My aunt went to NY in early sixties. She said there was so much food she put on two stone in six months and had to diet. It was a shock to go from Connemara to Manhattan. But America was considered safer than London then.
She married a man from Boston. He said they were so poor he was, as a baby, put in front of oven in a basket to keep warm. His brothers fought in WW2 and survived. I asked him if that was a big thing to fight and he said no as all the men in neighbourhood of same age were off at war.
They never had kids. They would come back to Connemara on holidays up to early 80s. Her husband - my uncle - used to laughingly complain about how complicated the old money was with pounds shilling and pence and then he got to know it and they changed it.
He was a lovely lovely man. I was obsessed with cowboys and Indians and as he was American he assured me his best friend was a chief. He’d had a horse with two tails so cowboys didn’t know what direction he was going. He’d say my auntie rode side saddle behind them and quickly shush my laughing as she approached.
Later he thought me to wolf whistle with my fingers. I adored him. When they went home I’d get all the Irish change left over. I remember their airline travel bags (like sort of over shoulder old football bags) and how exotic it all was.
When my grandparents died my aunt’s visits slowed and then stopped. She got very upset coming home and then having to leave and eventually she stopped flying. When I was older I’d visit them in Boston.
Her husband died a few years back and his family mind her and are great to her. She’s about 87 now. She’s had a lovely life, was adored by her husband and his family and my other aunt in Boston and her family , but I think that emigrating and not having kids meant she carried a certain ennui or sadness.
My mother’s two brothers in Chicago fell out but that’s another story.
. Paddy could pay for the proper wedding next month in one foul swoop.