Jerry Ring's Blog: Resonating Rings
July 5, 2012
Renewal
The world was smaller then.
Two terraces of redbrick houses in a cul-de-sac, twelve facing eleven. We lived in number four, where I was born ten minutes before the Angelus, on a summer’s day in 1943.
My first memory was the sound of the siren.
Gathered up in my mother’s arms she ran through the back garden to the stonemason’s yard behind our house. The day war was declared between Germany and England the workers had built the blockhouse from granite and limestone offcuts. It was a sous terrain, half street level, half underground. The men took their places politely and made extra room for us. In dusty blue overalls they flavoured the air with a subtle hum of sweat and the acridity of cut stone. We were given pride of place in the corner and made very welcome. They made clucking noises to amuse me but it was my mother they were trying to impress. She was exceedingly pretty with a warm smile. Men like a woman about.
They took the alert seriously and talk turned to the progress of the war. Though Ireland was neutral, the needs of the greater powers always becomes a moral law. The threat of invasion was real, from either Allied or Axis forces. It was not that long since the Great War and they had sharp memories. They had survived the horrors of trench war and knew only too well the hypocrisy of imperial leadership.
In later years I wondered if I truly remembered the air raid. To recall such detail as an infant is unusual. Perhaps one of the others told me about it, my brothers or sisters. But, it was probably my mother who fed me the images just as she exposed me to the outside world.
We lived on the North Circular Road squeezed in by the prison avenues on the direct route from the city centre to Glasnevin cemetery and Arus an Uachtarain, the presidential residence. All manner of parades, potentates and protests passed by the entrance of the cul-de-sac. To see over the crowds my mother, a small Dublin woman held me up like a camera, as if to record the events for future generations. My eyes shuttered the images then fixed in the fluid of my brain and archived.
Two terraces of redbrick houses in a cul-de-sac, twelve facing eleven. We lived in number four, where I was born ten minutes before the Angelus, on a summer’s day in 1943.
My first memory was the sound of the siren.
Gathered up in my mother’s arms she ran through the back garden to the stonemason’s yard behind our house. The day war was declared between Germany and England the workers had built the blockhouse from granite and limestone offcuts. It was a sous terrain, half street level, half underground. The men took their places politely and made extra room for us. In dusty blue overalls they flavoured the air with a subtle hum of sweat and the acridity of cut stone. We were given pride of place in the corner and made very welcome. They made clucking noises to amuse me but it was my mother they were trying to impress. She was exceedingly pretty with a warm smile. Men like a woman about.
They took the alert seriously and talk turned to the progress of the war. Though Ireland was neutral, the needs of the greater powers always becomes a moral law. The threat of invasion was real, from either Allied or Axis forces. It was not that long since the Great War and they had sharp memories. They had survived the horrors of trench war and knew only too well the hypocrisy of imperial leadership.
In later years I wondered if I truly remembered the air raid. To recall such detail as an infant is unusual. Perhaps one of the others told me about it, my brothers or sisters. But, it was probably my mother who fed me the images just as she exposed me to the outside world.
We lived on the North Circular Road squeezed in by the prison avenues on the direct route from the city centre to Glasnevin cemetery and Arus an Uachtarain, the presidential residence. All manner of parades, potentates and protests passed by the entrance of the cul-de-sac. To see over the crowds my mother, a small Dublin woman held me up like a camera, as if to record the events for future generations. My eyes shuttered the images then fixed in the fluid of my brain and archived.
Resonating Rings
A member of an ordinary Irish family shares the story of his life.
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