1952. It is one year after my father's death. I am thirteen years old and board the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad's Hiawatha in Wisconsin Rapids. The engine is diesel powered and rumbles like a rested lion. I'm traveling all by myself. I show my ticket to the conductor who helps me with my suitcase.
I choose one of Dad's suits to wear. It's a light colored double-breasted affair. The tie is multi-colored paisley and wide. My oldest brother James says, "You look like an old farmer. Everybody but them wears single breasted suits nowadays." I don’t care because I'm going to visit Uncle George and Aunt Marie Smullen and their three children, cousins Mary Lee, Michael, and George ("Buddy"), in Racine.
I sit nearly the entire trip in the men's smoking room, adjacent to the men's bath room, about the same size as Miller's outhouse, and listen to a judge explain why judges can't be either Democrat or Republican.
My Aunt Marie, a former working nurse, meets me at the Milwaukee train station. A week later, treating me as one of the family, my aunt asks, "How'd you like to meet Ma and Pa Smullen?"
"I'd like that."
With me in the middle of front seat and the entire family ensconced in the big Buick, Aunt Marie is the driver. She wears a long, white glove on her left hand, its top reaching past her elbow. "That way, I avoid the sun's rays," she explains.
With the tip of her right shoe, she presses the accelerator pedal down, lets up, and then presses down again. Aunt Marie does this again and again and again, the entire trip. Halfway to Chicago, my stomach roils furiously. I try to keep my eyes off that pedal but I still feel the car lurch. I am carsick for the first time in my life. "Stop," I yell.
Aunt Marie halts the car so I can get out and lean over in a ditch and vomit. I don't say why I get carsick. I don't want to hurt her feelings. She's too nice of a person. As we near the outskirts of Chicago, Aunt Marie says, "Ma Smullen is laid up with a fractured hip."
When we arrive at the Wrightwood Avenue two-story building, Aunt Marie takes me first to the downstairs flat where I meet Skinny Aunt Florence. The bottom flat is where she and her family live. A nurse, she's very pretty. Nervous, too. Dark hair. Her eyes sparkle as she talks. Softly, as my dad used to talk. Sometimes.
Ed Bailey, Florence's husband, sports a neat mustache and shakes my hand as if I am a fellow adult. "George," he says with an easy smile, "I am so happy you could visit us." He and Florence introduce me to their daughter and son, cousins. The older child, Pat Marie, with little help from her dad, twists her body and limbs this way and that, looking like a human twisted pretzel. I am amazed she doesn't feel pain.
Then, it's up the stairs we go. The rooms are darkened. Aunt Marie leads me to a side room where a gray-haired woman with plump, round face and hard eyes behind round wire rimmed glasses sits upright on a bed, a number of pillows bolstering her back. "Is that the Dago's kid?" she fumes, glaring, scowling.
"Ma, this is one of Jim's sons, Georgie," says Aunt Marie. I've made my decision she's my favorite of all my aunts, and she's obviously distressed by the old woman's snappish query. "What do you think of his curly red hair and all those freckles? He's Irish through and through."
Never in my life have I been mistaken for being of Italian descent. In fact, I win each and every freckle contest in my city's summer playground programs. The old lady frowns even more so, turns to look straight ahead, away from the sight of me. She says not another word.
Quickly, I turn and leave the room and rush down the stairs and out the back door of the two story building. A moment later, Mary Lee and Pat Marie join me.
"Don't feel bad, George. She's just that way," says Mary Lee who appears as if she might cry any moment.
"She's naturally ornery," pipes in the blasé Pat Marie. "You ought to see the way she treats Pa."
I show them. I'm just as tough as that old hen, maybe even tougher. "I don't care. She might not like me, but I don't like her, either." That was the last time I see Mary Smullen, my fraternal grandmother, for even back then I wasn’t likely to purposely seek painful experiences.
Ma Smullen, the former Mary Theresa McNicholas, was born in County Mayo, Ireland, three miles from Kiltimagh in the 1880's. Three reasons for the imprecision regarding the specific year of her birth include:
1. The 1920 U.S. census taken in Johnstown, NY, states Mary was born "about 1888."
2. The 1930 census lists, Mary, now a resident of Chicago as being born "about 1890."
3. Her obituary in the Chicago Tribune on July 31, 1958, states she was 74 years old at the time of her death. If one is to believe the obituary, she was born in 1884 or 1885, depending on her birth month.
Now, I don't know if Mary Theresa fibbed about her age to the census takers or not, but she did some fibbing regarding other subjects, including the Smullen name.
Her youngest son, my Uncle John, told me years later she'd tell him and his brothers and sister that Smullen was not an Irish name, at all. "Your father," she'd tell her offspring, "was a Mullen, and the Mullens were horse thieves. That's why he changed his name when he came to this country. Even the Krauts think the name's German."
Uncle John laughed when he told me the story. According to him, Mary told her son George he was named after a baseball player.
Twenty five years ago, I bicycled all of Ireland, including County Wicklow, where Grandfather Smullen was born. Nearby, I stopped by an old cemetery. There was a number of stones with the name Smullen on them, some as old as five hundred years. It turns out that Smullen precedes the names of Murphy, O'Malley, and all those names we instantly assume as being Irish.
I spent three days in Dublin at Christchurch, researching the family name. Turns out my great grandfather's name was also George Smullen. He worked as a mile man in Wicklow County for the Irish National Railroad. A mile man is just what the two words suggest: He was responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of one mile of rails. If anything untoward occurred on that specific set of tracks, the mile man was sacked. So, he'd better check the entire mile of tracks each and every morning, afternoon, and early evening, performing the same tasks, each and every day, seven days a week, making certain tracks and ties and spikes were in perfect order. If they weren't, he'd better make them so. Or else.
