Ting-A-Ling !

The hardware store just off Eyre Square in Galway beckoned me to enter. Unknowingly of my need for number 7- sized wood screws and a roll of black electrical tape, I was under the spell of the phantom of tools. I don't know the name of the store, nor does anyone inside know my name.

Hardware stores, indeed small variety stores, did not outnumber the large chain stores in this Irish City of Strangers at they once did.

Sad to say, the corner hardware store, candy store and neighborhood family-operated shops were fading quickly ever since the 1960’s in Ireland and the States as well.
Although Galway is a city, it is not as "city-fied" as such in Pennsylvania. There has always been and remains vestiges of small stores. You know you are in the right place when you are welcomed by name by the owner. Another small store example:

“Hello, George, back in Galway again. You’ve been away to long,” he said as he picked a theatre book off the shelf.
“Hi Des,” I said to Desmond Kenny in the book store/gallery.

“Here’s the newest book on the Abbey Theatre by Chris Fitzsimon.”

Of course that was three years ago, Kenny’s Bookstore has since closed or reinvented itself as Kenny’s Gallery for contemporary Irish art. Des’ brother is there, but I don’t know him as well, I don’t feel as comfortable there anymore.
When I visited last Thursday, on opening the door I did notice a bell attached overhead which tingled when I entered.

Ting-a-ling !
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Stevie Vahovitich’s corner store, nestled on the Southeast corner of Third and Ridge Street , Coaldale, Pa., was a smaller store than most. A store in a house in fact.

A thin small built man with wire glasses appeared from the yellow flowered curtains behind the counter of the narrow aisled store. His gray and thinning hair, was neatly combed parted on the right, too far, into the top of his head. He pulled at the sleeves of his brown sweater with the quarter-sized holes in the elbows. His wife, we never knew her name, peeked around the closed curtain, and said something that sounded like “hmmarmya.”
“You want candy ?” Stevie said in what seemed to be an Czechoslavakian
American accent.
Penny candies scattered in small cardboard boxes at the front of the glass encased counter. Candies ready to jump into your pocket and awaiting the pennies in your pocket to jump into Stevie’s hand.
Pink peppermint tablets, MaryJanes, black nigger babies, and red fiery lozenges. Occasionally a square of chocolate or very small pillow like candies that tasted like licorice mints called Sen Sens.
“So,” he would say as he leaned on the counter awaiting the decision of the eight year boy from Ruddle Street.
“I’ll have….. three of those….and….one of those…no,no, those red things shaped like quarters….yeah. Ahh, that’s it.” A hungry pause. “And five of them…how much is that?”
“Nine cents, you got nine cents ?” Stevie would smile. He must have had false teeth from the same dentist as my dad had, they looked the same. Stevie’s choppers were perfect.
My God, I thought, Stevie was old, he must have been at least fifty and he had one golden incisor ! Wow !
“Ahhh, six of those there jaw breakers.”
Ahhh, the jawbreakers, round hard sugared flavors of lemon, lime, orange and cherry filled with what seemed to be plastic chewing gum. Lucky if this good cheek full of artifical flavor didn’t actually break your jaw or a tooth along the way of bubble blowing fun.

There , I did it, spent the entire 15 cents mom gave me. The change from buying milk, bread and butter at Nardini’s Market two doors away. I almost tripped and broke the milk bottle running passed the druggist store in my eagerness to get to Stevie’s.
The milk...oh for the days when we had milk delivered tio the dior.
Usually we would get our milk from Harry Boles. His red truck with the golden lettering would regularly stop on Ruddle Street on Tuesdays.
Harry, a gentle chubby Santa Claus for all seasons, would blow the old Chevy truck horn twice and walk up to the house. He always carried a wire bottle holder to our side porch door in the his left hand. In the square holes was buttermilk, white homogenized milk and an occasion, a bottle of chocolate milk.

He would leave a bottle of white next to our basement window and pick up the empties. He’d carefully jump over the chicken wire fence between our house and Buehla’s making sure his pants didn’t catch a grasping wire end, and then he’d continue his deliveries.
I never actually saw Harry do this during the school year. He’s come about 9 am to deliver, but from June to August when school was out for the summer, I’d sit and wait for him. In that summer of 1952, something happened that would have every kid in Coaldale repeat the embarassing song.

“Georgie Porgie Puddin N’ Pie, Kissed the Girls and made them cry, when the girls came out to play…”
I would repeat the last line of the well known jeer along with him…
“Georgie Porgie ran away.”
He’d laugh- a few months later later when I was 11, and all grown up, I would see him coming to deliver and shout out at him…

“Harry Boles, pudding N;’ Cakes
Kissed the ladies for goodness sake
When the ladies came out to play
Harry Boles drove away.

Okay, so it wasn’t very clever. I laughed.
Harry was not laughing. He stopped calling me Georgie Porgie after that.

