Chapter 22

Worker and Father

On a Friday night in December 1868, Pat was late coming home from work. At midnight, he banged into the front door and staggered into the living room. Mary, dressed for bed, had been asleep on the couch waiting for him. She jumped up, dazed and startled. The baby wailed. She rushed to the crib, which was nestled in a dark corner of the dining room, cradled her daughter in her arms, rocked her, and spoke to her in calming tones. Within a minute or two, as Pat slouched on the couch and mumbled, Katherine fell back to sleep, and Mary placed her once again in her crib.

She walked over to her husband and in a low voice said, “Pat, it’s after midnight. You’re drunk. You reek of smoke and alcohol. You scared your infant daughter out of a sound sleep.”

“Mary, love, I stayed too long with the boys. You can’t begrudge me a few shots after a week in that hell hole.”

“Let me help you get these dirty clothes off.” As she took off his shoes, Pat fell asleep. She threw a blanket over him and put a pillow under his head.

The next morning, Pat was up at 7:00, ready for work.

“I’m sorry, love, for the spree last night. It won’t happen again.”

“Oh, get off to the Works and don’t forget to come home on time. We’re expected over at Dad’s tonight to celebrate his birthday.” She kissed him hard on the lips, shoved a lunch pail into his hands, and pushed him gently through the door.

“How is it I love him so?” she murmured to herself. “One thing gives me confidence. No matter how much he drinks, the next morning he’s at work on time.” Something else bothered her more—his chronic weakness. “He really hasn’t recovered from the war,” she murmured to herself.

Pat walked across the dirt floor of the factory through a large door to a field on the east side of the plant. One of the laborers leaned on his rake and yelled to Pat, “To the swamp, Bones!”—short for “Lazy Bones”—and pointed toward the creek. The other men nearby smirked. Pat dipped his head slightly, but said nothing. At the swamp, he began raking out a mound of slag into the creek. PM joined him, long-handled rake in hand.

Four men dumping gondola cars every five minutes shouted insults at the two and laughed. It was bitter cold this time of year. A westerly wind thinned the fumes from the furnaces and slag. Pat and PM bent to their work. The four prodded the mule and cart up and down the track as fast as the mule would go. By mid-morning, work had to be stopped, as slag mounded before the track. The gondola workers stood idle back at the furnace, content with the bottleneck they had created and barking their complaints out for all to hear. Within minutes, the foreman walked out to the swamp and gruffly warned Pat and PM to speed it up.

Pat’s head was still throbbing at mid-morning. He turned to PM and asked him, “How are you feeling this morning? I caught some heavy lip from Mary.”

“So did I from Bridgid, but she’ll get used to it.” Within the past year, PM had met and married Bridgid Donnelly. “The women in the Ward know we men are going to tip a few and come home a bit unsteady once in a while.”

At noon, Pat dragged himself through the front gate and started with PM for home down Tecumseh Street. It being Saturday, work was through. The two men walked in silence. Then Pat said, “I think I have to find something else, PM.”

PM nodded in rueful agreement. “The Iron Works is about to finish off what the Johnnies didn’t,” he said. “Besides, the bosses have about had it with us.”

“I see it, too,” said Pat. “Jobs are opening up at some of the new grain mills on the Creek. We’ll keep our ears open at Kennedy’s, though $2 a day at the Iron Works is tough to match. Rest up tonight. I’ll see you at church.”

Dolan turned onto Tecumseh Street. He was only 100 yards from his flat. Both of them had refused company housing within the walls of the plant. They had their fill of the company sixty-six hours a week.

Young men hanging on corners in the Ward shouted, “Hey, Bones,” as Mary and Pat walked to the market that afternoon and to church the next day. Finally, on the way home from noon mass, Mary asked Pat what they meant. Pat sloughed it off, saying, “Oh, it’s just mates joking around.”

When she heard it again from a group of young men on the corner of Elk and Louisiana, as she, Pat, and the baby were coming home from the market the following Saturday, she realized this was more than a joke. Deeply upset, she probed Pat more insistently. Anger flashed across his face and he told her not to worry. “They’re just assholes, acting stupid.”

