*Notes From The Old Home Town-As March 17th Approaches-A Moment In History- The Irish Diaspora

Click on the headline to link to a "American Left History" entry that deals with the Irish Question in little different manner.


Markin comment:

Not all the entries in this space are connected to politics, although surely most of them can be boiled down into some political essence, if you try hard enough. The following is one of those instances where trying to gain any “political traction”, or as I am fond of saying drawing any “lessons” would be foolhardy. I should also note that this entry is part of a continuing, if sporadic, series of “trips down memory lane” provoked by a fellow high school classmate who has been charged with keeping tabs on old classmates and their doings, even those of old-line communists like this writer. Go figure?

As March 17th Approaches- A moment in history…


"A Terrible Beauty Is Born", a recurring line from the great Anglo-Irish poet William Butler Yeats,"Easter 1916"

At the corner of Hand Street and East Street forming a wedge in front of our old beige-bricked high school, and from that vantage point giving the building a majestic “mighty fortress is our home” look, there is a plaque that commemorates a fallen soldier of World War I, and is officially known as the Frank O’Brien Square. The corners and squares of most cities and towns in most countries of the world have such memorials to their war dead, needless to say far too many. That plaque furthermore now competes, unsuccessfully, with a huge Raider red billboard telling one and all of the latest doings, or upcoming events or honoring somebody or something, and in due course will be relegated to the “vaults’ of the history of our town. This entry, however, is not about that or about the follies of war, or even about why it is that young men (and now women) wind up doing the dangerous work of war that is decided by old men (and now old women), although that would be a worthy subject. No, the focus here is the name of the soldier, or rather the last name, O’Brien, and the Irishness of it.

A quick run through of the names of the students listed in the “Manet” for the Class of 1964 will illustrate my point. If Irish names are not in the majority, then they predominant, and that does not even take into consideration the half or quarter Irish heritage that is hidden behind other names. And that is exactly the point. If North Quincy in the old days was not exactly “Little Dublin”, the heritage of the Irish diaspora certainly was nevertheless apparent for all to see, and hear. That North Quincy was merely a way station away from the self-contained Irish ghettos of Dorchester and South Boston to the Irish Riveiras of the area was, or rather is, also apparent as anyone who has been in the old town of late will note.

And that too is the point. Today Asian- Americans, particularly the Chinese and Vietnamese, and other minorities have followed that well-trodden path to Quincy. And they have made, and will make, their mark on the ethos of this hard-working working class part of town. So while the faint aroma of corn beef and cabbage (and colorful pasta dishes, from the other main ethnic group of old Quincy, the Italians) has been replaced by the pungent smells of moo shi and poi and the bucolic brogue by some sing-song Mandarin dialect the life of the town moves on.

Yet, I can still feel, when I aimlessly walk certain streets, the Irishness of the diaspora “old sod”. To be sure, as a broken amber liquor bottle spotted on the ground reminded me, there were many whiskey-sodden nights (complete with the obligatory beer chaser) that many a man spent his pay on to keep his “demons” from the door. And to be sure, as well, the ubiquitous pot on the old iron stove for the potato-ladened boiled dinner that stretched an already tight food budget just a little longer when the ever present hard times cast their shadow at that same door. And, of course, there was the great secret cultural relic; the relentless, never-ending struggle to keep the family “dirty linen” from the public eye. But also this: the passed down heroic tales of our forbears, the sons and daughters of Roisin, in their heart-rending eight hundred year struggle against the crushing of the “harp beneath the crown”; of the whispered homages to the ghosts of our Fenian dead; of great General Post Office uprisings, large and small; and, of the continuing struggle in the North. Yes, as that soldier’s plaque symbolizes, an Irish presence will never completely leave the old town, nor will the willingness to sacrifice.

Oh, yes, that Frank O’Brien for whom the square in front of the old school was named , would have been my grand uncle, the brother of my Grandmother Radley (nee O’Brien) from over on Young Street across from the Welcome Young Field.