A SIGHTING OF MICHAEL

Even at the worst of times Christmas was a big deal in Wexford. This had much to do with the mass return of emigrants. Everyone in town had someone in London or Birmingham; the Ffrench family had a famous cousin, George Harrison, in Liverpool.

With the ferry leaving daily from Rosslare to Wales, the saying was “you could go out for a drink on Saturday afternoon, end up at Paddington Station Sunday morning, and get the start in construction Monday.”

Everyone came home for Christmas, except those with families, or lads who had done a runner over an unexpected pregnancy, and those tragic few who had gone off the rails.

My Granny Kirwan’ brother, Michael Moran, was one of the latter.  Along with their brother, Matt, they were the Morans of Fisher’s Row. Like many up there by The Faythe, they were of seafaring stock. Their father, Capt. James Moran had gone down with his vessel in a great storm off the coast of Wales in 1898.

Their mother was their rock, she took in lodgers, ran a pub, and eventually the two boys went off to sea. Captain Matt Moran was a great success and became one of the founders of Irish Shipping. He was killed in a shipboard accident in 1942.

Michael was quieter and very close to his mother. He took her death badly, went back to London and was never heard from again. 

My granny had made a good marriage to my grandfather, Lar Kirwan, a successful cattle dealer with two big farms, one of which was less than a mile outside town. She lived there in a fine house up a tree-lined avenue.

She was a woman of much imagination, while my grandfather was quiet and steely; she used to murmur that her family was hesitant about the match, feeling she’d be isolated outside town and should marry among her own outgoing seafaring folk.

One day around Christmas I went with my father to visit. Though he was the eldest son he was often at odds with my grandfather and was making his living at sea. Lar wasn’t home, but some cattle had gotten loose so my father was out fixing a fence.

A knock came to the back door and a willowy man in his Sunday best waved in the window at us.

Granny seemed to recognize him. She fixed her hair, and hurried to the door. They exchanged some quiet words in the scullery, then she brought the man into the kitchen and set about making tea.

“How did he look?” She asked.

“Well enough.” The man replied.

“Did he say why he hasn’t written or come home?”

“You know Michael, quiet as ever. Just said, if I was in Wexford for Christmas to drop by and tell you he was okay.”

“Was he drinking?”

“He’d had a few, I ran into him at The Shakespeare on Holloway.”

“He had no news?”

“Divil a bit, just insisted I come all the way out here to see you.” He blew into his chapped hands and looked eager to be gone.

The conversation tapered off. Granny excused herself. She had been crying when she returned. She wrote some lines on a sheet of stationary, licked an envelope and, in her best copperplate, addressed it to  “Michael Moran.”

“Give this to Michael if you see him... ask him to write.”

The willowy man gravely took the envelope and, after she gave him some pound notes, he left without finishing his tea.

She sat down heavily at the table and held her head between her hands. I didn’t know what to say.  

“What’s the matter?” My father asked when he returned from the fields.

“John Byrne from The Faythe saw Michael in London. He’s alive.” 

“Haven’t I warned you about this!” my father muttered. “How much did you give him?”

“With Matt gone, I’ve no one left.”

“If Michael was alive in London, I’d have heard. You’re too much of a soft touch.”

Their routine continued - my father convinced that Michael had taken to the drink and disappeared in some foreign port. My granny hoping against hope that someday her brother would walk up her tree-lined avenue.

I wish there had been a happy ending, but emigration is messy and some people fall between the cracks.

A very happy Christmas to you all. Hold your families close.

THE LIQUID PILGRIMAGE TO PUFFY'S!

 New York City is jammed in these boom times. The sidewalks are abustle with shoppers, the streets clogged with vehicles, their passengers staring out mournfully as we walkers glide by pitying their immobility.

Then again, it was always thus. Take Broadway in the 1860’s. Back then, New York’s main street was divided: the “Dollar” side on the west catered to the gentle folk from Washington Square, while the “Shilling” side on the east was exclusive to the hordes of immigrants from the nearby Five Points.

While writing the musical Hard Times, I used to track the down-at-heel composer Stephen Foster as he made his way down the crowded “shilling” side to Nelly Blythe’s Saloon where he could parlay his once brilliant reputation into cheap drinks.

I was reflecting on economic drinking and the disappearance of the buyback recently when I remembered an odyssey I used to take on Sunday afternoons when I lived in the far East Village. This was back in the 1970’s when one could live on hopes, dreams, and a couple of gigs on the weekends up in the Kingsbridge area of The Bronx.

One Sunday afternoon, while in recovery from my Bronx labors, a friend arrived at my apartment where I was entertaining some others over a couple of six-packs.

He had heard it on good account that a bevy of “high-end models” congregated at Puffy’s Tavern on Hudson Street in Tribeca and were interested in meeting “interesting people of diverse means.”

Why any of our scruffy bunch felt that such ladies would be taken with the likes of us is a mystery to me now, but back then hope sprang eternal; so began our pilgrimage to Puffy’s.

It was decided that we would break for a beer at Fanelli’s on Prince Street in Soho, as an aspiring writer among us had been treated to a sufficiency of buy-backs on his last visit there.

Thus began my almost 50 year association with the second oldest continuous drink and food joint in NYC. Prices have risen since my first fateful visit, but I’m happy to report that writers, aspiring and otherwise, are still welcome and buybacks, though rarer, are common enough. A salmon sandwich is still a bargain and the pint of Dogfish 60 IPA is to die for.

