The Turfman
The Turfman's misadventures evolved in Feeley's bar on Willis Avenue in the South Bronx. Feely's was my father's social club for years after my folks moved to 137th Street and I also spent some bachelor times there. Although well known in the fifties as a popular Irish cabaret, it had that role only on weekend evenings. During the week it was a fairly typical Bronx Irish bar.
Feeley's had a daily crew of regulars, mostly pensioners or workmen between jobs and some with a day off. My father with his irregular workdays on the docks was one of the regulars and the Turfman was another. Why the Turfman had his nickname, I don't know. Pat Mc Nally was the day bartender. He was, as were many of his customers, of Irish birth and was a senior citizen. Although average in size, he ruled over the bar with a commanding presence. Any patron's perceived misconduct was instantly halted by an icy glare that would have been the envy of a Mother Superior or a British Army Sergeant Major.
His attitude towards most "narrowbacks", Irish-Americans like myself, was one of reserve, almost disdain. This attitude did not extend to me. On the contrary, he held me in high esteem. I gained this status by resurrecting his ancient home radio after several radio repairmen had pronounced it dead. I found it needed an obsolete old radio tube and asked about it where I worked. To my great surprise an older radiomen, who worked with me, had one in his basement. I plugged the tube into Mc Nally's old set, the mellow deep 1930's sound poured out, and my special status was forever secured.
The group of regulars spent much of their leisure time in daily arduous bar room pursuits similar to those on the much-later TV show, "Cheers", that is, in gossip and watching TV sports. They were also a scholarly debating society. Although these men had only a few years of grade school in their native Ireland, they read the Daily News and the old Journal-American thoroughly. Local and world events were debated fiercely. Irish events in the United States were always important matters of discussion. Also any comment or statement uttered by a regular could become the subject of an inquiry and debate. The name of an obscure river in Ireland, the population of a town in Ireland, the date of an event, the name of Colin Kelly's son, almost anything was fair game for debate. In truth, many of the subjects discussed could be labeled Irish trivia. The scholars were a select group from whom narrowbacks were silently excluded. Despite my special status with Mc Nally I knew better than to venture an opinion when the debating society was in session. Under a strict protocol maintained by McNally, there could be no halfway participants. You were either "in for a pound" or you were a silent observer. A disputed subject would be debated at length, sometimes even for a week.
When all the scholars had finally backed their position with a small wager, and not before, Mc Nally announced it was time to look at the books. Most of the answers could be found in set of reference books kept behind the bar by Mc Nally. My Pop called them the Book Of Kells. They included two massive Irish reference books, one on Irish history, the other on Irish geography. My family formerly had these two books at home until my father foolishly brought them in to prove a point. The books were appropriated for the continuing search for truth and never returned. When the moment came Mc Nally would, with great pomp and circumstance, search for the item in the index of each book and then read out the Truth in his best parade manner voice. It was like St. Peter on Judgement Day and no appeals were heard nor granted. The scholar who had the most correct position then received appropriate recognition from his peers, wagers was paid, and an exchange of drinks sealed the records.
As I said the Turfman was one of the regulars, a tall red-faced Irishman, slovenly and lumpish in appearance, although not stout. He was surly and abrasive in his ways, not a pleasant man. What was especially unpleasant about him to his colleagues was that he was so often correct. He would participate in the debates, state his position with a loud arrogance, and to the dismay of all was almost always right. Worse yet, he was not a graceful winner. In fact, the opposite was true. He would rub their noses in each defeat individually and collectively. The group would have loved to be rid of him but could hardly ban him for being a greater scholar. My father would come home totally confounded, "How could such a dense and stupid man have the right story on so many different questions?"
I found out the secret of his scholarly success accidentally while on my own scholarly pursuits. I had that year quit my airport job to attend college. The freshman English course, Humanities, required frequent library reference and the library on Alexander Ave. was my quiet retreat. To my surprise, I saw the Turfman there regularly, a steady customer for the many Irish reference books they had there. Though normal for one raised in this country, the library was a most unusual place for Irish born workers. I think few of them had ever even been inside a library. I told my Pop about it and he was dumfounded. He had to keep quiet about it, after all, the man was still within his rights. The suspicion remained though that for a member of the Feeley's debating society, it bordered on cheating. Pop was careful thereafter in wagers with him. The source of the Turfman's wisdom gradually became known and his position as a scholar fell under a shadow.
