J. Powers - Suitable Accommodations - An Autobiographical Story of Family Life - The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963

Well, we aren’t the only ones soon to be ousted. The squirrels, both red and grey, go about their business with no thought of anything but their stomachs and next winter. There must be between ten and twenty squirrels resident on the property (the red ones were in the walls of the house until I came and fought them back and sank wire in concrete around all the porches, stoning, trapping, shooting, a man possessed for one whole summer). So much for that. We expect we’ll take a terrible beating on appliances and furniture when we move, for we’ll sell most of it. Probably we’ll try Ireland again.

I rented an office downtown a couple of months ago and have been doing very well with my work there in the afternoons. I found that I could work then. I had got the idea that the only time was night for me, but this was due in great part to children, I know now.

I haven’t been going down to the office since Saturday, though, for on Sunday I had to go to the hospital and have my appendix removed. I returned home on Tuesday and am still feeling the stitches and also the surprise and indignity of it: I have been lucky in the past, escaping the everyday illnesses and accidents. So my step is slow these days, and the Old World is ahead of me, and at times I don’t feel up to it, to going abroad with four children, two more than last time, when I was five or six years younger, and settling down again. Still, I know it’s the right thing to do. It is a terrible fact that there is no one I know and respect who, living here, in Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, or anywhere else, isn’t unhappy, an exile already, and becoming more and more of one as American society changes for the worse. All kinds of problems abroad, of course, but at least the children can get an education before it’s too late: however much I wouldn’t want mine to suffer needlessly, I would like to see them educated. Betty, who thinks she is more attached to things here than I am but sees the folly of remaining, has printed a card and put it over the doorway in the kitchen, to steady her. It reads:

In exitu Israel de Egypto,

domus Jacob

de populo barbaro

[…]

Jim

Journal, May 31, 1957

DECAY: Old men, who a few years ago were wearing light canary and green and blue and white sport shirts of transparent nylon, I see this year are wearing caps of same hues. Bet they’re nylon. Have strap in back like a wool cap. Wonder if they would wear a sign saying, “I’m an old Jackass.” Give sign as premium as they used to give you a bat or ball when you bought a new suit at Myers Brothers.

Before leaving St. Cloud for Ireland, the Powers family traveled by train to Albuquerque to visit Jim’s parents, his brother and sister, and their families. It was a bitter, unhappy time.

MICHAEL MILLGATE

June 3, 1957

Dear Michael,

[…] Your coming trip sounds brutal to me, but then you are young and can always console yourself with the thought that you’re just passing through. Perhaps I’m unusually sensitive at the moment: we — Betty and I and the four children — are going to Albuquerque later this month, by train: what a way to die! My mother and father, brother and sister, live there. I hate the Southwest, the dust and disorder. Priestley, in Journey Down a Rainbow , is right.

Sorry you can’t make it to St Cloud, but I think it may be just as well. Our life is breaking up here. The old house we live in is doomed, the lovely grounds probably scheduled to be a parking lot, all this part of St Cloud Teachers College’s expansion program. We must get out by January 1958, but have decided our flight should not be in winter, and have booked passage on the Britannic leaving New York on October 3; next stop Cobh. We hope to rent a house with at least five bedrooms, not far from Dublin and on the sea if possible. I am formulating my ad for The Irish Times: Immigrant returning requires … […] I had it planned that I should finish my novel and then go to Ireland. I love my little office. But it’s not to be, and I must try to dissect the corpus of my novel for a story or two and still not kill the thing. This is old stuff for me, and I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to do it again.

All for now, then, Michael. I hope to see you in Ireland. I don’t know what my address will be there, but will drop you a line when we find a place. In any case, I am always to be found in the ten-shilling enclosure at Leopardstown Racecourse. A pint of plain is your only man.

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

509 First Avenue South

St Cloud, Minnesota

July 8, 1957

Dear Fr Egan,

Today I am 40, and so far no signs of life beginning. However, I was born around 5:00 p.m., as I understand it, and it’s only about two now. Greetings, in any case. […]

Now about this long journey to Albuquerque — don’t ever do it. Very rough going on the Rock Island, failure of air-conditioning partway coming back, proximity of the little people hard to take, seeing what they eat and read, and returning on the Super Chief, which ain’t nothing but a train except for the Turquoise Room and sweaty odors wafting through the sleeping cars. For the best in travel, I suggest the Enterprise, first class, running between Cork-Dublin-Belfast. You know I often eat a Clark Bar at 4:00 p.m., taking it with a glass of cold water, and called in vain for some on the Super Chief. In Ireland, I switch to Cadbury’s Turkish Delight.

Suffering from the heat here, though we now have something approaching welcome relief. I spend my time at home waxing my trunks and remind myself of Noah somehow preparing for the Flood. We have three trunks and can use at least two more of the type (wardrobe); I find them at the Goodwill. I have washed off all the stickers except one: Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo.

I’ve said nothing about the main thing here: mosquitoes, the worst in the memory of men. I have bought a spray you pump up, have enough DDT coming to provide 400 gallons of fluid, and now, on top of this, we are having a professional do the place with one of those big machines. That was one thing, the one thing, about New Mexico: sitting out under the stars and not being bitten by anything. But I feel a little effete mentioning mosquitoes to you, for though you resent insects, you are still a Minnesotan — and I get the impression it’s sort of chicken or something to give mosquitoes too much thought. But as it says on the first bottle of spray I bought: “Who enjoys your yard, you or the mosquitoes?” This struck me as a very powerful line, one upon which to act. But the bottle is all gone (and at $2.50 a quart), and I step very lively as I pass between house and garage; the children are kept indoors. […] I must do justice to the mosquito in literature, for it plays a large part in our life here.

But I ramble. I trust you are finding your new assignment pleasant.3 I imagine by now, a week there, you’ve got the place pretty well organized. Always a few things to iron out when you first take over, isn’t that right? Now, I don’t know how you fathers do it, but here’s how I do it …

Jim

HARVEY EGAN

St Cloud

August 1, 1957

Dear Fr Egan,

No office today; too hot. […] Del4 has had it, from me. I sympathized with manager Glickman when he said, “Listen, Flanagan…” […] All for now.

Jim

Hugh and Jim, Port of New York, 1957

The six-day voyage on the Britannic was brutal, thanks to storms and high seas on the North Atlantic, seasickness, and the Asiatic flu. Jim and Betty arrived in Ireland in bad shape, mentally and physically. While still in the United States, they had arranged to rent St. Stephens, a furnished house in Greystones, for the time it would take to find a permanent place.