A jolt to the family memory bank

I have just been reading a little of my past from another’s perspective, and it excites a strange feeling. Good, if somewhat eerie.

It came about with Brendan O’Connell giving me copies of some memoirs written by a relation of the Nolan family. To put it into perspective, we Byrnes, O’Connells, and said Nolans are all related. That story is longtailed, but I might get to do it someday.

Anyhow, the memoirs I mention are written by a Phyllis Brugnolotti in New York. There are also a couple of ’fiction’ pieces written by a Joan Comiskey from Leonia, New Jersey, in which I recognise distant relations.

Phyllis is the one which is most in my mind at the moment. Her pieces are about her mother, her times and tribulations and how she went to America from her native Ballylinan. And also about her grandmother, who was my grandfather’s sister Katherine Agnes (Katie) and who left Kilcullen to marry a Michael Shortall in Ballylinan.

The details of what Phyllis has written I’ll leave to another article, but what has thrown me into a timeloop this evening are all the people she mentions who are in my own family folkmemory. Her remembrances add to my own in a way that makes them much more rounded.

So I now have more detail on how my grandfather was perceived by a considerably older sister (he was the last of seven, all the others girls), and how that same sister showed many of the same business traits that I remember from my own grandfather, and my own father too. Also that she had six children of her own (one of whom came 'home' and married a Nolan).

She writes about my ’Uncle’ Barney, who was a prisoner of war in Japan, and wonders about the details of his life before he died indirectly in the 50s of his wartime privations. And about Katie’s sisters Nora and Peg who raised him after their other sister ’Birdie’ died shortly after his birth. I have fairly recently worked out a few of these details for myself, but there’s a richer vein here.

My dad Jim Byrne is also mentioned in the piece. I have, of course, more direct memories than Phyllis has of him. But there are a few things she has that I didn’t.

I’m writing this as an immediate reaction to reading what Brendan gave me. I have also asked my son Carl in New York to try and make contact with Phyllis, who might still be able to give him, and his newborn son Gavin down the line, a little more insight into where they came from.

But just for now, I wanted to say that I feel very much closer to my forebears tonight. Thank you Phyllis, and Joan, for writing what you did. It is similar to what I’ve been doing for some years now, so that my grandchildren will know where they came from.

And me too.

Tommy Two Scoops

He used to sell carpets. Then he opened a fastish-food place, concentrating on his ice-cream made on the premises. He called it Tommy Two Scoops.

It stuck. On him as well as the business. He doesn’t mind. Tommy is good on marketing, and he knows good marketing happening when he sees it.

He opened a new place last fall. The Brightside Inn is a different place entirely. Not far from the original, but in a slightly more secluded area of Jersey City. Classy, so the Brightside is classy. Though not in any excluding way.

He gutted the original pub to make it the way he wants it. There’s a nice American bar. The usual sports-mad screens, but not as obtrusive as they often are. Music in the background of the restaurant area where you can go if you don’t want to eat in a bar environment.

The menu is good American. The house burger great, and all the other stuff equally so, especially the pastrami sandwich. Nothing is set in stone, so you can have your meals with or without any component and there’s no hassle.

Tommy knows the value of the personal touch. He turned up to say hello in both places at the times we were in each.

He collects people. Digitally. He gets your email, your birthday if you’re not fussed about it. He taps the details into his smartphone, and you know that someday you’ll get a message that might invite you in for a meal with a birthday surprise, or maybe a discount.

In the Brightside, he manages the music with an iPad. A party comes in, like us, with a Mother in Law, and he taps it for the classic 1961 hit of that name to celebrate the event. Or, learning we were Irish, what did we want to hear from home? So we had Christy Moore in the background for the duration of the meal.

Tommy reminds me a lot of my late Dad. He’s a goer. Tries things. Takes a flyer on a whim. Probably has had as many, or more, failures than successes. Failures aren’t the point. Having a go is. If you don’t, you’ll never know. If you don’t you never will. If you do, you might.

Either way, Tommy’s the kind of guy who, once met, you figure as a friend. Like it was with my Dad, Jim Byrne, it’s personal.

Jim Byrne of Kilcullen made himself, and his 'The Hideout' pub and restaurant, an internationally-known brand in the middle of the last century because he made it personal. Like Tommy Two Scoops is doing today in Jersey City.

Tommy’s real name? Doesn’t matter. Tommy Two Scoops works. Many of his customers in the original ice cream parlour are schoolkids from the nearby St Peter’s Prep School. Some of them, maybe even more than that, will eventually, years down, graduate to the Brightside.

In the meantime, their parents are going there. It’s probably called something like vertical marketing. For Tommy, it’s personal.

He has the emails.