A week later, Pat and PM were both fired after months of warnings. For three months, they found work constructing an extension of the Erie Canal called the Hamburgh Canal. Pay was less than at the Iron Works and part of it the contractor gave in store-pay, redeemable at a general store at Main and Genesee Streets. Mary asked her father for the use of a horse and wagon to move them to a cheaper apartment over a small grocery at Carroll and Heacock. After moving them, Garrett took his daughter home, where they sat and talked as they had not done since she married. They conversed about Nagle Supply, social events, and her friends at work and on the West Side. When he dropped her off late that afternoon, she found herself longing for the excitement of the life she once had and the company of educated business and social associates.

Garrett had considered giving them the money to remain where they were, but decided against it. He suspected the firing was due to Pat’s drinking as much as to his war-weariness.

In the spring of 1869, the old Company I captain, Hugh Mooney, dropped by one evening. The Dolans and the Donohues were sitting on the Dolans’ front porch over a few ales. Neighbors gathered on porches as long as the weather was good, May to October. Mary and Bridgid were both pregnant. Katherine had been put to bed in a side bedroom. Wisely, they each nursed a single glass of ale through the evening. The two Pats were on their fourth when Hugh walked up.

“I was hoping I’d find you two lads tonight. Mary and Bridgid, how are you? Looking lovely as ever!”

The women smiled, excused themselves, and went inside. Hugh had something to say to their husbands. They liked Hugh. He was tall, handsome, a bit overdressed, but a good man, good to his wife, Kate, and often seen by them walking his son and daughters down Ohio Street to the small park Ward residents had carved out of a field.

Hugh was a friend of the general manager, Michael Dillon, at the New York Central Freight Office. Dillon hung out at Mooney’s Saloon and Boarding House below Mooney’s flat on Ohio Street. A few years older than Dolan and Donohue, Hugh Mooney walked deliberately and erect, with the air of the captain he’d become at the end of the war. Mooney was a hero to Pat. He reminded him of General Corcoran. Both were always at the front of their men in battle and were the last to leave campfires at night, sometimes on all fours.

Mooney, unlike Corcoran, cared little about discipline. After drinking all day at Fortress Suffolk, he stole another officer’s horse and rode down the Edenton Road, shouting to the pickets that he was chief of the Grand Celts, a group within the 155th that invented new ways to raise hell. For that misadventure, he was demoted from lieutenant to private and served two months in the brig. Soon after his release, Captain McAnally, a friend of his going back to the Ward, restored his rank and position within Company I.

At the Battle of Cold Harbor, Mooney took a minie bullet through the left shoulder. He was out of action for three months, but returned to his company rather than accept a permanent furlough. There was no one in the city who Pat admired more.

“Pat and PM, it’s always great to be with you lads. How the two of you made it through Salisbury is a monument to your manhood.”

“Thanks, Hugh. We seldom think about it, but it left its mark,” said Pat. PM grunted in agreement and offered Hugh a glass of beer.

“I know it did, Pat. That‘s why I came by. I thought of you two when I heard there were jobs opening at the Central as freight carriers.”

Pat and PM could hardly contain their excitement. “Hugh, could your timing be any better?” said PM. Calming his voice a little, he continued. “There are plenty of jobs here in the Ward, but they’re as bad as the ones we’ve got or are just temporary. Both of our wives are expecting. So we can’t just up and quit like two young bucks.” Pat nodded in agreement.

Hugh smiled broadly. “Well, let me first congratulate you. Being a father is the greatest experience of my life. Here’s the story. The New York Central is buying up small roads all over the East and Midwest. It sees Buffalo as the biggest inland port in the country in just twenty years or so. There could be a real future for you with this company. Michael Dillon is the general manager from New York and a friend of mine.”

Pat and PM nodded.

“Now, the job is unloading package freight from rail cars. You will be out in the weather, but that’s nothing new for the likes of you two. And the bosses are reasonable. They let their men work at their own pace. The pay is the same as you’re earning now, $2 a day, sixty-six hours a week.”

He paused for a few seconds and drew on his beer. “You need to decide soon. I had Dillon put a hold on the jobs for now, but he has to fill them in a day or so. He likes the idea of hiring Irish, and hiring Civil War veterans is a real winner with him. He’s a gentleman. I think you’ll like him.”

“Hugh, you have our answer now. Let’s bring out the girls and let them in on this,” said Pat.

Hugh nodded and Pat went to the door to call the women out. When Mary and Bridgid appeared, the two Pats began to speak at the same time.

