This is the house into which my mother was born in 1936. Her father, James O’Connor, was a truck driver for the Providence Journal Bulletin newspaper. Her mother, Helen (O’Keefe) O’Connor, was not working when my mother was born, but did work most of her life as a sales clerk. My grandparents did not graduate from high school. They were the children of immigrants and entered the workforce young. The O’Connors lived in the upstairs and the downstairs apartments over a couple of years. Next door lived Helen’s Uncle Jim, an Irish immigrant bricklayer, and his family.
Sitting and drawing from across the street, I watched people come and go, as bass-booming cars drove by. I couldn’t help but notice that no one looked like me, or my family. The Irish Americans are gone. When I think back to my grandparents, I wince at the thought of them being with me now, looking again at their old neighborhood. I fear what they’d say, what they’d think about who lives there now. They had such a tribal mindset. Every nationality had a nickname—most were derogatory. Or, maybe the passage of time could help them see this place from another perspective—that after all these years, the neighborhood is pretty much the same. It’s a working-class place, with a healthy mix of first and second generation Americans living in multi-family houses. Many on the street are probably related culturally, and by blood, just like my family back in the 1930s. Here still live the folks who drive the trucks, and lay the bricks, and stack the shelves.
Visiting the Relatives 