A ONE WAY TICKET TO AMERICA

A ONE WAY TICKET TO AMERICA - By Veronica Breen Hogle

As she stood in her nightgown that frosty December morning, she looked frail and forlorn, and her long braids seemed too heavy as they hung like silver ropes over her stooped shoulders. Her face was flushed from crying one minute, and laughing the next. While we clung to each other, my grandmother whispered,
“Take this money, just in case. Ya never know what you’ll find when ya get ta the other side a the deep rollin’ foam!” pushing a roll of pounds sterling into my hands. I knew she was worried. I was nervous too, because I had accepted an offer of a one-way ticket to Houston. I was leaving my family, friends, and country to marry a man I met in France. All I knew about him and his family was what he told me in person, and in letters.

“If need be, this is your fare back home,” Gran reassured me. For years afterwards, I wondered what else she was feeling that morning, when I left Ireland and came alone to America.

In 1949, because both my parents were in a sanitarium to help them stop coughing, I was sent to live with my grandmother. She lived in a five-room, stone house, outside Graiguenamanagh, a village nestled at the foot of Mount Leinster, on the River Barrow, in County Kilkenny. I lived with her for two years. There wasn’t another child for miles around. When I looked outside, all I saw were gray rock walls and matching clouds that stretched endlessly. I was so lonely, I felt like a fallen leaf that dries up and blows away in the wind.

To get me used to life in the country, Gran taught me the calls of the thrush and the meadow larks. She showed me how to read the haze on the mountain to know what kind of a day to expect. We picked mushrooms that sprouted up in the dew-covered, green fields. We heard the bleating of the lambs and calves as we got water from the spring well.

“Go out an’ tell me who’s ridin’ at the head a the fox hunt,” she said, engaging me.
I stood at the green iron gate as men in scarlet jackets thundered by on horseback, followed by yelping dogs. I ran in and said, “The doctor’s at the head a the hunt.” Later in the evening, when I heard the dogs in the distance, I rushed back to the gate. My heart was beating with hope that the fox got away. But he was there -- draped over the front of the saddle; his amber, bushy tail hanging down, his ruby eyes wide open, staring at the sky.

Back inside the house, Gran was baking a ginger cake in an iron covered pan over the open fire. I liked the ritual of her firm hands tucking me in to bed at night, telling me stories about Queen Victoria, who had been princess of India When we went to mass in the Abbey and to market, Gran sported her Napoleon-style hat, and I wore green tartan ribbons. We traveled in our cart, drawn by Bertha, our silver-coated ass. We went by bus and train to visit the family. Without noticing it, I wasn’t so lonely after a while.

A slight figure with clear gray eyes, Gran wore mostly black, and always a hint of lavender. From living skin-to-skin with nature, her knowledge of cures from leaves, herbs, honey, plants, and nettle soup kept the doctor away. The midwife often sent for her to soothe mothers during long, difficult labors. On winter nights, we sat around the fire in the light of the oil lamp; and we brushed each other’s hair. That’s when she told me about herself, and the disappointment.

“I was born tiny an’ couldn’t keep anythin’ down ‘til they tried goat’s milk. Put a few drops a whiskey in it ta stimulate her appetite, said the doctor, an’ that saved me!” was a popular tale. When offered a whiskey, she would say, “Well, I’ll have a small one ta give me a little appetite,” her eyes dancing.

She often told me about the years she managed her father’s grocery and bar.
“I met your Grandfather one Saturday night when I was working behind the counter. He came in for a Guinness. I spotted him through the cloud of smoke when I looked in the Jamieson Whiskey mirror behind the cash register. He told me he was on a 90-day leave from India. “I’m fascinated with the story a the Taj Mahal. Have ya seen it?” I asked him.
“Yes. I’ve gone back a number of times to see the magnificent gardens,” he answered.
“Would you like to go for a walk by the river tomorrow, so we can talk some more about them?” he offered.

