lungs into bacterial sponges.It provoked cures galore;to ease the catarrh
you boiled onions in milk blackened with pepper; for the congested
passages you made a paste of boiled flour and nettles, wrapped it in a
rag, and slapped it, sizzling, on the chest.
From October to April the walls of Limerick glistened with the
damp. Clothes never dried: tweed and woolen coats housed living
things, sometimes sprouted mysterious vegetations. In pubs, steam rose
from damp bodies and garments to be inhaled with cigarette and pipe
smoke laced with the stale fumes of spilled stout and whiskey and tinged
with the odor of piss wafting in from the outdoor jakes where many a
man puked up his weeks wages.
The rain drove us into the churchour refuge, our strength, our
only dry place. At Mass, Benediction, novenas, we huddled in great
damp clumps, dozing through priest drone, while steam rose again from
our clothes to mingle with the sweetness of incense, flowers and
candles.
Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the
rain.
My father, Malachy McCourt, was born on a farm in Toome, County
Antrim. Like his father before, he grew up wild, in trouble with the
English,or the Irish,or both.He fought with the Old IRA and for some
desperate act he wound up a fugitive with a price on his head.
When I was a child I would look at my father, the thinning hair, the
collapsing teeth, and wonder why anyone would give money for a head
like that.When I was thirteen my fathers mother told me a secret: as a
wee lad your poor father was dropped on his head. It was an accident,
he was never the same after, and you must remember that people
dropped on their heads can be a bit peculiar.
Because of the price on the head he had been dropped on, he had
to be spirited out of Ireland via cargo ship from Galway. In New York,
with Prohibition in full swing, he thought he had died and gone to hell
for his sins.Then he discovered speakeasies and he rejoiced.
After wandering and drinking in America and England he yearned
for peace in his declining years. He returned to Belfast, which erupted
all around him. He said,A pox on all their houses, and chatted with the
ladies of Andersontown. They tempted him with delicacies but he
waved them away and drank his tea. He no longer smoked or touched
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