The Turfman's standing was shattered one afternoon in Feeley's and, I happened to be a witness. The peripheral details have faded, but the downfall was so sudden, unexpected, and so humiliating to the Turfman, the memory is still vivid. The central figure, whose identity I don't recall, was one of the regulars, a middle aged, medium size Irish workingman. A woman, Mary who was apparently his wife, was chastising him. She was an Irish woman of similar age and height but much stockier than he. Mary, herself no stranger to Feely's bar, was trying to convince the man that he had enough to drink and should go on home. The Turfman happened to enter at this time, saw his friend at the bar, and in a moment of ignorant comradeship called for drinks for the group. Mary, like many an Irish wife, blamed her husband's problem on his drinking cronies and particularly, at that moment, on the Turfman. She loudly told him to take himself away from her husband and to stay away. The Turfman foolishly confronted her face to face, or rather chest to formidable chest, and told her he would drink with whom he pleased. Mary was half his height but twice his girth, as round and as hard as a fair sized tree. In fury she slammed him once in the chest with a massive fist. To my astonishment and no doubt to his also, this large lump of a man flew backward ten foot to the double doors through which he had so recently entered. The doors crashed open behind him and he continued out onto the sidewalk of Willis Avenue like the villain in a western movie. The Turfman just managed to keep his footing, and stood for some moments on the sidewalk while fighting to get some air into his battered chest. Then he slunk back into Feely's like a chastised oversize dog. He went quietly to the other end, far from his former drinking friend and the still belligerent Mary. He called for a drink in an attempt to retain his dignity, but it was a lost cause. His case was clear to the chief justice, Mc Nally, and to the firm jurors who lined the bar. First with his questionable library excursions, now with his proven lack of common sense, the Turfman had lost his dubious rank as a Feeley scholar. From that day on, he had no place in the Feely's debates.
Feely's Bar
Feely's, described below, was a well known South Bronx bar and cabaret. I'm including this little profile because it and it's counterparts have passed into history along with the Bronx of it's day. The "bar" is a stereotype of the old Bronx Irish neighborhood. It's true most Irish neighborhoods in the Bronx of my youth had many bars and most of them had a steady clientele. The bar were not so much a drinking place but a club room, a quite place away from the noisy confines of an overcrowded apartment. Upstairs each night three to six kids (and sometimes more) filled the living room and the kitchen while reciting endless recitations and answering catechism questions as they did their homework for the strict parochial schools.
One truth lost in the stereotype of Irish drinking is that many Irishmen drank little or no alcohol. My wife's father and all his friends seldom drank and would never set foot in a bar. Most Irish women never touched alcohol except a glass of wine or a light highball on holiday occasions. Still, if truth be told, the bar was an integral part of the social life for many South Bronx Irish and Irish-American men. Feely's was the bar which my father frequented for years after my folks moved to 137th Street in 1951. The owner and many of the patrons were long time friends from close to his home in Ireland. Feeley's was more than the usual local bar. It was a typical Bronx Irish bar during the week but a celebrated Irish cabaret on weekend evenings. Roger Feeley had a large and very popular summer place in East Durham in the Catskills and later in Atlantic City. This drew the winter weekend evening crowd to Willis Avenue. I spent some of my bachelor times in Feeley's while my brother and friends were still in the service. On weekends, Feeley's had Irish dancing with many lovely young ladies to dance with. Then and later when I was in college, Feeley's was a place to go. It wasn't the "Cheers" we saw later on TV, not near as decorative or classy ambiance, but the general feeling and the characters of the Cheers bar were familiar.
The establishment was hardly grand, about twenty foot wide, with two glass store windows framing a wide double entry door. The windows were standard, dressed with fluted cardboard decorations supplied by a liquor vendor. There was always an overlay of dead flies on the floor of the window space. Numerous potted geraniums lined the rear of the window, forever blooming despite the thick cigarette smoke and the smell of stale beer. The floor was the common tile store floor, white set with small octagons. A dark mahogany colored bar stretched thirty feet on the right side as you entered. It curved to the wall about five foot from the front and was closed off from the rear dance floor by a partition. The bar had the usual rear wall mirrors, elaborate wood work, shelves filled with liquor bottles on top, and cabinets on the bottom. At the back or the bar were also posters announcing Irish football matches, several calendars with Irish scenes, and a large frame exhibiting ribbons from the National Dog Show. A brass footrail and a long row of weathered wooden bar stools furnished the front of the bar. There were two separate groupings of beer taps in the bar, attesting to the size of the house on weekend dancing nights.
