The Girl in the Photograph

Did you have a close childhood friend whom you’ll always remember?

During the 1940s and ‘50s, Ann Farrell lived next door to me in Bagenalstown, a little town in Ireland. Recently, I had a big shock. I heard that the old grocery shop, where Ann’s family had lived for hundreds of years was gutted. Gone. Hearing the news, I felt as if a piece of me was gone too.

Ann’s family owned the grocery shop that had everything from sacks of flour standing beside the brass scales, to variegated rhubarb, leafy heads of cabbage, and showy red flowers inside the door. Succulent cooked ham was hand-carved to order. On the counter, cream puffs hid under a frosted glass dome beside the box of marshmallow mice. Delectable imported fruits, half-dressed in colored tissue paper, added their fruity scents to the smell of warm bread, and the sweet aroma of tobacco.

Ann was 15 months older, and half a head shorter than me, with wispy brown hair, slanted teeth and velvet brown eyes. Cupping her hand around my ear she whispered, “Did ya know that only the Protestants buy the grapefruit and eat it with spoons that have teeth on the sides?” We’d have given anything for just one look at such a spoon.

We loved making up geography games and we used fruit for clues and prizes.
“A banana if ya know where the bananas come from?” Ann tested me.
“The Canary Islands!” I shouted back, catching a banana flying at me.
I bartered hard with her for bananas and other exotic imported fruit, which was such a luxury, people only got it when they were sick or at Christmas time.

We caught tadpoles in the river with jam jars and watched them turn into frogs in the whiskey barrel in her back yard. At night, the hen house was our theatre, with cross hens protesting our lighting effects from flashlights.

In summer, we swam in the chilly River Barrow until we were blue with the cold, practicing for regional competitions. No matter how hard I tried, Ann beat me in every race and as I stood clapping for her, I often wondered if there was any fairness in the world at all. But my losses were short lived. Afterwards, Ann always had money to go to Slater’s shop where we gorged ourselves on bananas splits.

School was no bother to Ann either and she helped me with algebra telling me I was a desperate case. Then came Latin and she explained it much better than Sister Mary Kathleen. “Look out at the Jackdaws. Avis means birds - that’s how they got the word a-vi-a-tion - ta fly,” Ann said, gliding like a bird.

When Ann was 16 years old, I was devastated when she and her family moved to England, and left me behind. When she returned 15 months later for a holiday, she was gorgeous and glamorous, her eyes shaded and penciled like Cleopatra. But she had such a Lancashire accent, I could hardly understand her, while she told me things about the facts of life that made my eyes huge. That was the last time we were together.

When she returned to Ireland for her honeymoon, I was no longer living there. Over time, continents widened our separation, but didn’t lessen the loss, when cancer claimed her spunky life several years ago.

Now I struggle with the recent shock - that the last piece of her - her old house, is gone, forever. But Ann will always be remembered. Thanks to the Carlow Nationalist, this story and a huge photo of Ann appeared in its December 9th, 2005 edition. The story brought her memory back to many local people and to relatives as far away as New Zealand. It helped me finish grieving for Ann.

Paddy Moore, owner of the spiffy new "Roosters" has the original story in which at the end Ann is saying to me, "A fried bananaa is ya know what fruits are native ta China?" He also has the photograph of the girl who used to live in that space, next door to me, over 50 years ago. ##

*This story was previously published in the The Carlow Nationalist, Ireland

Story ID:	51
Written by:	Veronica Breen Hogle (bio, contact, other stories)
Organization:	Irish Cultural Events
Story type:	Story
Location:	Bagenalstown Co. Carlow Ireland
Year:	1955
Person:	Ann Farrell