“Today, I got strawberry milk,” he said showing me the pink ambrosia.
I ran into the house and pleaded with mom to buy just a quart of this dairy delicacy. She’s gave me 23 cents and I bought the pink milk knowing that would be the week's candy money. I would be happy for a full week. I’d drink only a small amount each day to prolong this rare tasty treat. One Sunday afternoon I gave Darryl Sharpe a taste and his mom ordered two bottles. His sister Connie could down a quart in three gulps !
…………………………………………
Stevie Vahoitch took the 15 cents, put it in a green jar where all the candy money apparently lived.
After I was finished buying as much candy as my change would allow, he would ask whether my mom needed thread or yarn for her crocheting.
“No, not today Stevie. See you tomorrow, if I get any worn out pennies.”

It would take seventeen steps to go back through his red painted front door centered in between two large showroom windows filled with tablecloths, mouse traps, a tricycle, tools and paints. The magic would begin when you stepped inside. The door bell attached to the top of the door would ring as you entered and when you escaped.


He never said goodbye, he just disappeared behind that flowered curtain again just like the Lone Ranger would disappear before anyone could say thank you. Back into his wonderful cabbage, onion and potatoe smelling Slovak kitchen with Helen…oh yes, I just remembered, her name was Helen.
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When Kate and I visit Kenny’s Gallery, Galway, nowadays, we can still imagine the bulging book shelves on the walls replaced now by abstract prints of Connemara. We can still hear Des’ voice and his mother as she calls for him to answer the phone. The atmosphere is different but they are still there, in our imaginations. If only there were books !

Back in the hardware store, it was 8 Euro 70 for the electrical tape and the screws. Costly , yes...but well worth knowing the store was there, at least for another two years I hoped.

The Day the Music Tried

Was that It ?
That sound..?
I'm listening to an Irish trad song on Galway Bay FM.
I don't know the recording artist nor the singer.
A solo clarinet in the background. A clarinet in an Irish reel ? I'd expect a flute, a fiddle, Ulean Pipes, a harp...but a B-Flat clarinet ?
He is singing about the trees swaying in the wind telling a story of the banshees as they whisper ancient stories to the holy Earth.
It is a solemn piece and conjures up forgotten stories from my past. Very strange, foreboding in a way. yet, comforting to me. A remembrance of my short lived musical childhood.

"................Monday morning. First class of the week. 8:20 am.
There wasn't a more pleasant time to welcome the week at school than in sleepily floating up to the second floor, winding the light green corridor to the back rooms of Mr. Matrician. There were only fifteen of us chosen for this vocal class.....
The classroom was bigger than most. Not only did screeching, maturing, teenage voices cling to the walls, but treble cleffs, notes, sharp, flats and musical military marches hung from the ceiling. The Coaldale High School Alma Mater was sung and practiced so many times in that room that the song itself seemed to be etched into the north wall plaster.

“Oh the wind through the trees blows cheerful
It sways them in their glory
It whispers a little earful
It tells a wonderous story
Of spirit true and athletes too
Of deeds both brave and gory
Of courage that has been true blue
Our Alma Mater’s glory.”

Only when the large bottom-swing windows were opened would the music escape.
When we didn't practice in the music room, we would be forced to use the cloak room on the first floor, a long narrow space where some of the instruments were kept.
Mr. Matrician was soft spoken and of a good nature most of the time. He always gave us a sense of a favorite uncle, and didn't act like a teacher at all!
One October afternoon, Bobby Davis, the tuba player, failed to show up for practice. Mr. Matrician put aside his violin and attempted to "get into" the junior sized tuba. His arms flailing through the opening of the mighty brass horn, he looked like a giant octopus caught in a cave underwater. He laughed for about two seconds, became aware that he might actually be stuck in the confines of the bellowing beast, and finally asked us for help to free him of the embarrassment. It took three of us from the reed section to give George his freedom again.

I took private clarinet lessons from Mr. George Matrician in his home on Ridge Street. Each Tuesday, after school, for five years I practiced the clarinet in his living room. I was in the Coaldale High Band, although I was less than fluent in conversation with the other clarinets in the troupe.
Mr. Matrician was very gentle and kind man but did have a mean streak. When I was not prepared for the lesson of the day as witnessed by "very poor fingering", George would threaten me with playing his trumpet. He usually practiced with me on his violin.
The trumpet would make the neighbor's Irish Setter bark, stop the mahogany mantel clock, pierce the eardrums of this student and would upset his wife, who sweetly appealed to me to learn to practice at home so this sort of thing did not happen again.

After Bobby returned the following Wednesday, he gave up the tuba and started to practice on the bass drum. He said he “wasn’t gonna get into that tuba no more after Matrician abused it !”

The song's over now. My memory of that clarinet and of our school Alma Mater exposes an embarrassment and a peaceful moment of long ago.
It is as if the banshees were tapping on my shoulder again, telling tales to a long lost boy of another world, another time and place.
The boy is still within me, here, even now. Where has he been for almost sixty years ?
Undoubtedly, too busy to believe the music.