Bridgid put her hands up and said, “Okay, just one of you give us the story.”

PM looked at Pat and said, “You let them in on the good news.” Pat quickly went over the offer. The ladies turned to Hugh and grabbed him by an arm. “Thanks, Hugh,” said Mary. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your thinking of our husbands. Thank you so much.” Then Bridgid repeated: “Oh, bless you, Hugh Mooney. God bless you!”

PM looked at the two women and said, “Well it’s settled then.” He turned to Hugh. “Monday morning we’ll quit and come over to the freight office and sign in, if that’s okay.”

“Yes, I believe it is. I’ll let Mr. Dillon know to expect you.”

The women went back in to cut a cake Bridgid had made and boil the tea. Hugh waited for the wives to move out of hearing distance and then blurted out the last thing on his mind.

“You won’t embarrass me now, lads, will you? You have to give me your word you’ll never come to work drunk or drink on the job.”

Dolan and Donohue assured Hugh those days were a thing of the past. The two lapsed into a moment’s silence. Done were the carefree days of their adolescence, but they weren’t sure it was a good thing.

On Sunday, October 24, 1869, Mary gave birth to her second child, a son named after her maternal grandfather, Robert Joseph. The boy was small, seven pounds, ten ounces, measured eighteen inches with a full head of light brown, curly hair. He was healthy and his eyes shimmered with a clarity that bespoke intelligence.

Six months later, on the first warm day, Mary beamed with pride and pleasure when she took the baby for a buggy ride back in the old neighborhood along Louisiana. Her women friends up and down the street greeted her, saying how great she looked, not a bit of maternity bulge left. Kate, now two, struggled to keep up with her mother. Her mother’s affection was shifting slightly and unconsciously to her son. “You’re prettier than ever, Mary. Nothing like a baby to bring the best out of you,” said old Mrs. Shea, the matriarch of the Flats where Pat and Mary lived.

“I imagine your husband is all over you every night. You send him to Father Hennessey for a talk. You don’t need a third baby too soon.”

Mary smiled demurely. She agreed with this wise old lady. Already, she was scheming how to handle Pat in bed. He wanted sex only a week after she gave birth. She liked sex, too, but she did not want a third pregnancy just yet. She wanted to enjoy her children.

While she cleaned and cooked, she pushed images of her old life as business partner and socialite to the back of her mind. Still, when the children slept, she sat at her front window drawing fashionable men and women cavorting, dancing, preening.

She found ways to put off Pat. One scheme was to get out of bed as soon as Pat moved his hands over her stomach toward her breasts.

She would say, “The baby is awake and needs nursing” or “The baby needs changing” or “The baby is upset.” She had ten different lines, lest Pat catch on. Once out of bed, she would sit with the baby until her husband’s snores signaled she could return to bed unmolested. Tension grew in him from the lack of sex and resentment as he felt himself odd man out among the children.

In November, Bridgid gave birth to a boy. She and PM named him Terence, after her deceased grandfather. The new parents doted on their infant son. PM fed him from a bottle when Bridgid went dry. He plunged into fatherhood. For Bridgid, motherhood was literally the answer to her fondest prayer. She felt even more complete sharing their son with his father. Bridgid and Mary communicated feelings they shared with no one else and grew closer than twin sisters.

At two months of age, Terry became feverish and began vomiting. His parents nursed and prayed over him day and night. The second day, with his son crying uncontrollably, PM ran for a doctor, who diagnosed the illness as diphtheria. He had no remedy, just advised keeping the boy bathed in wet cloths to control his temperature and praying he would have the strength to endure. He didn’t and died within a week.

The Dolans were crushed. So were their best friends. After the wake and funeral, conversation among the four grew sparse. They cooked, played with Katherine, and took turns with the baby. They found any way to pass the time but talk honestly about how empty and helpless they were feeling. The Donohues believed they had to be near their friends every day. Often, the Dolans wished they’d go home so they could mourn openly with one another.

Mary bathed her children carefully, tenderly, and often. She looked on her son with anxiety after Terry’s funeral. He was such a fragile infant, she thought. She held him through much of the day. She worried at the least sign of illness, sniffles or a light fever. So many children in the Ward never survived their first year. The Dolan child wasn’t the only infant funeral that year; there was at least one every month, it seemed. Along with other women, she’d throw her arms around the grieving mothers, helpless to console them with empty words.

