MAGGI PICAYUNE

This didn’t seem to get much press in the US. It is a wonderful landmark that the violence in Northern Ireland has subsided enough for the UK to remove the bulk of its deployment. I only wish my ethnically Irish grandmother lived to see it; she was born in America along with her parents. Contrary to her feelings and Gerry Adams’ (the public face of Sinn Fein), the UK’s army was there to keep the Catholics and Protestants from openly killing each other. One of my freshman teachers at Marquette was an Irish graduate student named Aidan. He hailed from Belfast which he charmingly called the Beirut of Europe and he set people straight about what life was like there in his classes. It couldn’t be helped, we were all curious and most students attending a Jesuit school in the Midwest are part Irish so their sympathies were with the Catholic factions (the IRA, Sinn Fein). Many were taken aback, including Grandma, when Aidan stated that the British army kept the Catholics from being wiped out. He wasn’t keen on what the UK had done in the past neither. However, it didn’t matter anymore. The fighting had been going on for almost 20 years by then and most people were tired of it. Unemployment in both parts of Ireland was high and the educated citizens were leaving in droves; the Troubles made it much worse.

Love them or hate them, Clinton and Blair finally got what may be a lasting peace happening. Personally, I think the British majority grew sick of Ian Paisley and the other UDF extremists giving their nation a black eye. The UDF proved to be as thuggish as the IRA with their random murders. Grandma always had a chip on her shoulder with the English but after finally meeting some Brits over the years, I learned they weren’t proud of the situation. They found the conflict stupid because the rest of the UK is a functioning society, government and infrastructure with Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Hindus working together.

Hopefully, the end of Operation Banner signifies that Northern Ireland will finally move forward as a functioning democracy where denomination isn’t important; both factions are Christian so they’re not different religions, people and the media get this frequently wrong.

Twenty years ago, I spent the Summer in the Philadelphia area at my parents’ place and thankfully, it was the last time I ever lived with them. After eight months of the dorms and having little adult supervision, being back under their watchful eyes was a difficult transition. Not like I was a drunken hellraiser on academic probation (a sizable faction of my wing) but I had grown accustomed to coming and going whenever I wished, not shaving for weeks at a time, playing the stereo loudly and drinking beer. Mom and Dad meant well with their nagging yet they gave me too little credit in the self-discipline department.

Over two months had passed since I moved into their cramped condo in Lansdale, PA (an hour by car from downtown Philly). The Summer had been progressing financially due to my factory job cutting/polishing carbon seals for jet engines. The work was so mind numbing, it strengthened my resolve to attend college at all costs and it cajoled me into dumping Maureen. Outside of that, everything else really sucked and I was a prisoner of the house thanks to not being added to the car insurance, even if I paid for it.

But on my 19th birthday, the clouds of annoyance lifted for the day I took off to spend in Philadelphia. A chance to see what I wanted to see or do without the bossy parents, namely hitting South Street. A coworker named Tad who was my age tagged along as my guide. We grabbed the morning train downtown which put us within walking distance of the major sites. Looking back, most of the day was a blur spent shopping, eating and browsing. I had already seen all the historical sites last Spring (Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell) so this was a consumerist expedition; South Street’s Bohemian days were long over but it wasn’t completely commercialized by chains yet. The only item I still own from that day is the Hoodoo Gurus CD I bought at Tower Records, back when it was a cool retailer to my generation. I also remember the irritation on mom’s face over the Clockwork Orange and Joy Division “Love Will Tear us Apart” shirts I scored; can’t remember which one was from the world famous Zipperhead store.

I’ve never went back to South Street or Philadelphia because my parents moved to San Diego a month later. They dropped me off at Marquette on the way out so it would be another few months before I ever set foot in California. Oddly, my Summer there made me really dislike Philly for a long time but the bigger lesson I learned was to never live with my family again. Despite the negative experience, the day on South Street was one of the three bright spots for the Summer of 1987—the other two were meeting Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens and DC’s The Watchmen series ending. The following year, I toughed it out in Milwaukee, a story for next year inPicayune, and learned this: it isn’t necessarily the city, it’s who you live with and what your means of getting around that matter more.