Oh What Might
Have Been-When Irish-Town Tradition Couldn't Hold A Good Woman Down-Or Could It
By Frank Jackman
Most of the
time when you write stuff, particularly “slice of life” stuff it is based on a
tip, maybe something you read or heard. Today though I am writing about the fate
of one Delores Jamison (nee Riley) from the Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville
where I grew up whose life took some small but decisive turns which despite the
title of this piece did bring a good woman down. See Delores was the mother of
a close friend, Kenny, who passed away from cancer many years ago but whose
memory and then that of his mother got jogged when I heard a segment on the local
NPR affiliate in Boston WBUR. That segment dealt with the 50th
anniversary of Life magazine’s controversial issue in which they had photographs
of all those killed in Vietnam during a week in June of 1969. That segment
centered on James Hickey who was several years younger than me and had grown up
in Quincy a few towns over from my own hometown. His story was so familiar, so
much like Kenny’s and my own that it started the memory in motion.
I did not know
Delores Riley really well since she was usually somewhat sickly (from having
had four boys close together which her delicate frame never really recovered from)
and overwrought with having to tend to too many children. Kenny and I would
tend not to stay at his house for that very reason. Apparently though Delores had
not always been so out of sorts and that is really what this remembrance is
about. About decisions she made, or did not make, which led to her falling
under the cracks in life. About decisions really that confronted almost
everybody who lived or was raised in the Acre, in North Adamsville.
From what I could
gather (Kenny never knew much and from a pretty early age stayed out of the house
and over with his grandmother) about Delores’ early life it was conventionally
middle class for the hellbroth 1930s Great Depression days. Her gruff, grumpy
father Daniel had married late and had been an officer in the town fire department
which meant he had a steady income all during the Depression. Owed the house he
was born in over in the better Atlantic section of town, had married Anna and
had three children with her. Anna by all accounts was “a saint” for putting up
with him but also being a kind person to all in that neighborhood. That heavily
Irish neighborhood, always called Irishtown by residence and strangers alike-
which will play some small part in what happens later. Delores was a fairly
bright and industrious student and graduated from North Adamsville High in 1942
and subsequently went to a business school in Boston.
Normally, at
least directly for a young woman, the war raging in Europe and the Pacific
would not affect her as much as for the vast array of young men the military
machine was eating up on two fronts. Once Delores finished that business school
she got a job at the Hingham Naval Base about twenty miles from home. This is
where the vagaries, maybe slightly the fog of war, came into play. Since the
naval base needed protection, a detachment of Marines (really soldiers for the Navy)
including rotated battle-tested young Prescott Jamison was stationed there. As
things went Delores and Prescott met at a USO dance at the base on a Friday night
(many details from this period are missing except Prescott must have had
something since he was called ‘the Sheik” in gest by his fellows and in earnest
by young women). Fairly shortly, although maybe not so for wartime, they were
married since Prescott was scheduled to be discharged fairly soon after that.
This is really
where things began to fall apart (part of this from Kenny but also part from
his pious grandmother when I would visit Kenny there as he sought shelter from the
home storms). See Prescott was from coal country down in Kentucky, down in
well-known Hazard, had dropped out of school in either the ninth or tenth grade
to work the mines. When Pearl Harbor came in December 1941 he enlisted the next
day in the Marines, saw the island-hopping battles of the Pacific with now
hallowed names, and after suffering wounds was rotated to Hingham. He like many
down in Appalachia was strict Primitive Baptist (meaning you had to take a
dunking in the river to be baptized according to Kenny).
That was the first
strike. No, actually the first strike was when Daniel saw the good-looking Prescott
and nixed the guy from day one. Reason: although Daniel was not a religious man
he knew he hated Protestants of any kind and told Prescott so. (Anna the really
pious of the pair would after a while ignore his religion but at the time
supported her husband.) The second strike was that the couple under Roman
Catholic doctrine could not marry in the church but only the rectory which occurred
by their choice without her parents present (his parents by then both dead, he
the youngest of eleven children). The third strike, the decisive strike was
that he was uneducated for anything but coalmining not an industry found around
North Adamsville.
I guess they
tried going down to Kentucky but that was worse than up North for work (and
Prescott’s kin did not like Roman Catholic Delores anymore than her father
liked Protestants) and so they returned. Returned and Delores started with much
trouble having those four closely aged boys and to find shelter in the North
Adamsville Housing Authority (the notorious “projects” evilly conjured up even
today). Without help from her father. As the reader can imagine with work hard
to get (Prescott last hired, first laid off a familiar refrain) things were always
tight and Kenny believes something in her snapped early on and she decided to
treat a hostile world including her sons hostilely (that verified by Kenny’s
sibling recently).
We already
know this story cannot end well (except Anna accepting Prescott and having them
in when Daniel was not around and later when he was in a nursing home). And it
did not end well. What has always intrigued me, always when Kenny would tell
his tales of woe was why a young girl, probably pretty innocent as most Irish girls
were, decided to forsake the neighborhood boys (some of whom were interested I
gather) and stake her life on Prescott. One answer came to mind early on when I
knew Kenny that grandfather Daniel drove his daughter from his door. What has always also intrigued me is whether Delores
ever regretted her decisions. According to Kenny no matter what was happening
to the family Delores never regretted marrying her “Sheik.” Called his name
from her death bed.