“We went for the first of many walks. He was from Athenry, the place in Galway where the prison ships left for Botany Bay. I took a shine ta him right away. His regiment was Prince Albert’s 11th Hussars, and he cut quite a dash on horseback. We were married before his leave was up!” Grandfather, dressed in his ornate uniform, with a sword in his white-gloved hand, looked down at us from his portrait on the kitchen wall.
“It’s five years since he died, and I still miss him every day,” she said looking up at him.

She told me about their seven children, and about my mother, the third born. “Your Mammy was born two weeks before the Easter Rebellion in Dublin in 1916, while Grandfather was fighting in North Africa for the British.

The year I came to live with her, Ireland became a republic. The country was poor and people didn’t have anything extra. All she had was her widow’s pension, and a house on an acre of land, benefits from the British Government. Once, while looking into the fire she told me,
“Long before I met your Grandfather, I had a disappointment. I was ta have married a man who left for America. He was ta have sent for me when he got settled in Boston. But . . . he never wrote. Not even a line ......” gazing deep into the fire.

It was 1965 when I said yes to an offer of a one way ticket to America. Gran, then 82, traveled the roads for the three-day farewell party, and to see me off. Through our sad and happy tears, I wondered if she was remembering her disappointment? She did not say anything. I did not ask.

It was a time in Ireland when only the doctor, hospital, and a few merchants in the small village had phones. People waited for the news in the hand-written letters with foreign stamps. I promised to write every week.
“Gran, You won’t believe it, but I’m writing to you as I sit out around the swimming pool in December. I can picture you sitting at the kitchen table, writing back to me in the circle of light from the paraffin lamp. I can hear your nib squeaking along the paper and the tapping of the nib on the bottle of black Indian ink. I miss the smoky sweet smell of the turf fire, and I feel lonely for you when I smell lavendar."

“Gran,” I wrote, “He was waiting at the airport. His beard is gone. He has a crew cut. He has joined the army. Something to do with a war in a place called 'Nam. Ever hear of that place? You won’t believe this, but before going to his mother’s house, we went to a restaurant where we didn’t even have to get out of the car. We were served by a waitress on roller skates, who attached our trays to the car window! She and the other waitresses wore the skimpiest little shorts!” I told her I’m drenched from the sweltering humidity in Houston, and my hair is wet and frizzy all the time. “The Mexican food is lovely an’ spicy; and cheaper than fish n’ chips. Oh, Gran, you won’t believe this. They ruin the tea. They put ice in it!”

In the third letter I wrote, “Alison, my future mother-in-law has turtles in the swimming pool. She swims with them at four in the morning -- with no bathing suit on!”
Gran wrote back saying she could imagine it all, and to stop looking out the window in the middle of the night. I wrote telling her that I’d been to a wake, but the man looked alive -- all dressed up as if he was going to a wedding! I told her that people always say, Gee, Golly, or Wow, after I say something.

“Oh Gran, things are really getting out of hand, Alison wants me to wear a Chantillly lace wedding dress that belongs to her friend! I look like a doily! What will I do?” Gran advised me to consider it. She also offered an Irish lace wedding dress, if I wished. When she got the wedding photos, she wrote saying, I was a lovely bride in the Chantilly lace wedding dress.

The weekly letters continued until four years later. Gran was standing at her gate, crying and laughing as she jubilantly hugged me. I had returned with my husband, the man who sent me the one way ticket, and our one-year old son. She was ready to go out to the Anchor Hotel in Graiguenamanagh for her favorite dinner of roast lamb with mint sauce.

“I’ll have a ‘small one’ ta give me a little appetite. Maybe I’ll have two taday now that I’m 86, an’ in honor a the visitors from America,” she announced, beaming. During dinner, she leaned towards me and whispered, “Ya know, the December mornin’ ya left on the one-way ticket ta America, I felt -- ya got ta go in my place,” her eyes dreamy.

Photo number one: My grandmother, Mary Kate Walshe of Bagenalstown, Co. Carlow 1909

Photo Number two: Mary Kate Walshe 1910.

Photo number three: Mary Kate Earls (nee Walshe) Eileen Breen, Veronica Breen Hogle, and Brian Hogle, Graiguenamanagh, Co. Kilkenny, 1969.