Catholics often repeated ejaculations throughout the day like “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, have mercy on us.” Hers was “Not Robert, Lord, please, not Robert.” She prayed it a hundred times a day.

She spent time with Kate, reading to her, but she began to plot ways to make something more out of Bob than what she saw in the Ward. In reaction, Pat doted increasingly on his daughter.

The job at the Central unloading boxes of freight was cleaner and lighter than the job at the Works. The pace, as Hugh had promised, was within the ability of most workers to keep up . . . except for the two most recent hires. Pat took days off when his rheumatism flared up in his knees and shoulders, or could not leave the house for dysentery, or walk for piles.

Mary borrowed home remedies from other women, but they were seldom more than palliative. Pat relished the care she gave him and at times feigned greater pain than he felt.

The bosses ignored his absences, as well as those of PM.

These were happy times at work. The bosses were indeed reasonable men. The company threw parties at Christmas and Easter. Pat liked most of the men he worked with. His friendship with PM was an anchor. There were supervisory positions he could advance to. All that said, Pat could feel himself slipping deeper into a fallow state. He wondered how long he could keep up with the work.

Despite his promise to Hugh, Pat began to drink once again with PM, both at home and at Kennedy’s. He seldom spent time with his son. He took his daughter to mass on Sundays, and then walked downtown, as far as her little legs could go. Then he hiked her up on his shoulders and strolled along the creek, watching sailboats and freighters moving in and out of the harbor.

Mary became distant and unhappy. She and Pat, when they talked at all, never alluded to the growing gap between them.

One late summer evening, the vaudeville act of Grogan and Farrell, entertainer Ned Harrigan, and other headliners from New York played at the Richmond Hotel on Main Street. Michael Dillon bought tickets for all his workers and their wives. When Mrs. Shea offered to babysit, Pat was able to persuade Mary to leave her children to take in the show.

As they waited for the show to begin, Dolan asked the wives, “Mary and Bridgid, what do you hear about George Tipping’s family?” He had seen both wives talking to Tipping’s wife, Catherine, after mass the previous Sunday. “A widow’s pension is good and all, but raising five children on it has to be a struggle.”

“Yes,” Mary said, “but the family is getting help from George’s brother and other family members. Catherine is, however, worried about her daughter Lizzie, who is deep in sadness over her father’s death. She’s not eating. She’s not attentive in school. She’s in another world with no family or friends. Seems like nothing will pull her out of her melancholia.”

The theatre lights dimmed and the curtains parted. The performer, Ned Harrigan, in a one-man show, transformed himself from one stock Irish character to another in the course of forty-five minutes on stage. All were characters Harrigan took from the streets of New York, but who were to be found in any Irish ghetto in the East. Harrigan made them appear real.

Afterward, standing at the bar with his fellow New York Central employees, Pat started repeating Harrigan’s lines. The group turned away from their side conversations and howled and clapped as Pat imitated Harrigan’s delivery, mouthing one of his sketches, and adding a story from the Ward. Mary watched proudly a step or two away, a bit stunned by the showmanship exhibited by her husband. She was relieved because Pat drank only two beers in the course of the evening.

In 1870, one of Johanna’s uncles, Edward Needham, visited Buffalo. While at a family reunion at the Mahoney house, John asked, “How’s your coal mine going in Pennsylvania, Ed?” As part owner, Edward was very proud of the stature the mine gave him in the community and business world, and of his rapidly accumulating wealth. Fifty years old and heavyset, he wore a custom tailored suit from New York, sported a large emerald ring on his right hand, and now and again lifted a gold watch from the pocket of his vest. In response, he talked about himself and his mine nonstop for two hours, during which he mentioned that his manager had recently been lost in an accident.

Needham was impressed by his niece’s husband, how he listened and asked the right questions. Family members told him later what a great husband and worker John was. They said he never missed a day of work and seemed to be progressing well at the Division of Weights and Measures, which controlled the lift bridges in town. They mentioned, too, that members of his old company held John in high regard. He was known as one of the best soldiers in the regiment.

On the second day of his visit, Needhan offered John the manager’s post that paid more than John would ever make with the city. John and Johanna were ready to leave Buffalo anyway, hoping to escape the dirt, noise, accidents, and rowdy behavior of the gangs of young men who had taken over the street corners. John was disgusted by the way politicians bid out contracts to friends and received kickbacks in return. Indeed, First Ward politicians refined corruption in city government to a fine art. Life was often dangerous and city jobs were precarious.

