We complained and complained and complained to the retailer. Finally, when I threatened to sue, they sent over a subcontractor to do repairs.
The subcontractor was an Irish green carder with a beautiful, utterly charming Irish accent. He also knew Gaelic! Oh, man, he was such an interesting person to talk to, as he worked! I am a descendant of victim's of the Irish Potato Famine, one of them with an amazing story. So, I felt like I was talking to "blood"!
My great grandmother, Annie Fuller Mallon Dawson, was just Annie Fuller when she met a young Irish potato farmer with the surname of "Mallon" -- we don't know his given name -- and married him in 1845. Their home was probably his little potato farmer's mud hut -- what the English were restricting most of the Catholics to, in the aftermath of Wolfe Tone's rebellion in 1798, and Cornwallis' subsequent slaughter of the Irish and mass seizure of Irish property. There Annie and her young husband lived like pigs -- probably with their pigs! -- but happily, for the Irish were known then for their virtue, tolerance and Catholic Christian love. English diarists from the period express profound astonishment at the extraordinary virtue of the Irish during this period of great oppression -- preferable, some of them said, to freedom and vice of English society during the same period. (Catholics must find this again.)
In 1844, an American sailor chomping on a single American potato, on his sailboat from America berthed at a wharf on one of the islands in the English Channel, reached a mushy part of the potato, and in disgust tossed it ashore.
So began the great Irish Potato Famine. As a result of that sailor's mindless action, millions died, governments were overthrown, and wars were fought all over Europe.
The potato was afflicted with Blight, an odd, mold-like potato disease which ate the potato's leaves above ground, so that the potatoes underground rotted.
Blight spores jumped across the English channel and began killing the potato crops in southern England.
In 1845, the spores were carried by the wind across the Irish Sea, and Irish potato growers were mystified as their crops rotted where they were growing. Most had enough savings to cope with a bad luck year. No problem.
In 1846, essentially every potato in Ireland turned into mush.
When, half a century before, the English stole Irish lands at gunpoint, and then rented the land back to the owners (which financed the lavish lifestyle of the Lords in London's West End), and then forced the Irish Catholics into potato farming, by various laws, the assumption was that the status quo could last forever. However, suddenly, the Irish were faced with a second year of failure of the crop they needed to succeed in paying the rents they should not have been paying to the English for renting the lands stolen from their grandfathers in the nationwide English "hold-up."
The Irish knew what was coming next.
Virtually every Irish potato farmer's lease had a provision permitting eviction for no reason in particular!
Only about one-third of the Irish were arrears in their rent in 1846, after a year of potato famine.
However, Parliament in England, in the guise of paying for charitable relief for the Irish Catholics, imposed a shocking tax called the Four Pound Clause, taxing Irish lazy beds -- the beds where Irish Catholics grew their potatoes -- at a rate that today would be equal to $3,000 tax per quarter acre of ground subject to potato cultivation per year. The only way to avoid paying the tax, the Lords of the London's West End were told, was to eliminate all evidence of potato cultivation -- the rotten potatoes, the lazy beds, and the mud hovels and shacks the Irish Catholic farmers were restricted to, everything.
Irish Catholic Parliamentarians immediately saw that there would be no relief, at all, for the Irish Catholics in the measure -- that it was really nothing but genocide, since the Lords of London's West End would obviously evict every single Irish Catholic man, woman and child to evade the tax. Their objections were made, and recorded in Parliaments official record, but otherwise ignored.
Protestant-ruled Parliament then budgeted for a massive move of troops to Ireland.
These troops assisted local constables in the eviction of every single Catholic Irish family, whether or not they were among the one-third in arrears.
Word spread among the starving and dying homeless Irish Catholics that the wharves in Irish ports were piled high with crates of food awaiting export to the European mainland for resale at high prices, to fatten the wallets of the Lords of London's West End who stole their land at gunpoint and rented it back to them.
So, they headed for the docks, and the men organized themselves into Catholic Ireland's so-called Skeleton Armies, large groups of men and boys, starved to near-skeletal thinness, and armed themselves with dirt balls, sticks and rocks ...
That, basically, is what happened at the wharfs.
And so, by mowing-down Irish Catholics in this fashion, the Lords in London's West End were able to sell their fruits and vegetables for a pretty penny in the markets of Europe.
This is why so many Irish Catholics, including my great grandmother Annie Fuller Mallon, who was widowed during the Potato Famine perhaps because Mallon very carefully starved himself to death to make sure that his pregnant wife had enough to survive, perhaps because Mallon died in charging the docks, perhaps because he died from some famine-related illness, emigrated to America. Over here, after my Great Aunt Barbara Malon was born to Annie blind like so many other Catholic Irish babies born during the Potato Famine, my great grandmother met and married an Englishman named Dawson, and the settled in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia.
And this is also where the Irish Republican Army came from.
Back to Magnolia and the Brogue-sounding young man working on our refrigerator ...
Irish Catholic Parliamentarians immediately saw that there would be no relief, at all, for the Irish Catholics in the measure -- that it was really nothing but genocide, since the Lords of London's West End would obviously evict every single Irish Catholic man, woman and child to evade the tax. Their objections were made, and recorded in Parliaments official record, but otherwise ignored.
Protestant-ruled Parliament then budgeted for a massive move of troops to Ireland.
These troops assisted local constables in the eviction of every single Catholic Irish family, whether or not they were among the one-third in arrears.