A four-foot high partition which ran the length of the bar evenly divided the remaining space into the bar customer area and a sitting area called the ladies room or restaurant area. A row of tables and chairs ran along the wall in the ladies area and continued into a large rear area also partitioned from the bar. The partition, I was told, resulted from a fiction in the New York law passed after the repeal of prohibition. The law ruled that saloons were illegal. The bars were, in this legal fiction, not bars but restaurants. The bar existed only as a service bar to a restaurant and had to be in a separate room from the restaurant. As a result of this fiction all bars in New York City at that time had a separate family or ladies area screened off from the bar by a four foot high partition and many had a separate family entrance. Also all bars were required to serve food if a customer was foolish enough to demand it.
The rear area had a dance floor, overlooked by a narrow raised bandstand. The dance floor was about twelve by fifteen foot in width, about twice as large as the floor in Katie Daley's, the popular Irish place on Long Island in recent times. Feeley's was very popular during the early 1950's. Every Saturday night the backroom was packed with couples whirling around the floor to Irish music. The band was always led by John Mc Grath, a local violin "professor" and a brother of Mike, the evening bartender. For several years his accomplices was the Ryan brothers, childhood neighbors of mine from 162nd Street.
The Sunday crowd, particularly after the Sunday noon Mass on a scorching hot summer day, would be a fair size. This scandalized some of the parishioners but it was only a short social cool-off visit for the family people and only the young men stayed for long. I first encountered this Sunday after-mass social club atmosphere when my brother Joe came home from the service. We were having a cool beer in Feeley's on a hot Sunday afternoon when four young girls stopped in and started chatting with us. They were girls from the neighborhood who thought nothing of stopping into Feeley's bar to meet some guys. I remember we were surprised by their forwardness but after all, that's where the guys were. We dated these girls and Joe eventually became engaged to one, Annie, for a short while. There were many other girls from the same neighborhood who had an opposing view about bars. My future wife Alice and her friends would never enter a bar then and will not even to this day. Also at Irish dances, and sometimes in Feely's when there was dancing, I would meet Irish-born girls who wore the pin of the Pioneer Society, the Irish total abstinence society. Those pretty girls were usually determined drys, true sisters of Prohibition's legendary Carrie "Hatchet". Their Irish wit was as sharp as Carrie's famous hatchet, as they joined in witty and abusive repartee with non-drys like me who tried to socialize with them.
Feeley's in the evenings during the week was much quieter, a club for a mixture of family men and young single men. For the married men it was a little quiet and socialization in the evening. For the young single men it was the same as the sports bar of today with the television always on. Watching the "Fights" on TV, then a regular weekly feature, was a obligation as serious as attending Sunday Mass. There was also often a musician or two in the back. John Mc Grath, the Professor, frequently was there playing his violin, his bow fingers frozen in place. An other local man, who I clearly remember but whose name I cant recall, often played a set of bagpipes that had to be squeezed under his arm.
During the weekdays Feely's was tended and ruled over by Pat McNally, an imposing Irish born senior citizen. Beside Himself, the major decoration behind the bar was the previously mentioned picture frame exhibiting a half dozen blue, red, and yellow ribbons. These ribbons were the past triumphs of McNally's wire haired Irish terrier, a champion in the National Dog Show in Madison Square Garden in years past. The dog was a regular outside the door and like some of the other elder Irish ladies along Willis Avenue, her appearance gave faint hint of her youthful beauty.
McNally ruled over a daily crew of regulars, mostly pensioners or workmen between jobs or on a day off. This group spent their leisure time in daily arduous bar room pursuits, gossip and watching TV sports, similar to those on the more recent TV show "Cheers" and in endless debates. My little story, "The Turfman", describes an incident involving the Feely's debating society. Feely's, indeed, was more than just a bar.
The Hero
In my youth Ireland was a constant presence. My folks and their friends called it the "old country". Ireland was the beautiful homeland they left to make a better life in America. They loved America with a passion and no one could speak ill of their beloved USA. But Ireland, the home of their childhood, was a constant presence with them; in their speech, their thoughts, their home, their music, and in the Irish friends that surrounded them. My father had mostly good images of Ireland; of good times with good friends, good nostalgic memories although he left home quite young. My Aunt told me that he and some others left rather hurriedly for the coal mines of England because of some trees they had chopped down in the lord's woods nearby. Whatever the reason, his choice was a good one. It was at the beginning of the Great World War. Legions of his fellow Irish youths were, at that time, joining the British army. They joined for the money or were caught up in the glamour of the military life. Unknowingly, they were destined for the killing fields between the trenches in France. The Irish Rebellion, the excesses of the "black and tans", and the terrible troubles of the Irish Civil War all beset Ireland during the years Pop was in the coal mines of England. Perhaps all my siblings and I owe our existence to some purloined trees from the woods of a so-called Irish lord back in 1915.