We then stumbled on to Kenn’s Broome Street Bar on the corner of West Broadway. Kenn Reissdorf, owner and artist, dressed like an urban cowboy, resplendent in turquoise, while his wife Berry, a former model, was the thinnest and sharpest bar owner I’ve ever met.

Alas, both have passed on to the great saloon in the sky, but their place has been taken by Jonathan Kaufman, a delightful, outgoing proprietor who likes nothing better than visits from thirsty pilgrims. The BLT on Rye is mouth-watering and the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale will please greatly, while the once sacrosanct tradition of the buy-back is not unknown.

Over the years, as the pilgrimage gained notoriety and new devotees, we added many blessed stops that included: The Holiday Lounge, a Ukrainian beer & shot joint on E. 8^th where owner, Stefan Lutek, would bid us godspeed with $1 brimful glasses of Jameson’s; and who could forget the esteemed Ear Inn on W. Spring that dates back to 1817, and whose Lamb Burger washed down by a pint of Guinness approaches Godliness, and so on and so forth and so fifth, as John Lennon used to say.

I can almost hear members of Shilelagh Law, up in the far reaches of County Yonkers, speculating on how a bunch of rowdy tossers was greeted by Puffy’s “high end models.”

Well, they proved quite friendly, digits were even exchanged, but only Mad Dog Brodsky, a writer of some renown who went on to edit Hot Tub Magazine, ever claimed to have dated one.

I doubt the relationship ever came to much as she didn’t attend his Shiva. Yes, time and, no doubt, a surfeit of shots took a toll on our number, and eventually our weekly pilgrimage fell by the wayside. 

However, in this coming age of anxiety, I sense there will be need of alcoholic fortification. So, on the first Sunday after President Trump’s inauguration, the pilgrimage will resume - destination Puffy’s! 

Who knows, perhaps the granddaughters of the original “high end models” will be there to greet us.

REFLECTION ON THE ELECTION

 At around 11:30pm on November 5^th I realized the jig was up. Some figures came in from North Carolina, and though hardly earth-shattering, I knew that if Kamala Harris was under-performing in the Raleigh/Durham area it would be a short night.

Congratulations to President-Elect Trump. He is truly a remarkable politician with an unerring ear for the moods, needs and resentments of modern America.

Now that he has swept both the popular and electoral college vote, is there any chance he might endorse a straightforward democracy that picks its president by popular vote?

 

For all practical purposes, the recent election concerned only the seven “battlefield” states, while the four most populous, California, Texas, Florida and New York barely got a look in.

I had returned from Ireland to cast my vote, I might as well have stayed there skulling pints, for I was one of a very few people voting at my polling station in South-West Manhattan.

 

Meanwhile “battlefield” voters were often forced to wait in line for hours. Thanks, Founding Fathers, the electoral college is right up there with your blind eye towards enslavement and women’s suffrage.

Despite his gloomy and often dystopian outlook, President-Elect Trump is inheriting a first class economy (as he did in 2016); unemployment and inflation are low, while growth and productivity are high. 

He has promised to reduce prices, though without offering any plans, except to “drill, baby, drill.” He obviously hasn’t heard that under the Biden administration the US  became the world’s largest exporter of energy. 

 

Perhaps someone should tell him that gas prices at the pumps are currently quite low. Or is Elon squiring him around in his Tesla?

I’ve always thought of this year’s presidential contest as the pandemic election. How soon we forget that less than two years ago we were going mano a mano with Covid 19?

It will take years before we can put these crazy days into perspective. But in the meantime, there is no doubt that Donald Trump has caused a realignment in the Republican Party, and indeed throughout the entire electorate.

 

And what of the Democrats? Bruised, bleating and hemorrhaging demographics. When will the party understand that it can’t alienate working class and rural communities, and expect to eke out any more nail biters?

As lame as it sounds, they need a commission of street-savvy pols, the like of Joe Crowley, Tim Kennedy, Martin O’Malley, John Tesler or James Carville to point out just where they’ve gone astray.

Despite all he did to economically revivify the country, President Biden is the big loser. What was he - and his family – thinking? Or did ego blind him to his condition and the country’s perception of him?

 

Had he stuck with his promise to be a bridge to the next Democratic generation, there would have been primaries to test the mettle of Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Kamala Harris and others. 

As it was, he appeared to ignore his Vice-President, so that Ms. Harris often seemed out to lunch on the economy, the most vital matter in any presidential election.

Although this daughter of immigrants ran a valiant race in the little time she was allotted, I doubt anyone is longing for another Harris candidacy.

Candidates aplenty are already positioning themselves to run in 2028. But the next major battle will be the 2026 mid-terms, when a revivified grass-roots Democratic Party could take advantage of the mess Mr. Trump will inevitably cause.

His choice of Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert Kennedy Jr. for cabinet posts is outrageous, unless he’s testing his authoritarian control of the Republican Party. At the best these three promise chaos and confusion.

Hopefully Mr. Trump’s positions on tariffs and mass deportation are part of his trademark bluff and bluster, for how many want the rising inflation and mass misery that will accompany the extreme measures he promises.

Meanwhile global warming is going nowhere, regardless of how many times the president-elect calls it a hoax. The national debt of $36 trillion shudders at the thought of his second coming, and who knows what rough beast lies waiting in the wings? Who had any notion of Covid 19 at the Trump inauguration in 2017?

Make sure your hatches are oiled and ready for battening down. With the worst full of passionate intensity, the center will be well tested, hang in there until 2026. And whatever you do, “Don’t mourn – organize!”