Ireland: Stories of Casual Grit, Humor, and Nonchalance.
“The Southern coast of Ireland was great!,” I said to our new pub friends in Dublin. “I just couldn’t make out with anyone in the town we stayed in because my family is from there. Didn’t want to end up kissing a distant cousin,” I joked.
“That’s funny, but I know what you mean! My family is from here. I have a really Irish last name,” he leaned in as the pub scene got louder.
“Oh really? What’s your last name?” I asked.
“Walsh,” he said.
My friend almost spit out her beer.
“My last name is also Walsh,” I said.
“It’s a common last name here! I know my lineage, trust me, we are not related,” he did his best to brush it off.
The conversation moved on and regardless of the number of people with that last name, we shook hands when we parted.
Ireland was full of great conversations, stories, and rain. Each taxi driver engaged us in interesting political conversations, proceeded in a line of questioning that allowed them to tell the dark stories of the IRA and Irish mafia, or told us stories about the towns we were driving through like we were on a paid tour.
“And this man, he left for Australia. He stole from the rich to give to the poor. He was an outlaw though, shot about twenty people and three police officers. He was arrested.” Without missing a beat, the taxi driver continued, as if in perfect logical sequence, “so the named this town after him.”
“This other man, hiked Mount Everest twice! He finally died when is appendix burst while he was here in the grocery store.”
The casual grit and ‘no big deal’ pride within Irish culture was starting to come through.
“And we were in New York City, my brother and I,” she explained. “We had a wedding to go to in the morning at 9am. We were getting back to the hotel the night before and my brother decided to leave his phone in the room to charge while he went back down to get some fresh air outside. Well,” she continued, “I was up and went to bed and while he was down there he got hit by one of those scooters! Knocked down and unconscious, apparently.”
“An ambulance came for him and took him to the hospital. They stitched him up and he came to while he was in the MRI machine,” we gasped, thinking this was the peak of the story, what a horrible place to wake up. “So they pulled him out! He asked what was going on and they explained his condition and that he was stitched, but they were going to take imaging to make sure he was ok.”
“He asked what time it was and how long it would take. They told him the timeline and once the doctors left to check on the images, he walked out of the hospital and straight to the wedding…stitches and all! Well, he wasn’t about to miss the wedding and knew his family must have been worried about him.”
We again thought this was the peak of the story, but there was more.
“My brother showed up on time, luckily, only partly concussed. He said he would go back to the hospital later to pay the bill. Well, we had a tight time schedule for the rest of the trip, so when he got back to Ireland, he called the New York City hospital he thought he was at and they had no record of him. So he called a few more hospitals, still no record. He had no idea what he told them, because remember, he was knocked out and had no identification on him.”
“He knew with US cost of health care, that bill must have been at least $15k with the ambulance ride and images. We go to New York all the time, so he didn’t want this debt on his record. No one could figure out where he was. So girls, in summary, we’re not sure if he should go back to the US, if he’ll be wanted or a felon for owing all that money…”
We reassured her that there was a slim chance that the US hospital system and bill collectors aligned with the US immigration and customs system.
She continued on for the rest of the taxi ride with her praises of Joe Biden and her distaste for Mike Pence, both of whom have spend time in Ireland, but only one of whom is respected by the local crowd.
“And my son’s American mother-in-law was visting here, she went to church every Sunday and tried to talk to the Irish pastor every Sunday after the sermon. She was too much for that Irish pastor. She was so upset when she was walking home one day, she saw the pastor drive past her on the road and he didn’t stop to offer a ride. She said to us, ‘can you believe it? My US pastor would never pass me without offering.’ That lady was too much, even the pastor here didn’t want to talk to her. Trump supporter that mother-in-law.”
There was a balance of grit and confidence blended with a natural appreciation for the environment. Both a hardened Dublin taxi driver and a soft and sweet Northern Ireland school teacher spoke of their love for a winter polar plunge into the icy North Atlantic. Moreover, the Irish explained the fall of the DeLorean car and its inventor to the inventor’s willingness to rip out a Hawthorn tree that was in the way of building the factory.
Hawthorn trees are still treated with immense respect and reverence — so much so that roads have been re-routed and it is rumored powerful men have fallen and misfortune courted when ancient lore has been flouted.
The locals had refused to uproot it. Not only did the DeLorean car fail, but its inventor was soon arrested for cocaine smuggling.
Each story teller’s theme and cadence reminded me of how my Irish aunts and uncles shared family stories.
“And your Grandpa Jack and his friend came back from the war and starting building satellites out in the yard as their hobby. They got so good at it, someone from the US government came by and told them they had to knock it off.”
“And so, our family members waited in Canada until an Irish person was working at the border who would let them into the US. Then of course, they went back and came in the legal way…”
“And your great uncle found his wife in bed with another man. Instead of taking it out on just her, he shot them both. For a while, we wondered why there was such tension between that uncle and some of our cousins.”
My aunts and uncles weren’t even directly from Ireland, but must have picked up the knack for story telling, strength, pragmatism, and rolling with the punches.