Why Grandfather Smullen didn't set his wife's stories straight can only be answered by him. And he's not around to do so.
I choose one of Dad's suits to wear. It's a light colored double-breasted affair. The tie is multi-colored paisley and wide. My oldest brother James says, "You look like an old farmer. Everybody but them wears single breasted suits nowadays." I don’t care because I'm going to visit Uncle George and Aunt Marie Smullen and their three children, cousins Mary Lee, Michael, and George ("Buddy"), in Racine.
I sit nearly the entire trip in the men's smoking room, adjacent to the men's bath room, about the same size as Miller's outhouse, and listen to a judge explain why judges can't be either Democrat or Republican.
My Aunt Marie, a former working nurse, meets me at the Milwaukee train station. A week later, treating me as one of the family, my aunt asks, "How'd you like to meet Ma and Pa Smullen?"
"I'd like that."
With me in the middle of front seat and the entire family ensconced in the big Buick, Aunt Marie is the driver. She wears a long, white glove on her left hand, its top reaching past her elbow. "That way, I avoid the sun's rays," she explains.
With the tip of her right shoe, she presses the accelerator pedal down, lets up, and then presses down again. Aunt Marie does this again and again and again, the entire trip. Halfway to Chicago, my stomach roils furiously. I try to keep my eyes off that pedal but I still feel the car lurch. I am carsick for the first time in my life. "Stop," I yell.
Aunt Marie halts the car so I can get out and lean over in a ditch and vomit. I don't say why I get carsick. I don't want to hurt her feelings. She's too nice of a person. As we near the outskirts of Chicago, Aunt Marie says, "Ma Smullen is laid up with a fractured hip."
When we arrive at the Wrightwood Avenue two-story building, Aunt Marie takes me first to the downstairs flat where I meet Skinny Aunt Florence. The bottom flat is where she and her family live. A nurse, she's very pretty. Nervous, too. Dark hair. Her eyes sparkle as she talks. Softly, as my dad used to talk. Sometimes.
Ed Bailey, Florence's husband, sports a neat mustache and shakes my hand as if I am a fellow adult. "George," he says with an easy smile, "I am so happy you could visit us." He and Florence introduce me to their daughter and son, cousins. The older child, Pat Marie, with little help from her dad, twists her body and limbs this way and that, looking like a human twisted pretzel. I am amazed she doesn't feel pain.
Then, it's up the stairs we go. The rooms are darkened. Aunt Marie leads me to a side room where a gray-haired woman with plump, round face and hard eyes behind round wire rimmed glasses sits upright on a bed, a number of pillows bolstering her back. "Is that the Dago's kid?" she fumes, glaring, scowling.
"Ma, this is one of Jim's sons, Georgie," says Aunt Marie. I've made my decision she's my favorite of all my aunts, and she's obviously distressed by the old woman's snappish query. "What do you think of his curly red hair and all those freckles? He's Irish through and through."
Never in my life have I been mistaken for being of Italian descent. In fact, I win each and every freckle contest in my city's summer playground programs. The old lady frowns even more so, turns to look straight ahead, away from the sight of me. She says not another word.
Quickly, I turn and leave the room and rush down the stairs and out the back door of the two story building. A moment later, Mary Lee and Pat Marie join me.
"Don't feel bad, George. She's just that way," says Mary Lee who appears as if she might cry any moment.
"She's naturally ornery," pipes in the blasé Pat Marie. "You ought to see the way she treats Pa."
I show them. I'm just as tough as that old hen, maybe even tougher. "I don't care. She might not like me, but I don't like her, either." That was the last time I see Mary Smullen, my fraternal grandmother, for even back then I wasn’t likely to purposely seek painful experiences.
Ma Smullen, the former Mary Theresa McNicholas, was born in County Mayo, Ireland, three miles from Kiltimagh in the 1880's. Three reasons for the imprecision regarding the specific year of her birth include:
1. The 1920 U.S. census taken in Johnstown, NY, states Mary was born "about 1888."
2. The 1930 census lists, Mary, now a resident of Chicago as being born "about 1890."
3. Her obituary in the Chicago Tribune on July 31, 1958, states she was 74 years old at the time of her death. If one is to believe the obituary, she was born in 1884 or 1885, depending on her birth month.
Now, I don't know if Mary Theresa fibbed about her age to the census takers or not, but she did some fibbing regarding other subjects, including the Smullen name.
Her youngest son, my Uncle John, told me years later she'd tell him and his brothers and sister that Smullen was not an Irish name, at all. "Your father," she'd tell her offspring, "was a Mullen, and the Mullens were horse thieves. That's why he changed his name when he came to this country. Even the Krauts think the name's German."
Uncle John laughed when he told me the story. According to him, Mary told her son George he was named after a baseball player.
Twenty five years ago, I bicycled all of Ireland, including County Wicklow, where Grandfather Smullen was born. Nearby, I stopped by an old cemetery. There was a number of stones with the name Smullen on them, some as old as five hundred years. It turns out that Smullen precedes the names of Murphy, O'Malley, and all those names we instantly assume as being Irish.
I spent three days in Dublin at Christchurch, researching the family name. Turns out my great grandfather's name was also George Smullen. He worked as a mile man in Wicklow County for the Irish National Railroad. A mile man is just what the two words suggest: He was responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of one mile of rails. If anything untoward occurred on that specific set of tracks, the mile man was sacked. So, he'd better check the entire mile of tracks each and every morning, afternoon, and early evening, performing the same tasks, each and every day, seven days a week, making certain tracks and ties and spikes were in perfect order. If they weren't, he'd better make them so. Or else.
Why Grandfather Smullen didn't set his wife's stories straight can only be answered by him. And he's not around to do so.