I recall now that in that solidly Irish community of my youth, there was a pride in being Irish and an apparent widespread good fellowship among them. Many of them were from neighboring places in Ireland. There was seldom any mention of those troubled times in Ireland. There was an almost universal hatred for the English and especially for the "black and tans". Occasionally there was an odd phrase about someone having been a Republican or a Free State man. Still, seldom did I hear any talk about those happenings that started with the Easter Week martyrs and culminated in the bloody Irish Civil War. I didn't even know until years later there had been a civil war with Irishmen killing Irishmen. The "troubles" the old folks spoke of may have included many things that were best left unspoken.
Like many young Irish-Americans I had a romantic image of those "bold lads" who fought the English in the times of the "troubles". I thought of them as heroes of my parent's age group and as respected citizens in this very Irish neighborhood. Sometimes at a wake, I would see the tri-color flag draped over the casket honoring the deceased as a fighter for "The Republic" in his youth. I saw still another picture after chatting one day with my father in Feeley's. A man paused to speak with my father and when the man left Pop told me his story. My father was in Feeley's one day cashing a check. McNally, the bartender, said Pop's name and a man sitting near by spoke up. "John Haran. I can never forget the name John Haran!" He then asked Pop if he was the same man he had encountered on a train years before....
Pop was returning home after several years in England. He had been working in the coal mines and the pallor of underground work had replaced his healthy farm boy skin coloring. Suddenly the train stopped and a group of soldiers came into the car. It was the time of "The Troubles" and they apparently were searching for an escaped prisoner. They immediately singled out my father because of his pale skin, so like that of a prisoner. Pop told the soldiers his story about being several years in England in the coal mines. They were at first unwilling to give up on such a fine prospect but Pop withstood their intensive grilling. He finally convinced them he was, in truth, John Haran of County Mayo. In their zeal to arrest my father, they overlooked a slight man who was sitting quietly beside Pop all through the encounter. They left Pop and continued their search down the remainder of the train. When the train later slowed to enter the next station, his quiet seatmate jumped up and opened the window. "John Haran", he said, "I'll never forget you, it's me they're after". He slipped through the window and disappeared. Thirty odd years later, when this man in Feeley's heard my father's name, he still remembered. Pop also, just as clearly, recalled the event. Pop said the man bought my father a drink to commemorate their meeting...
I had seen the man before, and thought of him as just one of the many Irish bachelors in the neighborhood. They lived in the brownstone rooming houses and frequented the local bars. Some were teetotalers and regular participants at the open forum in front of the Rexall drug store at the corner of 138th Street. In the bar, always ready for a little conversation, their talk exposed the loneliness of their lives. Their work and the local meeting place seemed their only social life. My father's friend had features seemingly common to these men; a slightly pudgy face, ruddy complexion, graying hair and in the upper end of the midyears. In the succeeding years after this event, I saw his face become even more ruddy as he became more and more a heavy drinker. When Pop told me the story, I thought how different real life was from what we imagine and I might have felt a twinge of disillusionment. My romantic image of the "bold lads" was never quite the same.
Meeting Dad
When I was single and dating the girls in the South Bronx, the initial visit to the girl's home was always an experience. You were introduced to her parents, and the mother was always very friendly. Her Dad was always more cautious. After a brief hello, you date disappeared to finish her makeup and the mother returned to the kitchen. Then the friendly inquisition began. There was always four questions the girl’s Dad would ask. The first three were; "What County (in Ireland) does your father come from?", "What line of work are you in?", and "Why aren’t you on the Cops". His brogue capitalized the 'C' in County and in Cops. A six-foot Bronx Irish—American lad like myself, who was not on the Cops or in the Fire Department, had better have a good explanation if he wanted to continue the relationship. When my defense was presented, that I was an engineer, this only raised the level of the courteous inquisition. "Do you mean you are a motorman on the subway trains? No! Well now, if you don’t drive a train, what do you do?" I found it difficult to explain just what I did which at that time was developing electronic circuitry for a classified military project. It was hard to bridge the gap between the Dad’s working experience and my technological work day. Often I left feeling I had not quite made the grade with the girls Dad.
I don’t recall my initial interview with the significant Dad, the one who became my father—in—law. He had an innate quiet courtesy. I was dating his daughter for some time before I found out he was well educated in physics with a college degree earned before he left Northern Ireland for America. His reasons for leaving were never discussed but apparently his abhorrence for British rule was matched by his abhorrence for teaching as a life work.
