A Man for all Counties

opposed to “that corner,” or, “this very day” rather than “today.” With Pat, words become alive, with a buoyant sense of exactness that when spoken became an expression that was complemented by the lilting rhythm of almost every sentence.

In short, I liked him a great deal and I was pleased to be included for what was obviously an adult visit.

At the ring of our apartment doorbell, I would be there to greet him at the door. There would be a confirmation of summer as Pat hands me his straw hat. After a short handshake and a “Good to see you Martin,” to my father, he sat down comfortably on a living-room chair with his hands clasped in front of him. As he sat there with his warm sense of presence already filling the room, he could be described as being “at the height of his ease,” as my mother would say.

Here in our small apartment, Pat found himself in front of a rapt audience awaiting to hear the news of the day. Since he was a person who was invited to almost everything of consequence in the neighborhood, he would first bring my parents up to speed on any wedding or wake he might have attended.

On this occasion, he began with a wake in of all places, the Bronx.

“You will remember Mickey Gilmartin, won’t you, Martin, from around Killybegs, if I recall, big on the fishing. Well, it was his wake I thought I was attending.”

There it is: the opening sentence. But it is pure joy to see how long it takes him to embellish the thought, his face full of expression, his first line delivered with the poise of a veteran actor on the stage. I saw his style as a natural gift, like a Ted Williams swing.

I was still standing by the door, hoping that no distraction would arise to cause me to leave this living room. I was as eager as my parents to learn what might happen next. I was completely aware that I was in the hands of a master of his trade.

My father jumped in then with the comment that he was sure Mickey had passed away some time ago. “I worked with him on a construction job when I first came out,” he added lending a little credibility to his observation.

“Sure indeed, Martin, you couldn’t be more correct. It wasn’t the Mickey Gilmartin I knew at all, at all.”

Then there is yet another pause. If one didn’t know the full dimension of Pat’s personality, a listener might assume that Pat was acknowledging a mistaken conclusion, but of course, he was heading for bigger game, and my parents knew it. They stayed silent as he then continued.

“Sure I knew it well enough when I saw the people walking into the funeral home ahead of me. I was thinking of the wasted long trip I had just taken on the IRT, past Yankee Stadium mind you, my own fault, but nevertheless, now that I was there, I decided to pay my respects and wasn’t I very glad I did.”

There was a distinctive nod of his head at the end of his statement, as if in approval of his spontaneous decision to go into the crowded funeral home despite his lack of acquaintance with the body on display or for that matter with the family who were in mourning. I also got a sense that Pat Casey imparted a certain truth: that life is absolutely loaded with such chance occurrences, as when you mistakenly attend the wake of some unfortunate stranger. But, Pat Casey was a man who could go with the flow, the steady stream of life’s occasions that could often lead to broader horizon.

Pat Casey was a master of pace, glibly moving from the news of all things Irish, and to the wake, and on to the real matter at hand; the condition of everyone else in the parish. This was not, except for a few well- chosen queries, a three-way conversation.

Implicitly, everyone knew that Pat would be offered a drink. I recall that it would be my mother who would make the offer, feminizing the event.

“Will you have a drink then Pat?” she would ask, leaning forward in her hospitable manner with a laugh in her voice, as if the offer was a household tradition, which to a degree it was, and further, that he was expected to oblige.

“Well…” He, like many Irish men, was a great one for introducing almost any afterthought with the word ‘well.’ “Well, I think I will now, perhaps a little toast.” My father, then, would get up to get Pat his well-deserved drink.

After receiving his drink, Pat would continue. “Well I was up to the

O’Riellys’ place last week and things aren’t going too well there at all, at all, I can tell you.”

With these words there is a slight change in his presentation, leaving his good-natured affability to impart a deeper emotion; not quite with a frown, not at all implying judgment, but more conveying a knowing sense that life can be very hard on those who fall on tough times.

Then, too, there was another type of innuendo that was sure to get a reaction: “Well, I was over to the Brogans’ this very past Tuesday, and didn’t they move to a nice apartment on Lincoln Place, but, while I was there the phone rang.”

“No,” my mother exclaimed, expressing surprise, and fully sharing Pat’s incredulity that the Brogans would even know how to dial a phone much less to own one.

They’re all laughing good-naturedly at this point, and Pat might throw in a barb about the incredible heights that the Brogan’s had come, considering the boglike characteristics of their home town in a remote area in Kerry, yet another Irish county in a small country jammed-packed with no less than thirty-two little counties having lilting names that sound as if they were locations in a Celtic fairy tale.

“Tis a great country, after all,” adds Pat, as he leans back in his chair.

To a great degree, this is what it is all about. All of them were on shaky ground and they knew it. There was in this visit the underpinnings of a hope that the Brennans are not falling behind God forbid. Ultimately, they and everyone else on the route wanted to preserve their old world and its values even as they tried to embrace the new, as daunting as that task appeared. They considered themselves always to be on the edge, and Pat Casey was the chronicler of their changing conditions however good or bad…