[Incorrigible]

"Stab City" always cracks me up!

My grandmother came from Limerick and never talked about her family and never returned despite a few opportunities to do so!

She would have been the same age as Frank McCourt's mother so who knows!

[IrishMike]

Frank McCourt's mother (poor woman)

A lot of your grandmothers generation never returned, had no desire, they left hunger and poverty. Families were split, Australia, Europe, England and the States.
At one time 10% of the American population was Irish emigrants.

Back to the McCourts, born in America, during the great depression, alcoholic Protestant father, originally from the North (during the era of the black n Tans), and he leaves America to raise a family in catholic Limerick city.


WTF was in his mind !!

[wideawake]

My great-aunt was the matriarch in the family who came to America at 16 to work as a seamstress in Manhattan.

She was from rural Mayo.

She never went back to Ireland and never made a nostalgic comment about it. She died at the age of 92.

Her children invited her again and again to visit Ireland with them and she usually responded by saying: "Why would I want go there? I'm an American!" or "I'll go, but not by plane. I'll drive to meet you when they build the bridge."

Both comments delivered in her heavy brogue, of course.