And I played a game of Gaelic football in New York’s Gaelic Park, a playing field up in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. Mary and I had gone to see a game and word spread that a Gaelic footballer from Ireland was in the stands. So they invited me to play. They gave me a uniform and paid me $25 for my effort. Yes, it certainly was a week to remember.
When we got married, we had about $300 to our name. This was actually a pretty big sum of money at the time.
After the honeymoon, we lived at the corner of Liberty and Carew streets in Springfield on the third floor of an apartment building. Was it ever hot! Our apartment was up under the flat roof of the building where the hot sun beat down all day and there was no air conditioning to give us some relief. We quickly moved to 117 Mooreland Street. It was a bigger and nicer first-floor apartment in a two-family house, right next to my aunt Brigit who was married to my uncle Maurice. Yes, my aunt on my mother’s side got married to my uncle on my father’s side – they were no relation.
We got our first television set when we lived on Mooreland Street. The first programme we watched was the Saturday night fights. One of the boxers was named Moses Ward. I teased Mary, saying that he must be a cousin of hers from back in Roscommon. But Moses turned out to be a big black guy. And boy, could he fight. He was a true champion!
American Citizenship
I became an American citizen on 15 January 1954. Judge Edward McCauley administered the oath of citizenship in Superior Court in Springfield. There were thirteen or fourteen of us being sworn in that day, including my brother Paddy. The judge gave a brief speech. He said that he wanted us to become citizens, but he wanted us to maintain our ethnic heritage. I liked that a lot. It was the same as my own view on the subject.
Mike Carney’s Certificate of Naturalisation as an American citizen, dated 15 January 1954.
I proudly took the oath of citizenship in a loud, clear voice, with an Irish accent, of course. I obviously love Ireland. But I love America too. I don’t see a contradiction. After all, everybody loves both parents.
We left the courthouse and went up to American Legion Post 430 on Liberty Street in the Hungry Hill neighbourhood to celebrate the special occasion. We had more than a few drinks that night.
Mary got her citizenship a year later because she emigrated a year later than I did. She became a citizen on 3 June 1955. When she did, she changed her name to ‘Maureen.’ We talked about it and we decided that ‘Maureen’ sounded more Irish than ‘Mary’. So ‘Maureen’ it was.
Our Lady of Hope Church, Hungry Hill, Springfield.
Hungry Hill
When I came over to America, my family all lived in the Hungry Hill neighbourhood in Springfield. It was on the top of a hill, about a mile up from Main Street. There are a couple of theories on how Hungry Hill got its name. Some think that it’s a tribute to Hungry Hill on the Beara Peninsula near Cork. Some think it’s a mocking reference to the huge quantities of food that people bought for their growing families. Still others think that a popular policeman gave the neighbourhood its name in the early 1900s. The legend is that he was frustrated at the lack of restaurants in the area where he could get a bite to eat while on patrol and he gave it the nickname ‘Hungry Hill.’ But whatever the source of the name, there wasn’t really any hunger in the neighbourhood. It was the opposite of the conditions during the Famine back in Ireland.
Lots of Irish people lived in Hungry Hill, along with some Italian, Greek and Jewish people. In fact, it was mostly Irish at one time, back in the 1950s and 1960s. They were good working-class people. Everybody knew everybody.
Hungry Hill was a nice clean place to live. It had tree-lined streets and mostly two-family homes with porches at the front and neat lawns. There were stores on the main streets. Everything was tidy and well kept.
The heart of the neighbourhood was Our Lady of Hope parish. It was a nearly all-Irish congregation. Some people would even speak Irish outside the church on a Sunday morning after Mass. Families would send their kids to Our Lady of Hope School. The Irish always pushed education.
Hungry Hill reminded me of the island. People were always helping one another. People would help other people to get jobs and babysit for each other. It was close-knit. If there was an accident, a hospitalisation, an operation, or if somebody died, they would run a benefit event where people would socialise to raise money for the family. Irish social events were usually held in downtown Springfield. There was Ireland 32 and Tara Hall and the John Boyle O’Reilly Club.
We played lots of cards in the neighbourhood, including high-low-jack, just like back on the island. Maureen and I would go to our friends, the Longs, to play cards. I remember we all had hula-hoops one night when they were popular. It was wild.
We always stayed current on the news from Ireland. We got letters from West Kerry and we would share the news, just like back on the island. And we would write letters back home to let our relatives know how we were doing in America. I would send money back to my family when I could.
My friend Maurice Brick, who emigrated from West Kerry and who lives in New Rochelle, New York, would send me his copy of The Kerryman every week. I would read it and then we would circulate it all around Hungry Hill. It was certainly a well-read newspaper! I suppose we were too cheap to buy our own subscription. I still read The Kerryman every single week. Maurice has been sending it to me for over twenty-five years.
