Tag: Dorothy Hein

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Dorothy’s Cat

I remember my sweet mother-in-law every day of my life. She died in 2008, at the age of 98. I often wear her fuzzy bathrobe when I get up in the morning. I wear one of her sweatshirts it the winter, when it is cold outside. Snuggled in my memories of her, I am cozy and warm.

I loved spending time with Dorothy. She was pretty and funny, sweet and a little naive. But Dorothy was also determined and brave. She survived losing her father in the influenza outbreak when she was eight years old. She survived diphtheria and being quarantined at Denver General Hospital for six weeks when she was ten. She was the mother of six children, two of whom died before she did. Even as she approached 100 years old, she was determined to stay in her own home.

For many years, Dorothy and I spent every Friday evening together. Often we would go to the neighborhood restaurant for dinner and a glass of wine. Other times, we would sit in Dorothy’s kitchen and talk about our week. At various times, Dorothy shared her home with her husband, her children, her nephew, her mother, and Jim’s dog, Adolph.

Adolph was a medium-size, brown dog. Not a big dog, but not small, either. He was part Airedale and mostly mutt. Adolph was happy and  lovable, but not especially smart. Although Dorothy tolerated Adolph, her real love were her cats. She nearly always had a cat in the house. When one died, usually from crossing busy Grant Street, another one showed up, asking to be adopted.

One Friday afternoon, I stopped in to see Dorothy and I knew something was wrong. Her grey kitty was meowing around the kitchen. Dorothy poured each of us a glass of wine.

“Is everything ok?” I asked. “You seem a little flustered.”

“I am flustered. I had a weird phone call today.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. It was a man’s voice. He said he saw me at church.”

“Are you sure you don’t know him?”

“His voice wasn’t familiar at all. He said he wanted to see my pussy.”

“Oh, my. That’s terrible. What did you say?”

“I was very cross with him. I asked him why he would say such a thing. My cat was right there in the kitchen with me and I wasn’t going to take her outside to show her to him or anyone else.”

“What did the man say then?”

“Nothing. He hung up.”

Dorothy told that same story to everyone she saw that weekend. No one had the heart to tell her why we thought the story was funny.

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The Luck of the Irish

I have always thought that the Mexican people and the Irish had a lot in common. In addition to being from devoutly Catholic countries with a distinct tendency toward alcoholism, they both have some of the worst luck in the world. They just don’t know it.

I am lucky to be one-fourth Irish. That comes from my dear Grandmother, Irene Fay Jones. My grandmother and her family were Irish to the core.

I was also lucky to marry into an Irish family. My mother-in-law, Dorothy Gorman Hein, was my mother, too. Her sister, Margaret Gorman Gessing, was my beloved aunt. 

Irene and Dorothy had a lot in common: Both lost their fathers at a very young age. Dorothy’s father died in the flu epidemic of 1918, when she was eight years old. Irene’s father was crushed between two boxcars, working for the railroad, when she was eleven. 

Both Irene and Dorothy grew-up poor, raised by single mothers at a time when jobs for women were scarce. They both became hard-working, brave women who loved their spouses, their children and their grandchildren. Both Irene and Dorothy had sisters who were their best friends, and both married men who were stable, hard-working, and NOT Irish. Irene and Dorothy also loved to drink, now and then. Dorothy and Margaret drank wine out of a pretty glasses. Irene drank whiskey, with her sister Ruth, out of lovely porcelain cups.

St. Patrick’s Day was the most important day of the year for Dorothy and Margaret. They had their own booth at Duffy’s Shamrock Tavern in downtown Denver. They arrived early and stayed all day, wearing green from head to toe.

 

I don’t know if Irene Fay was proud of her Irish heritage. My Welsh grandfather didn’t approve of her wild Irish family. Too often the Fays were in trouble with the law and Grandpa was embarrassed when their names appeared, yet again, in the local newspaper.

Irene Fay was a serious woman. She married my grandfather, Robert Jones, when she was seventeen and he was twenty-four. Grandpa was a studious, sober Welshman, who never drank a drop of alcohol. Irene’s younger sister, Ruth Fay, was Grandma’s opposite. Ruth was fun-loving, friendly, exceptionally pretty and always ready for the next drink, even if it wasn’t legal.

Ruth married Johnny Quinn in the St. Paul Cathedral in 1923, three years after the start of prohibition. I can only assume it was a Roaring 20’s courtship, filled with music, dancing, and bootleg liquor. Ruthie’s hair was short, she dressed as a flapper and she loved to drive a car. Johnny was a small-built, dapper, charming Irishman.

As a child, I loved to hear Johnny and Ruth tell stories of gangsters running out the back door of their house. I grew up hearing stories of machine guns hidden in guitar cases, of people being gunned down in the streets, of crooked policemen and gangsters “with a heart of gold.”  Uncle Johnny taught my sister how to shoot Craps when she was seven years old.

Johnny Quinn killed a man at the Green Lantern Saloon in St. Paul in 1931. He said it was self-defense, but it probably wasn’t. Grandma’s brother, Frank Fay, and her brother-in-law, George Hurley, were also implicated in the Green Lantern “situation.”  Johnny was eventually convicted of the murder and spent time in the Stillwater, Minnesota prison before being pardoned by the governor. Meanwhile, Frank escaped to Canada, and George ran away to California. 

I wish I could tell you that Johnny and Ruth lived a straight life after he returned home from prison, but that wouldn’t be true. Prohibition was repealed, so they needed to find another business. They bought a small dry-cleaning business in St. Paul, and set up an illegal gambling operation in the back room. They ran that business until Uncle Johnny died of natural causes in 1963.

Aunt Ruth lived fifteen more years after Johnny died. She outlived my grandmother by twenty-two years. Ruth was always the life of the party. She was always beautiful. Always everyone’s favorite aunt. Always a baseball fan. Always generous.  And like the Gorman sisters ~ Dorothy and Margaret ~ Aunt Ruth was always ready with a laugh and another story.

I was lucky to have Irish men and women in my life. They taught me to work hard. To believe in leprechauns and four-leaf clovers. To ask for forgiveness, instead of permission. To look for fun and laughter. To make music and tell stories. And to take a drink, every now and then. Everyone should be so lucky.