Spectator's Journal
Croke, Bill
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL by Bill Croke A Pilgrim's Progress R eading Christopher Caldwell's admirable piece on contemporary Ireland ("Mary Robinson's New Ireland," TAS, November 1997) brought back...
...The rare sun splintered off hedges and trees, and the infinite grace of God brought me back to Dublin before the pubs closed...
...Was Texas really that big...
...It immediately turned purplish-blue...
...Wet, bruised, and bloodied, they'd hacked and slashed after the ball with their half grown canoe paddles, and beat the Limerickers (literally...
...Ifi The American Spectator • January 1998 57...
...Father Al instructing me to pack only a light bag and warm jacket...
...Maybe a cozy bar, I thought...
...a prim and pious Mrs...
...Come away from Father Croke...
...No luggage...
...My two cousins were what Hemingway called "good drinkers...
...In the afternoon there was a break from the beds, stations, and Rosaries as we huddled around a peat fire in the boathouse...
...We exited the bus at Pettigoe, County Donegal...
...Take off your shoes and socks," he said...
...It afforded opportunities to ditch Father Al and his itinerary of Gothic cathedrals and ruined castles—in short, the Excessive Piety Tour...
...I was traveling with my uncle, a Catholic priest...
...While we were down among the relatives in Tipperary, Father Al rarely knew where I was...
...SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL by Bill Croke A Pilgrim's Progress R eading Christopher Caldwell's admirable piece on contemporary Ireland ("Mary Robinson's New Ireland," TAS, November 1997) brought back memories of my own visit in August 1978...
...Big cars and houses...
...Why not...
...Much later, I discovered references to it in a Seamus Heaney poem: "Station Island...
...For a month I hauled around a heavy suitcase to his ongoing amusement...
...I'll have my steak rare, please...
...As rain streaked the bus windows through gray and dreary Navan and Cavan and Enniskillen (with its heavily fortified police station), I still harbored the hope that we were off to a country Remembering Ireland when it was still Ireland...
...The village sat on the shore of the shiny, black Lough, and faced an island a half mile out with short buildings obscured in mist...
...It struck me that they were all as lightly encumbered as we were...
...I thankfully accepted...
...men small gym bags—that was it...
...I was convinced that foreign travel should afford sinners their share of sin-ops...
...At day's end the sexes separated—even husbands and wives —and retired to respective dormitories...
...So, you're goin' to Lough Derg, are ye...
...That night at dinner, he announced to an assemblage of relations that tomorrow he would take his annual retreat to Lough Derg, and that I would accompany him...
...The old Muhammad Ali training camp regimen...
...Father Al put on his brogue and got the old ladies cackling by his teasing banter with the waitresses...
...Then he handed me a plainly printed brochure that explained where I was, and what I was about to do...
...Carrying a small businessman's briefcase, he roamed the world...
...I met my cousins...
...He had spiritually uplifting activities in mind for me, of course...
...It elicited snickers from my cousins...
...Our bus group piled into the boats...
...Out of a sense of Celtic courtesy, Jack constantly made the offer as he lit up...
...The rosary, tea with a local priest of his acquaintance, a tour of the fascinating but dank and musty ruins of an eleventh-century Cistercian abbey...
...If it has changed as much as Mr...
...We were forbidden sleep for the first thirty-six hours, and spent a long night in the dim, freezing basilica, while a succession of our Jesuit overseers—working in shifts—led us in innumerable Rosaries, or preachedechoing homilies while squinting at Scripture in medieval light...
...Well, half of one, anyway...
...He washed his underwear and socks nightly in hotel bathroom sinks...
...The two old boyos cast off, and people began to remove their shoes...
...It was almost as if Father Al was the author of a travel primer, and everyone in the two boats had read it...
...Paul Newman...
...Yes I do," I snapped...
...We set sail from the penitential paradise...
...Years of globetrotting in the army had elevated him to a state of movable minimalist bliss...
...We went on a charter bus from Dublin...
...It contained the tools of his trade: a portable relic, sacramental wine, communion wafers, a stole, papers related to the celebration of the Mass...
...Had I ever visited Disneyland...
...Caldwell says, it's sad...
...The ground was rocky-soggy under the bunioned feet and peaty knees of old, arthritic Irish women in plain brown overcoats and headscarfs...
...I periodically dozed off, inviting a hard lean from Father Al...
...In the gray dawn, Monseigneur Thomas Flood—the island's clerical Douglas MacArthur—showed up to say Mass...
...When I demurred, his brogue fussily replied: "Take it anyway...
...My uncle picked at his laces...