St Patrick’s Day was always a major event on Hungry Hill. Every year we would hang a large banner across Carew Street near Our Lady of Hope Church. It said ‘Hungry Hill – Home of the Irish’. A whole gang of us marched in the big St Patrick’s Day Parade up in Holyoke. It is the second-largest St Patrick’s Day Parade in America after Savannah, Georgia. Lots of Irish went up to Holyoke with our kids to participate in the festivities.
There were plenty of package stores and bars on Hungry Hill where you could get some strong drink. Nobody ever died from thirst. On Sunday, package stores were closed but you could get liquor from a drug store if you had a prescription from a doctor. We used to joke, ‘Did you get your prescription today?’
I suppose that there was plenty of drinking going on among the Irish in Springfield. But I always felt that the Irish didn’t drink any more than people of any other nationality. Unfortunately, there were many families in Springfield that suffered from an alcoholic family member. And the Irish certainly had their share of this curse, the Carney or Kearney family included. I was never a big drinker. I was always too busy.
My generation was very hard working. A lot of guys worked a couple of jobs. We made sure our children got a good education and good jobs. The next generation was better educated than we were. They got even better jobs. They were making even more money. When they started their own families, our kids tended to move to the suburbs around Springfield, like Wilbraham, Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, West Springfield and so on. They wanted a quieter area and a bigger backyard. And they wanted to live in single-family homes. I suppose it was just like the young people of my generation leaving the island for a better way of living.
Today, Hungry Hill is not an Irish neighbourhood. Other nationalities moved in from other places, especially Puerto Rico, in the 1980s, the 1990s and after the turn of the millennium. There are Hispanics and African Americans and lots of others. You don’t hear Irish on Hungry Hill any more; you hear Spanish instead.
The neighbourhood has deteriorated a bit. The houses are not as well kept. Our Lady of Hope School has closed. And even our beloved Our Lady of Hope Church closed in 2011, after two parishes were combined. It is sad to watch the passing of these Irish institutions. Today, the only Irish centre in Springfield is the John Boyle O’Reilly Club.
Irish-American Politics
Politics was always a big thing in Springfield, especially on Hungry Hill. There were elections for City Council and State Representative and Mayor and the United States Congress. Naturally, most of the winners were Irish. Eddie (Edward P.) Boland from Moorelan
d Street was elected to Congress. Dan (Daniel M.) Brunton, Tommy (Thomas J.) O’Connor, Billy (William C.) Sullivan and Mary Hurley were elected Mayor. Hurley was the first woman mayor of Springfield and is now a judge. ‘Red’ (James) Bowler, Arthur McKenna and our own relative, Sean Cahillane, served as State Representatives in Boston. Mike (Michael J.) Ashe serves as Sheriff of Hampden County and has served in this capacity for almost forty years. Mike is married to my niece Barbara, another Carney and a Blasket descendant.
Later, we elected Richie (Richard E.) Neal as Mayor of Springfield and then to Congress when Eddie Boland retired in 1987. Richie was from down the hill, in Sacred Heart parish, but he is certainly one of us – a true Irishman.
Congressman Neal has been highly involved in the Irish peace process and a devoted supporter of our efforts to preserve the memory of the island over the years. We are very proud of him.
Blasket Islanders in Hungry Hill
The islanders in my generation that came to the Springfield area were just following earlier emigrants to Springfield who then sponsored the new come-overs. I really don’t know why the first emigrants chose Springfield. There is a story that it was a man named Guiheen and that he came to Springfield before the Civil War in America, maybe in the 1850s, but I have no way of knowing. In any event, somebody from the island must have come over first, and then others followed. Hartford was the same way. There were quite a number of former islanders living in Hungry Hill, about two dozen. They included:
From my father’s generation: his brothers, Tom, Mike and Maurice Carney, and two unrelated islanders, Patrick ‘Cogant’ Connor and Catherine ‘Fillie’ Carney Garvey.
From my generation: yours truly and my siblings Maurice, Martin, Paddy, Thomas and Billy, and Maureen Carney Oski; our first cousins Eileen Kearney Cahillane, Mairéad Kearney Shea, Sister Mary Clemens, SP (Mary Kearney), Catherine Kearney Moore and Thomas Kearney; and other unrelated islanders, Thomas and Maurice Kearney, Eilís O’Connor Sullivan, Thomas Crohan, son of Tomás Ó Criomhthain, the original islandman himself, and Mike Guiheen.
I am sure that there were other islanders, but I just can’t remember them all. It was as if a chunk of the island community had been uprooted and relocated to Hungry Hill. Since Hungry Hill was mostly Irish, the islanders fitted in quite well. But they were still minor celebrities because of all the folklore about the island. It was not uncommon for them to be referred to as ‘the islanders’. And, of course, we all took great pride in being from the island.
US Congressman Richard E. Neal, Democrat, from Springfield, Massachusetts, who has family roots in Ventry, has been an effective advocate for the preservation of The Great Blasket Island.
