Document text
6/14/39
Name: Jane(K. Leary, 32 Acorn St.
Informant: James +hes, 51 Johnson St.
Assignment: The Shoe Laster of Lynn (Living Lore)
Character Sketch of Informant and Wife
Within a five minute walk from Central Square lives this
old shoe laster with his wife and brother-in-law, in a rather
sparsely furnished but scrupulously clean five room, high
cellina,ed flat of a "three tenement block." Unlike many
Irish homes, this one is almost totally devoid of the numerous
knicXimacks that usually clutters congested rooms. There
is space in the living room between the divan and chairs,
piano and radio-- a distinct feeling of room to breathe.
"James" walks with the bit of stoop to his gait that
is characteristic of aged lasters, and his hair and close
cropped mustache are altogether white. He seems a bit too
restless to be 79 however; lacking is the resigned peaceful-
ness of a life fullfillea.
One has the feeling when visiting him, that this home
has not imprisoned enough dreams to satisfy its oceupants.
Peace and harmony is not lacking, out it is the peace and
harmony of dreams that never were, rather than that of dreams
approaching satiety.
This, to all appearances has been a marriage of convenience.
Time and again the husband gave away this fact in his conversations
with me. He told me the story of two little motherless girls,
his children b his first wife, who had to spena their baby-
hood in an orphanage. Sometimes, the grieving father felt,
there was not enough fresh eggs there to make little bodies
sturdy-- and perhaps not enough specialized love to make
little persons as carefree as children have a right to be.
"When ma first wife daied," he told me during one
interview, "1 boarded the children with a family in Lynnfield.
An thiey loved 'em too. Thiey'da brought 'em up too if 'Ida
said the word. But ti_ey wuz Protestants an' I cun't see
thet, so I ned ta put 'em in the home."
"Whin thiey wuz fieve an' six, I married agin, an' ma
wife wuz good to 'em ant brought 'em up raight. She come
from County Monohan too, ye see. It wuz her brother, the
one thet's alivin' with us now, thet first give mg the
notion ta come ta America."
Mutely hanging above the divan where my informant sat,
the picture of his second wife's mother seemed to tell the
other side of the story. It was the only picture in the
room, strong plain and unadorned as the room itself. It
had in it though, the poignancy of a story that should be
told. I was glad therefor that one day when I called, that
"James" was not at home.
His wife answered the doorbell. She asked me to come
inside "an' heve a seat fir yourself fir a minute ter two".
She hau a plain face, until ambling forth in conversa-
tion with her, I discovered her to be like the picture on
the wall-- poignant beneath her plain exteriot.
"1 hada a mind ta marry once whin I wuz young," she
told me. "But ya see, him thet I wuz goinl with, din't
want ta wait till I siaveu enough money ta bring xnt. mother
an' ma' father over from Ireland. All thier children wuz
hiere an' thiey wanted ta come too.
"1 wuz aaoinl h.Jusewirk thin. I hed bin go n' with
this fella fir quate (quite) a tame whin I first come ta
Lynn. Thin fir a time we sorta broke off an' he wint with
another Lirl.
"But one aiay I wint down town to buy somethinl fir a
woman I wuz awirkin' fir. I passed him on the strate (street)
awaikin, with another girl. But he smiled at me laike. An'
whin I got back to the place whiere I wuz awirkin' thiere
he wuz asitLinl in the kitchen awaitin, fir ma% Ant from
thin on we wint tagether all the tame agin.
"It wuz not long after this thet he said he wanted ta
get married. An' I did too 'cause I laiked him a lot.
But ya see I did not heve the heart ta disappoint ma father
an' ma mother. Yet see thiey wuz all alone in Ireland an'
remimberinl ma sister thet lied come out hiere bafore ma.
She daied only six wakes (weeks) after she come. In the
same male with a letter from her
wirk in ma uncle's factory, come
dead an' buried. She got a cold
asayinl she wu7 agoint ta
the letter sayin' she wuz
on the trip over ant she
niver ;Tot over thet. out thiey din't know it, ma uncle an'
aunt where she wuz alivinl. Thiey noticed she din't look
sa ,,00d an' ma aunt called a doctor.
"Thet girl', said the doctor 'is homesick. .She'll
ba all raight after a wnale (while). 3ut a couple a
diays after thet she daied. An' she wuz buried hiere ant
none a us in Ireland knowed inytheng about it atall 'till
it wuz all over.
"Yes, thet's how come I sint thet man I laiked awiay.
He mrried someone else after a tame.
"James's" wife told me other tidbits of her history
during the afternoon too. he worked in the G. E. for a
number of years, supporting the parents she brought from
Ireland. Then "James" came along and another suitor who
din't heve much hair on the top of his head."
"An once I Heard thet James said ta someone whin he
wuz acomin, ta see ma, 'I wish thet bald headed man tould
stiay awiay from thiere."
After her marriage, Jame's wife worked in the shoe
shops at times, in ad ition to keeping house, and caring
for the two children of her husband's first marriage.
Then, in the years following the world war, when inter-
mittent jobs at hand lasting made it difficult for James
to earn enough money to adequately suliport his household,
she became a night scrub woman for one of the Lynn banks.
Her fifteen dollars a week she earned, and this sum
she got when the otner scrub women were only getting
thirteen. r'or she the dentist's floor, the "hardest
of all" and including the business suite of one 41an who
was" awful irtieularn. Knowing her worth she had not
been afraid to ".peak up" when the bank representative
was reducing the wa,7es. l'or when she came gown to twelve
dollars, they were reduced to ten. o on it was until
she was getting but seven'I quit then," she said, "for
A
I wuz gettin' old an' I wuz sick."