first place, the place where I entered the world and first learned how to mediate between my external and internal environments.
Perhaps our first place has the strongest hold on who we are and how we think of ourselves. I know it has the strongest hold on our imagination. We carry our first place with us throughout our lives, and as it recedes into the history of our past lives and past places, it is what most shapes how we negotiate the external worlds we encounter. Our first place is ephemeral. It dissolves into history but is always vibrant in memory and imagination.
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