In County Tyrone, we stayed in Fivemiletown, home of the ancestors who emigrated from Ireland too long ago to have left a mark. I wanted a feel for the place. A sense of the village and the lay of the land surrounding it. It was pretty much unspectacular: one ordinary little street surrounded by lovely green fields. Reason enough for Timothy Dumars and his children to move on maybe.
We drove to Derry on the wide River Foyle, where our tourguide talked openly of the city’s history with The Troubles and pointed out the memorials to Bloody Sunday. At the Ulster Folk Park outside Omagh, exhibits portrayed the Irish farmers and weavers who sailed to America when faced with eviction, hunger, or religious and political persecution. Many, like my own ancestors, went to Pennsylvania.
Then we went into Omagh city center. I knew about the Real IRA car bombing that killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, in 1998 – well after the start of the peace process -- and I expected to see memorials similar to ones in Derry. The town map from the visitor centor listed a memorial garden, but I remembered the explosion as being in the middle of a busy shopping area. On Market Street I did find a tall blue pillar with a heart etched at its top, but there was no hint of its significance.
I went into a bookstore and, finding no books on the local tragedy, asked for a local newspaper. The shopkeeper shuffled through various stacks of papers before offering me one. “This is local,” she said, “and it presents both sides of the community.”
It set me back a bit to think that in a town of that size there might be a newspaper that only Catholics read and another strictly for Protestants. Rather like Americans reading only Republican or Democratic papers. And it made me wonder if the shopkeeper had hestiated in choosing a newspaper for me because she feared handing me the wrong one.
Back in Fivemiletown, I fell into conversation with the Methodist minister, a woman who spoke proudly of the new church windows. “The old windows were destroyed in a bomb blast. Not a bomb in the church, of course, but in the village.”
“Why here?” I glanced over my shoulder at the usual shops and pubs and houses.
She shrugged. “It happens.”
No where are we safe from violence. Or paranoia. I understand that. But I have difficulty imagining car bombs in the small American towns where I lived most of my life. Nor in Richmond, Virginia, where I live now. And while I try to avoid offending my Republican friends, I don’t live in fear that they will have me killed. All of which brings me to a toast:
We drove to Derry on the wide River Foyle, where our tourguide talked openly of the city’s history with The Troubles and pointed out the memorials to Bloody Sunday. At the Ulster Folk Park outside Omagh, exhibits portrayed the Irish farmers and weavers who sailed to America when faced with eviction, hunger, or religious and political persecution. Many, like my own ancestors, went to Pennsylvania.
Then we went into Omagh city center. I knew about the Real IRA car bombing that killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, in 1998 – well after the start of the peace process -- and I expected to see memorials similar to ones in Derry. The town map from the visitor centor listed a memorial garden, but I remembered the explosion as being in the middle of a busy shopping area. On Market Street I did find a tall blue pillar with a heart etched at its top, but there was no hint of its significance.
I went into a bookstore and, finding no books on the local tragedy, asked for a local newspaper. The shopkeeper shuffled through various stacks of papers before offering me one. “This is local,” she said, “and it presents both sides of the community.”
It set me back a bit to think that in a town of that size there might be a newspaper that only Catholics read and another strictly for Protestants. Rather like Americans reading only Republican or Democratic papers. And it made me wonder if the shopkeeper had hestiated in choosing a newspaper for me because she feared handing me the wrong one.
Back in Fivemiletown, I fell into conversation with the Methodist minister, a woman who spoke proudly of the new church windows. “The old windows were destroyed in a bomb blast. Not a bomb in the church, of course, but in the village.”
“Why here?” I glanced over my shoulder at the usual shops and pubs and houses.
She shrugged. “It happens.”
No where are we safe from violence. Or paranoia. I understand that. But I have difficulty imagining car bombs in the small American towns where I lived most of my life. Nor in Richmond, Virginia, where I live now. And while I try to avoid offending my Republican friends, I don’t live in fear that they will have me killed. All of which brings me to a toast:
Cheers to my Irish ancestors for choosing their new country well, and Happy Independence Day to us all.
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