Potato Famine 4 Pound Clause eviction
aided by British soldiers
As first thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and finally millions of Irish Catholic men, women and children began walking the roads of Ireland to their death, Ireland's Protestant overlords passed the first laws against Loitering -- the homeless, starving Irish Catholics were suddenly not allowed to stop walking!
The potato crop in Ireland was the only plant attacked by the Blight. All other crops did well. Ireland was actually filled-to-overflowing with food to eat during the Potato Famine.
So, the Potato Famine victims had plenty to eat, right?
Wrong. The Protestant Lords in London's West End had the Protestant caretakers of their vast stolen Irish estates rush English soldiers to every field and garden in Ireland where crops were growing. They had orders to shoot to kill any starving Catholic children, women or men foolish enough to try to eat the growing vegetables and fruits.
Basically, as the Blight spread to the European mainland and wiped-out potato crops across Europe, the price of all other foods skyrocketed, and the Lords in London's West End were determine to sell the non-potato crops of Ireland, to maximize their profits, as a result.
As starving Catholic Irish children, women and men endlessly walking the roads of Ireland to their deaths began charging the wagons jammed with foods the Catholics themselves had grown alongside their potatoes, the Lords in the West End dispatched soldiers to shoot-down anyone trying to eat foot in these wagons.
One artist's sketch of English soldiers
protecting a wagon of crops headed for the docks
as Irish Catholics, dying of starvation, watched
Word spread among the starving and dying homeless Irish Catholics that the wharves in Irish ports were piled high with crates of food awaiting export to the European mainland for resale at high prices, to fatten the wallets of the Lords of London's West End who stole their land at gunpoint and rented it back to them.
So, they headed for the docks, and the men organized themselves into Catholic Ireland's so-called Skeleton Armies, large groups of men and boys, starved to near-skeletal thinness, and armed themselves with dirt balls, sticks and rocks ...
A good portrayal of what
a brigade of Catholic Ireland's
"skeleton armies" would have
looked like, before charging the docks
to feed their starving wives and children.
... and charged the docks.
The English were ready for them, however. The soldiers were lined-up in step formation, so that one row after another could blast-away the skeletal humans charging them to get at the food for their children and women, much as you see in the 1964 movie "Zulu" ...
That, basically, is what happened at the wharfs.
And so, by mowing-down Irish Catholics in this fashion, the Lords in London's West End were able to sell their fruits and vegetables for a pretty penny in the markets of Europe.
This is why so many Irish Catholics, including my great grandmother Annie Fuller Mallon, who was widowed during the Potato Famine perhaps because Mallon very carefully starved himself to death to make sure that his pregnant wife had enough to survive, perhaps because Mallon died in charging the docks, perhaps because he died from some famine-related illness, emigrated to America. Over here, after my Great Aunt Barbara Malon was born to Annie blind like so many other Catholic Irish babies born during the Potato Famine, my great grandmother met and married an Englishman named Dawson, and the settled in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia.
And this is also where the Irish Republican Army came from.
Back to Magnolia and the Brogue-sounding young man working on our refrigerator ...
At a particular point, the young man working on our refrigerator brought up something surprising.
"How do you feel about the Irish Republican Army?" he asked.
I paused and thought about my words. Finally I said, "My great grandmother on my father's side, and my great grandparents on my mother's side, were all victims of the Potato Famine. We know how it all came about. We know what the British did to cause the suffering and death. And that kind of thing has been going on for 800 years. So, I know where the IRA came from. I can't blame them. The British caused the IRA. So, it's not as simple as, 'The IRA are the bad guys.' I know that. I think that it is a sin to kill the way they do. But I also don't think that I have the right to interfere."
And thereafter followed an astonishing admission by the Irish green carder repairman ...
"Tomorrow I'm taking an ocean-going tug out of New York Harbor. It's loaded with munitions. I'm re-supplying the IRA with a very large shipment."
"How do you feel about the Irish Republican Army?" he asked.
I paused and thought about my words. Finally I said, "My great grandmother on my father's side, and my great grandparents on my mother's side, were all victims of the Potato Famine. We know how it all came about. We know what the British did to cause the suffering and death. And that kind of thing has been going on for 800 years. So, I know where the IRA came from. I can't blame them. The British caused the IRA. So, it's not as simple as, 'The IRA are the bad guys.' I know that. I think that it is a sin to kill the way they do. But I also don't think that I have the right to interfere."
And thereafter followed an astonishing admission by the Irish green carder repairman ...
"Tomorrow I'm taking an ocean-going tug out of New York Harbor. It's loaded with munitions. I'm re-supplying the IRA with a very large shipment."
An ocean-going tug of the sort mentioned
by the young IRA member smuggling munitions to Ireland
I thought to myself, "Well, there's an admission by the most naive terrorist in the history of the world!"
After my Irish terrorist friend finished working on our refrigerator and left, I thought long and hard respecting whether I should call Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms. I decided not to. There was, for me, enough cause justifying the actions on both sides to make it impossible to label one side or the other as "the baddies." Our British brothers brought this horror down upon their own heads.
After my Irish terrorist friend finished working on our refrigerator and left, I thought long and hard respecting whether I should call Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms. I decided not to. There was, for me, enough cause justifying the actions on both sides to make it impossible to label one side or the other as "the baddies." Our British brothers brought this horror down upon their own heads.
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