A month later, John and Johanna, with help from family members, were living in Blossburg in northeastern Pennsylvania, fifty miles south of Painted Post, New York.

As they walked a half mile to the freight office at Chicago and Ohio Streets, Pat turned to PM and said, “I’m scared. I thought I’d have recovered by this time. It’s nearly six years since we’re back from the war, but I don’t feel much better than when I entered the convalescent camp in Alexandria. And I haven’t done any serious drinking lately, so it’s not the drink. Mary is expecting again. I can’t quit now, but I have to find some lighter work the bosses will let me do.”

“Tell you the truth, Pat, I’m about the same. I’m short of breath. There’s pains in my chest. It makes me think I’ve got the consumption. What’ll we do, rob banks?”

“No, PM, we’re too slow for that, but the government owes us for what we lost in the war. I hear some of our officers have gotten big pensions. They know the politicians downtown. That’s the answer. We need a pension of at least $20 a month each, ’cause let’s face it, we can only work a few days a week.”

On Christmas Day 1870, during their first visit back to Buffalo, John and Johanna caught Pat after high mass. John wore a black topcoat and top hat, Johanna an elegant red jacket above a long white dress. Old friends crowded around them and stared enviously. Pat was flabbergasted to see them looking so prosperous. Their faces broke out in huge smiles as they grabbed Pat and pulled him away. Separating themselves from their friends, they hugged Pat between them. “Pat, I have brilliant news. Johanna is pregnant.”

Pat grabbed an arm of each and began to swing them around and around in a circle, yelling and whooping there on Elk Street in front of St. Bridget’s. “God is good. What’d I tell you two? Relax and it’ll happen, and here it is! I can’t wait to get home and tell Mary. Come over for dinner this afternoon and we’ll celebrate.”

Pat burst in the front door, shouting, “Mary, Johanna is pregnant. I invited them over for dinner. Theresa, too. I hope you got a roast or something good to celebrate.”

On Saturday, March 18, 1871, Johanna delivered a boy named Michael. John and Johanna were overjoyed. They had waited so long for their first child. Pat and Mary shared in their happiness.

Four months later on July 18, Mary gave birth to a daughter, Minnie.

“This baby is the picture of you, Mary. She’s beautiful,” said Pat as he bent to kiss his second daughter nestled in the arms of her mother.

Within a week, Pat was back in the neighborhood, wheeling his newest daughter and showing her off to all who would stop and talk.

“Mrs. Shea, Bridgid, come look at the wee one Mary just gave us. Isn’t she the image of her mother?”

Mrs. Shea picked up the infant and tipped her toward Bridgid Dolan, who was walking with her.

“Well, we know this one is Mary’s, Bridgid. Her eyes are every bit as blue and the dimples are just like hers. You are a lucky man, Pat,” said Mrs. Shea.

Bridgid, depressed by the death of her son, had failed to conceive another child, which pushed her further into despair and PM with her. He would, without apparent reason, suddenly break off conversations and become silent, then respond in clipped phrases when Pat tried to restart their conversation.

Neighbors and family talked behind their backs. “What’s wrong with Bridgid and PM? Don’t they want children? They must be using the pelt.” The preferred form of birth control of the day, the pelt was a four-inch square of rabbit pelt inserted in the vagina. Inevitably, word got back to Bridgid and PM and only made them feel worse.

“Pat, I’m so happy for you and Mary. How is she feeling?” asked Bridgid, putting on a brave front. Still, there was no hiding her sadness, as she admired her friend Mary’s third healthy baby.

Pat turned on Ohio Street to show the boys at Kennedy’s what God had given him, while Bridgid hiked over to the Heacock Street apartment to visit with Mary. She found her playing with her two-year-old son, while four-year-old Katherine, amused herself alone with a doll in her bedroom.

In September, Baby Michael came down with pneumonia. As his condition worsened, John and Johanna made an anxious return to Buffalo and the Sisters of Charity Hospital. The attention of the doctors, their own prayers and those of their families and friends were not enough. Within a week Michael died, not yet a year old. Michael’s funeral from St. Columba’s Church left parents and friends emotionally spent and depressed. Mary’s anxiety for her children deepened.