Visitors from October Places

This year, 2006, was a very special Halloween for us. Kate and I spent the evening celebrating the glorious Irish season of Samhain, summer’s end or feast to the dying sun.
This day also combined the functions of Harvest festival and the Festival of the Dead.
It was a Druidic belief that Saman, the Lord of death, summoned together the souls of the evil people condemned to inhabit the bodies of animals, including people. As the leaves fell, annual growth decayed, the sun’s strength waned and the nights drew in, the Celts prepared for winter and for the sun to rise the next day.

This Samhain, in Ireland, we realized we were at the source of the celebration. Bonfires were lit around the whole countryside and if you stood on the Lydon’s Hill you could see the glowing embers of bonfires in the fields. Orange stars on the blackened landscape.
It was a time of mischief playing, of trick or treating and you just knew the faeries would spit on the blackberries so they could be eaten by mortals.
To be safe, Kate placed some milk and bread outside our door. The faeries knew therefore we were friendly and caring of their plight and respectful of All Hallow’s Eve.

It was also conjuring up the eve of 1954.
It was a lonlier October after all.

Halloween.
Cool evening. Dark, small glitters of stars. I was coming home from my cousin Cookie’s house on Earley Avenue.
I crossed Third Street. Began to step into the alley next to Pohlod’s house. A warmed feeling hit me in the face like a beam of sunshine.
Down at the end of the alley, what amounted to 40 car lengths away I saw a beam of white light. The light began to get larger and brighter. I was mesmerized but I kept walking toward the light.
The closer I walked the larger the light grew and the warmer I felt.
Half way day the alley was our garage and our back yard. If I only could get there I would be safe..I’d run down the yard to the house about 150 feet into the comfort of safety of our kitchen.
Could I make it ? What was that at the end of the alley ?
There was street light there, I knew that. But this strange ghostlike vision stood next to the street light. The light pole was about 14 feet high, but the ghost seemingly shrouded in a flowing white sheet in the form of a human person, stood next to the light pole and towered over it by about 10 feet. There seemed to be the form of a man with a horse like head through the glowing shroud.
What could be that be ?
I was almost at the our garage, and the vision about 20 car lengths away, the figure in yellowing white moved toward me.
Closer and closer, warmer and warmer until I started to sweat.
It was about 40 degrees outside. Crisp October weather, but I was getting hot.
I closed my eyes and kept running toward the wire back garden gate.
Peeking only momentarily to see if I was going in the right direction I shut my eyes again.
I felt something brush by me, a hot touch on my left shoulder. With my eyes closed I saw a red glow through my eyelids and felt my hair rustle.
I burst thru the gate almost ran into one of the peach trees and ran faster and faster toward the house.
The back door to the side porch was open, I ran inside completely out of breath.
Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table.

“What’s wrong,” my mother said in a panic.
“I just saw….I just saw…” I cried as drops of sweat ran down my forehead.
“What…what,” Mom ran toward me and held me close to her flowered lilac aproned dress.
“It looked like….a….” but I couldn’t tell her.
“Were you hurt, Did somebody hurt you,” my father demanded.
“No,” I said quickly,”
“Come on , tell me… now !” he scolded.

At the top of the alley, next to Pohlod’s house, was Russell Griffith’s garage. The garage and adjoining building was at the rear of the Griffith’s Funeral Home.
Russell and his sister were well known in the town for their gentle understanding personalities and were the most popular people to visit on Halloween. Their treats always consisted of a few pennies and chocolate peanut butter cups. Although no one knew exactly what went on in the garage, we all suspected it was the embalming room for clients no longer with this world. More than often, a black hearse sat quietly in the alley. Death was of little concern to a nine year old, but it still had a mysterious, Bela Lugosi spine tingling effect when you walked past it.
In those days, very seldom did one actual use the funeral home to lay out the deceased, especially in Coaldale where many of the families came from the “old world”…Ireland, Wales, England, Slovakia.
Most “wakes” were still held in the parlor of the deceased family home.
To me this was still another memorable paradox of feelings.

I was so out of breath, not from running but from fear, I could hardly get the words to fall out of my mouth.
“A ghost…I saw a ghost.”
They laughed.
Dad got up from the plastic yellow-white and chrome kitchen chair and came over to hug me. That was one of the few times in my life that my Dad actually hugged me. It was the perfect time as far as I was concerned.
“There are no ghosts,” he said
“But..but I saw this white big glowing thing coming towards me,” I trembled, “ and it brushed my shoulder right here.”
I showed them the spot. It seemed to have left a black mark on my coat.
“It looks burnt, “ my Mom said. “Were you playing with matches ?”
“What did you do to your coat George !” my father shouted. “Dammit ! This is your good coat !”
First they comforted me, then laughed at me and now I’m being yelled at.
But I was safe.
I couldn’t sleep for two weeks after that without seeing the ghostly figure. I certainly would not walk down that alley at night ever again.
No, I don’t know what it might have been.
I still fear black hearses, and whitened alleyways.