...Brendan was incredulous...
...and every morning—even in hotels—my teetotaling uncle roused me from stupor for the svelte fifteen-minute Mass (no collection, homily, hymns) celebrated atop dresser or nightstand...
...I followed the crowd and Father Al to a dock where awaited two motorized whaleboats manned by two weathered boyos in cruiser caps...
...For three days, three times daily, we "did the beds" of the Saints...
...Women carried handbags...
...Come with me," Brendan devilishly whispered...
...They were damp and unheated, and the night resounded with a cacophony of snoring—but I still slept hard...
...Army, and spent a long vacation each summer wandering Europe, with a stop in Ireland to visit relatives...
...Hence the dozen pints of Guinness (actually thirteen, I remember buying the first one myself...
...Was I pals with any movie stars...
...Divine justice, I thought...
...Afterwards, we herded into a refectory, and buxom, freckled girls from the mainland served us our only daily meal: two pieces of dry toast and a cup of bitter black tea...
...Marlon Brando...
...Put it in your pocket for later...
...As I coughed my way through the first few puffs, Father Al said: "You don't smoke...
...They smoked cigarettes, and thought it odd that I didn't...
...Living martyrs mouthing silent prayers through trembling lips, with rosaries entwined in cadaverous fingers in the rain...
...and me—bleary eyed, hair standing up, contemplating immortal sins...
...O'Malley...
...No," I said...
...Brendan's American cousin had proved his mettle by cheering them from the sidelines in a sopping rain...
...Two my age—Jack and Brendan—were forever dragging me to pubs and dances and to the homes of friends to show me off, exotic creature that I was...
...This was fine with me...
...There was Mass every morning in Ireland's only basilica, Lough Derg's sublime centerpiece...
...None of it sounded pleasant A Heaven Week...
...Well...have a good time...
...Oddly enough, cigarettes were permitted, and people smoked away the short leisuretime...
...56 January 1998 • The American Spectator resort with good meals and a warm hearth...
...I greeted a bleak morning on the edge of walking pneumonia and delirium tremens, and endured Father Al's fourteenth or fifteenth Mass of our holiday...
...Thus equipped, he had spent three weeks ranging Scandinavia before we rendezvoused in Dublin...
...He was thick and ruddy, with a beet colored complexion, and I wondered if there was whiskey in the Rectory...
...What was Richard Nixon up to since his resignation...
...The car was already running behind the barn, and we were off to a pub in Kilkenny...
...On the bus back to the city Father Al waxed theological on the subject of a soul's catharsis, and how there was really no place on earth like Lough Derg...
...H e was not amused by these nocturnal shenanigans, and set about to tip my scales toward exemplary behavior...
...There were good-byes to now familiar faces at a break-the-fast lunch in a hotel dining room in Pettigoe...
...plus a spare pair of socks, boxer shorts, T-shirt, a shaving kit, and a clothes brush for his one suit of clerical garb...
...One of the Jesuits offered me a "Major," a short, slim Irish cigarette...
...Later, he stubbed a big toe while climbing the stone steps of the basilica...
...In the morning there was confession and a last Mass, then we made for the boats and put grimy feet back into socks and shoes...
...Stations of the Cross, also indoors, and thankfully dry...
...The rain had ceased, leaving low overcast...
...This was news to me...
...Occasionally BILL CROKE is a writer living in Cody, Wyoming...
...there were takers...
...Sometimes only an elderly chambermaid on a break...
...I checked my suitcase at the station...
...I was 24 and drank a lot (When in Rome...
...He opened the door of our double room and summoned the faithful...
...On this point, I assented...
...Jack sidled up to me later, gave me a nudge, and a whisper trailing up to twinkling blue eyes...
...I was told that bits and pieces (what with the Middle Ages relic market) of Brigid, Columba, Fin-bar, and Patrick (the last's remains—it seems—are scattered all over Ireland) resided in the trough-like stone crypts that we circumnavigated partly afoot and partly aknee...
...One night, all twelve members of his hurling team (the Irish equivalent ofAmerican softball) took turns buying me drinks...
...You must see this place before you leave," Brendan said...
...Lough Derg's four most illustrious residents hadn't taken a breath in centuries...
...They had won their match and were in a festive mood...
...Father Al, bent and peering over the top of his black framed glasses, purple stole dangling above the consecrated nightstand...
...They were nuts for all things American...
...Our benevolent drill instructors were well shod Jesuit novices on summer holiday...
...Father Al Croke was a chaplain in the U.S...
Vol. 31 • January 1998 • No. 1
