All those smells... and the kids, we were the great unwashed... nobody ever knew what a shower was... We washed maybe from eyebrow to chin, week after week after week. Our crotches were innocent of water.
When I first came to New York and saw Italian families and their displays of affection, I was taken aback a bit because it was uninhibited.
The poverty and the influence of the church were very damaging. It damaged all of us emotionally. To be poor deprives you of self-esteem.
We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.
I was tormented. Fear and trembling. And a sense of doom. A literal belief in hell. Hell for eternity. With devils chasing you for eternity with pitchforks. I trembled. I couldn't go to sleep for fear I might die and wake up in hell. I was in agony.
We were just slogging on from day to day and making the best of it. But with a light at the end of the tunnel... AMERICA!
Happiness is hard to recall. Its just a glow.
Before the famine, which was in the 1840s, that was an emotional turning point... There are various documents showing how the Elizabethan English, in particular, were shocked by Irish displays of affection, by the way women acted toward strangers, walking up and putting their arms around them and kissing them right full on the mouth.
It's not just Catholic versus Protestant any more. I read somewhere that in any construction site in Belfast, they have protection rackets. And you have to clear your trucking with the IRA, just like the Mafia here.
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