“From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us.”
A Cornish Prayer.
When we first moved to Pope’s Hill, I easily made friends with the Penneys and the Slatterys who lived across the street. They were such nice people. Ma (Bertha) and Pa (Arthur) Penney lived on the second floor. Their daughter, Lorraine Slattery, her husband Jim, and their kids lived on the first floor. Ma Penney was a dynamo. She loved to clean and to bake. She would often invite me over to her apartment after my kids had gone back to the afternoon school session to have tea while we tried to figure out her medical bills. They confused her – and me. For a few years, she and I would dress up in horrible costumes on Halloween and then go out to visit Ma’s friends in the neighborhood. We were crazy to get dressed up but the neighbors loved seeing us, especially seeing Ma.
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I must mention a few more things about the Irish Village. Tom MacCormack, the dining room manager and now one of the owners, just loves fudge. Because he is so kind to our group, every time we are at the Irish Village, we all pitch in to get some fudge at the Stage Stop Candy Store in Dennisport, for him. Eileen Collins volunteers to drive to the store and come back with different types of fudge. We heard that Tom shares some of the fudge with his kitchen crew.
Often I sit with the gals from Lower Mills at the Irish Village. They are such a nice group. Barbara Sullivan told me that she had come in third in the state’s Senior Art Exhibit, sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth (William Galvin). Barbara brought me a copy of her winning card. It was adorable. She has painted a part of Adams Corner (the facade of the Eire Pub and a little bit of the Old Dorchester Post). Also on the card are: a four-member Salvation Army band, a mother and daughter holding presents, a little boy with his dog, and a sidewalk vendor with her wagon of wares. The card is so cute that I will keep it on our refrigerator until New Year’s. Barbara’s card was on display at the Archives Building, through Oct. 25.
While we were at the Irish Village, Eileen Collins met a tour rep., Cathy, whom we had been with in Branson, Missouri, about 10 years ago. Eileen recalls that we were very late coming into our hotel the first evening. Cathy thought that there might not be enough food for us so she went out and bought oatmeal and bananas on her own. Eileen and Cathy had a great chat while they were at the Irish Village.
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By the way, we had some great waiters and waitresses at the Village. One was Viktor Minkov, a young man from Bulgaria. He was terrific. So was Rosie, our waitress. While we were there, we recognized our bartender, Michael. We had heard him sing often over the years. We prevailed upon him to sing and sing he did – for us. What a great voice he has.
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On the Sunday of Columbus Day weekend, daughter Sue invited Hubby and me to brunch at the Fox and Hound Restaurant for our 80th birthdays. It was a lovely day as we drove along Wollaston Beach and pulled into the front parking lot at the restaurant. As I was getting out of our car, I saw our son Paul and daughter-in-law Alex in the car next to ours. When we all got out of our cars, we chatted a little. Then, all of a sudden, daughter Jeanne, son-in-law David, and the World’s Greatest Grandchildren, Brendan and Erin, came walking up the driveway from the back parking lot. Sue told us that she planned the brunch so that both grandkids would be home from school and would have the Monday holiday off from their schools. Jeanne, a school nurse, would have Monday off and Alex would be off from Brandeis.
We walked into the restaurant and were ushered to our table of nine, which was all set up. After giving our juice orders, we were invited to go up to the brunch tables. There was such a variety of foods: scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, chicken, broccoli, and ziti, baked chicken, home fries, French toast, pasta salad, regular salad, cinnamon buns and other pastries, plus cut-up cantaloupe, strawberries, and scrumptious pineapple. Brendan was sitting across from me. I thought, as a growing young man, he would eat more than he took. When I asked him if he was okay, he said, “I was up early this morning and already had something to eat.”
For our 80th birthday, daughter Sue gave us a photo album filled with photos that mean a great deal to us. I had brought the birthday book to the brunch. It started off with wedding photos of Hubby and me from July 2, 1960. After our wedding photos, the next photo is a photo of Hubby and me at the lovely party given by the city of Boston for couples married 50 years or more. There was a photo of Sue, Jeanne, plus Hubby’s brother John and his wife Joe Ann (named for her grandfather) from our 50th anniversary party four years ago. (Joe Ann passed away just two weeks ago; John died last year on Jan. 2.) There was a good-sized photo of photo of me, at probably four years of age. I loved the photo of my aunts Getta and Ethel and their brother, my Uncle Tom. (Getta was named for her aunt Getta, who was named for the Battle of Gettysburg.).
Sue didn’t leave out Dorchester. There is a photo of Hubby and me, with Sue and the World’s Greatest Grandchildren in Gerard’s parking lot after we had eaten some great food in the restaurant. There was a page devoted to my late brother Jackie and his wife Valerie. One photo was from their wedding; the second was from their 45th anniversary. (Val just celebrated her birthday this week.) There is another photo of Hubby’s brother John and Joe Ann, his sister Peg, and Hubby and me sitting on a wall outside Phillips Old Colony House on Morrissey Blvd. How John loved Phillips! There was a photo of Hubby’s parents, John and Margaret, holding their toddler grandchildren, Paul and Sue, on Easter 1963. Grandpa John died suddenly two months later.
In the book, there were two pages given over to all my cousins who were at our 50th anniversary celebration at the Fox and Hound Restaurant. There was one with all eight of us. The second photo was of just the girl cousins. There is a great photo of cousin Carolyn and her husband Rock. On that same page, there is a wonderful photo of my late cousin Nancy, Carolyn’s sister, sitting, happily, on the rocks near her Maine cottage. The next page is my cousin (and Godson) Richard with his arm around me on Thanksgiving two years ago. My Horgan cousins, Nancy, Carolyn, and Richard, are well known in Neponset because they went to St. Ann’s School and Carolyn and Richard were in St. Ann’s Band.
Daughter-in-law Alex pored over the book because she didn’t know the people in the older photographs. She figured, correctly, that the elderly couple in some of the photos were my grandparents, with whom our family lived during World War II when there were no apartments to rent. There was a wonderful newspaper photo of my parish priest when I was a kid, retired Bishop Joseph Maguire, who celebrated his 95th birthday in September. I remembered when he was transferred from our parish, Blessed Sacrament in Jamaica Plain. Even our parish’s nuns joined us in crying when he left. One of his assignments over the years was as secretary to Cardinal Richard Cushing for some time. He saw me a few years ago at the final Mass when the Blessed Sacrament Church closed and he remembered my name.
Also in the book are photos of the front of the buildings that housed Girls’ Latin School and State Teachers’ College at Boston, where Hubby and I both went to school. There was a photo, taken in Rockport, where everyone except Alex was sitting on the front stairs of Jeanne and David’s home. If you have about eight or ten stairs going into your home, then you have a great place to take photos of a fairly large group of people. You don’t have to worry about who is short or who is tall. Except for little kids, they are all about the same height sitting on the stairs. I was delighted that Sue included a photo of Hubby’s former boss, Jim Kean, whom Hubby loved, at his and his wife Eleanor’s wedding, which their daughter Nancy had put on Facebook.
At the end of the brunch, all nine of us gathered outside the restaurant. Hubby, Paul, and Sue all had cameras. We wanted to get a photo with all nine of us in it. Sue went back into the restaurant and asked the hostess if she would take our photos for us. Out she came. She did a grand job. We’ll give the photos to all the kids. There will be more about our 80th birthday book next week, with lots of local folks in it.
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Don’t forget to turn your clocks back one hour before you go to bed this Saturday evening. (“Spring forward; Fall back!”)
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Since we have had several momentous birthdays in the past month, this seems very apropos: “When it takes longer to rest than it did to get tired, it may just be that we have started down the other side of life’s road.”
