A Thousand Years and Then Some
by
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Grandfather did not see or hear the train coming as he was counting the change, which he was withholding, from his pay envelope. He froze and was knocked down, landing on his back as the train ran over him. Fortunately, for him the buffer, a coupling shock absorber caught under his waistcoat and rolled up and over his head. Although, it was a slow-moving coal train, several of the cars passed over him before coming to a stop. Suffering from shock, caused by the impact he crawled out between the cars and ran up the embankment as the speechless engineer, who thought he was seeing a ghost was too stunned to call railroad police on a trespasser. Aware of the penalty for trespassing on the railroad property, Grandfather avoided every uniformed man that he saw for several weeks to come. Nevertheless, in spite of his near brush with death, he continued to keep the change from his pay envelope un-be-known to Granny every payday. He was a hard-working man who spent most of his young life as a coal miner in Newtown, a suburb of Glasgow, Scotland. What I remember most about him was the difference in the length of his legs; one was two inches shorter than the other due to arthritis of the knee. Coal miners worked on their knees for much of the day at what they called the coalface with picks and shovels tunneling through the shaft. Many of them suffered from a debilitating disease called Black Lung Disease. Father, a discharged Sergeant Major from the British army in World War I, was awarded the Military Medal in France. Grandfather found it and pawned it, using the money to buy whiskey and stout, he could never save enough to redeem the medal. It was the second highest to the Victoria Cross in British decorations. Father came to the United States in 1927, to join his mother, brothers and sisters in Pennsylvania. His two sisters joined the religious order of The Little Sisters of the Poor, in Wilmington, Delaware. Mother joined him a short time later and we moved to Ireland with grandfather and grandmother. Upon the death of his older brother, grandfather became the owner of the property. We learned a little about farming while also attending school in Ireland. Grandfather was very proud of his family and seemed eager and appreciative to tell his stories to those who would listen. Quite often he would stop working and sit down in the field overlooking Lough Foyle and Redcastle Lighthouse, to recall experiences of fishing for salmon with drift nets. He also recalled times when the owner of the castle, a captain by royal decree, would have him shove off with a crew of four or five crewman in the schooner for a trip to Derry. The trip from Redcastle to Derry and back again took approximately two hours. The captain kept all hands working while Grandfather stood at the wheel, smoking his pipe as the captain stood directly behind him with the smoke blowing in his face. He seemed to appreciate the aroma from the plug tobacco. The crew spread the anchor chain out on the deck, link by link and when they had finished; they repeated the same thing all over again.
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About the Book
The story goes back to the fifth century when Saint Patrick converted the pagan Irish to Christianity. Pictures of ancient crosses are testimony to the saint’s arrival in Ireland. There is a graveyard, surrounded by a stone wall, where a wheeled cross stands at the entrance and a small stone structure with a stone roof, inside the graveyard known as the skull house, it allures visitors from all over Europe year round. The stone structure is Saint Finnian’s mortuary. The saint was abbot of the monastery, where monks were sent out to Europe to teach and to spread the faith. The unearthing of a beautifully inscribed slab stone in a monastery graveyard revealed the grave of Magnus, a Norseman from the isles. He was the forefather of the author’s. Maternal family, the Norseman came to Ireland by way of Scotland many years ago. The book describes the lives of the author’s great grandparents, grandparents and his parents before developing into a memoir, beginning with his school days in a two-room schoolhouse in Ireland and through the years of World War II. He lived with his grandparents on a farm and was hired to a farmer in the north of Ireland at the Derry rabble, a form of slavery in past years. He returned to Brooklyn and his parents in 1947. The book describes his life as a fireman as well as his son’s, a member of rescue one at the sabotage of twin towers on 9/11.
About the Author
Upon separation from the service, the author got married and became the father of five children and nine grandchildren. He moved from Brooklyn to the Bronx and lived there for most of his life. Duddy became a New York City fireman in 1956 and received the certificate of merit from the N.Y.F.D. He received the certificate of honorable mention and also a graduation certificate from the Writer's Digest School in Cincinnati. He graduated from Bernard Baruch College in New York City with a bachelor of business administration degree, specializing in marketing and international trade. He worked as an intermediary on the sale of five hundred metric tons of gold from Egypt and Saudi light crude and other commodities during the Persian Gulf War.