Dublin: A Brawl, An Arrest and Pat’s Excellent Adventure!

 Besides the anticipation of journeying to and arriving in Ireland, there was a bit of excitement along the way—and it started while in the plane. We were just minutes from landing when a fight broke out in the back of the plane.  A woman behind us started yelling, “Your child has been kicking my chair for the last six hours.”  The parent’s response, “Well that’s not my problem,” was not an acceptable to the woman, who then proclaimed, “Well, it’s not my problem, he’s your child!” The scuffling went back and forth a few times until we heard, “Mind your own business!”  Apparently, someone nearby tried to unsuccessfully intervene. We don’t know this for a fact as we couldn’t turn around due to the newly acquired “kricks “ in our necks from lack of sleep as well as our sardine-like positions in seats 27 A,B, and C.  None of us could understand why anyone would pick a fight at the end of a journey but maybe, between the kicking and feeling like a canned fish, she had had enough.

The other bit of excitement happened yesterday, during our Dublin walking tour. About halfway during the walk, we heard a man yell, “Don’t you move,” Needless to say, we all stopped on a dime.  We turned around, and a plain-clothes police officer was in the middle of arresting a woman.  It was quite the scene.  He had a woman against a wall, and was yelling and using the “f” word at a level that would have made Detectives Serpico and Kojak proud. In my mind, I thought that at the officer’s decibel level, someone must have been knifed—but no blood was apparent. It turned out that the woman had pick-pocketed another woman, who with her shopping bags and sneakers looked like a tourist.  Our great tour guide, John, didn’t miss a beat and said, “I planned this to be part of the tour!”

Today, was the adventure of a lifetime. Pat’s family is from County Laoise, an area less than an hour from Dublin. She had extensively researched her family history and along with help from family members who had previously visited the area, we set off to find Pat’s roots.  

The preparation of the journey was not easy. We planned on taking the train from Dublin to Portlaoise, the main town in the county.  But trying to find transportation to both the cemetery in which Pat’s family was buried and then a rural road in which the ancestral home of her grandmother was located, was no easy feat. We tried to secure a driver while still in the US, to no avail. And so we crossed our fingers and hoped that we would meet a taxi driver at the train station who would take pity on the three of us and help.

Well, we hit pay dirt. 

I must preface this part of the story by saying that our cab driver, Pat was wonderful and had it not been for him, our journey would likely not have been so successful. He was kind, often shutting off the meter when we stopped for one reason or another, (i.e. bathroom breaks), he loved history and told us about the history of Ireland, the area in which we drove and even personal details about his own life.  He was a true storyteller.  But at one point, I thought that he had become more invested in the journey than our Pat! When Pat initially approached our driver, she told him that we were going on a “adventure,” and he immediately said, “I love it!” From that point on, it was the four of us having that adventure. For example, while tramping along with us through the cemetery, it was our man who found the grave of our Pat’s great-grandparents.  

But that find was not enough.  After multiple times while in the cemetery saying to us, “Garls, get together for a photo,” he insisted that we go to the church rectory to talk to the priest to find out more information about Pat’s family.  On our own, the three of us would not only have never thought of such a crazy idea, but even if we did, we would never have executed it.  Our man, Pat, however, wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.  Thinking that the house next to the church had to the priest’s home, he pulled the taxi into the driveway. As we approached the house, a man in black pants and a sweater came out, I would assume because we were in the middle of nowhere and for all we knew, he may never have seen a taxi before! The “Pats” explained the situation and the good father then invited us all into the house so that our Pat could review the church’s baptismal records from the late 1800s! June and I, ever the cynical Americans, were remotely concerned that at a minimum, we would be robbed and at worst, we would be abducted. 

While the priest and Pat reviewed these records in his living room, the father then apologized because he could only stay with us until noon as he had to go and perform a baptism! But before he needed to leave, Pat was able to find the records of her grandmother and several of her siblings. Before departing to meet up with the baby and his family, our driver insisted that the “garls” take a photo with the father. And we did.

Next stop was to find the childhood home of Pat’s grandmother.  The priest, of course, knew the family home and gave our driver directions, as Google Maps and Waze were not cutting it, as it doesn’t map out  “the middle of nowhere” as well as it should. Needless to say, the directions were not the best.  Along the way and much to our consternation, our man pulled into every dirt path for miles, in his quest to find this house.  This quest included talking to a farmer about the family (he also came out to meet us when the taxi drove up his driveway), talking to another homeowner, who, like Pat, had a “Grammy who was a Seymour,” and banging on multiple doors in an attempt to find other distant cousins of Pat.  We got to a point that the three of us didn’t want to get out of the car! We eventually found the house and no one was home, but that didn’t stop our driver from banging on one of the windows just to make sure. 

We eventually returned to the train after many “thank yous” and “God bless yous” and headed back to Dublin after a day none of us will soon forget, including a cab driver who just happened to stumble upon three American garls.