Other islanders settled in Hartford, Connecticut, just 25 miles south of Springfield. They included the Keanes, with four sisters, the O’Connors, the Guiheens, and still another family of Kearneys, no relation.
My cousin, Eileen Kearney from the island, got married to Maurice Cahillane from Comeen, Ballydavid. Eileen left the island at sixteen and lived with me for a time in Dublin before coming to America.
Maurice was nicknamed ‘The Prince’ of Hungry Hill. He was a big personality, like Kruger himself. He would stand out and tell you about anything and everything with lots of confidence. Everybody on Hungry Hill knew ‘The Prince’. Unfortunately, his back got hurt on the job up at Monsanto Chemical Company in the Indian Orchard section of Springfield and he was disabled for many years. But it did not diminish his big personality one bit.
Eileen and The Prince had five children, who were about the same age as my own. Their son Sean is a politician, a former state representative and public official. He has been a great leader in support of the preservation of the island over a very long period of time.
Nearly all the children of island families achieved success in this country. There were many more opportunities than back on the island and they made the most of it. They became teachers, policemen, nurses, politicians, government officials, bankers, businessmen and businesswomen. It was a source of great pride in the community.
My Career
I worked for A&P supermarkets for over twenty-seven years. My first assignment was grinding Eight O’Clock Coffee, Bokar Coffee and Red Circle Coffee in the A&P in Indian Orchard, a section of Springfield. The coffee beans came in a big 100 lb burlap bag. I ground it up in a machine and packaged it in 1 lb bags, ready for sale to the customers.
I went from there to the dairy department and then to other areas of the store and then to other stores. There was always an incentive to advance. I became assistant manager in the South End store on Main Street in Springfield and later assistant manager in the bigger State Street store.
I bought my first car when I was working at the A&P. Before then, I used to have to take the bus everywhere, even to work. I paid just a $100 for a used Hudson. It was a beauty. I didn’t even have a driver’s licence when I bought it. It was green, for the Irish. Every single car I have owned since has been green. And, of course, green was the Carney family colour for our sheep on the island. I applied for a licence plate that read ‘BLASKET’. But I got ‘BLASKT’ instead because there was a limit of six letters on the plate. Because my licence plate was so unusual, I couldn’t hide anywhere in Springfield.
A&P eventually sent me to school in Boston for management training for a week. They were a very big company with more than 15,000 stores in America. I also took a course in business administration at the High School of Commerce two nights a week. It was a good course and it helped me in advancing my career.
Eventually, I got my own managership and worked for five years as an A&P manager. I was even applying the management training I got in the bar business back in Dublin. At one point, I managed the store on Liberty Street in Springfield right in my home neighbourhood of Hungry Hill. Sure enough, the store’s sales went up. Everybody in Hungry Hill came in to see Mike Carney. A&P was pretty happy with me. I was making good money for them! Then they sent me back to State Street as manager. That store was tough. It was in the 1960s, and the neighbourhood had started to deteriorate. You had to keep your eye on shoplifting. I had a reputation as a good man for dealing with shoplifting. But eventually I got tired of it, so I requested a transfer and they sent me to the big new store in Enfield, Connecticut.
Over the next couple of years, I worked in stores in Hartford, West Hartford, Wethersfield, Hazardville, and Willimantic, all south of Springfield in Connecticut. This involved a long drive to and from work every day. A&P was using me as a kind of a troubleshooter. I was always going to a store where they had just fired the manager and I would hold the fort for a while, straightening out problems until they hired a new manager. Then I was sent on to a new store. Those last five years with the A&P were not easy. It was one tough situation after another. I was ready to move on to something else.
Mike Carney worked at this A&P Supermarket on Main Street in Springfield’s South End neighbourhood. Note the snow on the sidewalk.
In 1975, a new Hampden County Hall of Justice was being built in downtown Springfield. I went to see Steve Moynahan, a lawyer and Hampden County Commissioner, about a job in the new building. Steve said, ‘I am sorry to tell you, Mike, but you’re not the only one who applied for these jobs.’ I remember one night I closed up the A&P store in Willimantic at midnight, and drove home on the back roads. It was a long drive, about 40 miles. Too long a drive … I got home about one o’clock in the morning and was exhausted.
The very next morning, the phone rang. A secretary said, ‘Mr Moynahan wants to talk with you.’ He came on the phone and said, ‘Mike, I think we can start you off in the Hall of Justice. There is an opening for a security officer.’ That was great news indeed! So, I left A&P in 1975 after twenty-seven years with the company. I retired from the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union and got a union pension.
In my new job, I was in charge of security at the main entrance to the courthouse. I operated a metal detector. But I was also a kind of public relations
man. The hours were great, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., just five days a week. In the supermarket, there was no end to the hours. I got to know all the lawyers and the judges. I loved all the humorous give-and-take every day at work.
Tom Begley was my supervisor. He asked me one day if I liked my new job. I told him it was like dying and going to heaven. I was now into public relations where personality was important.
I also found time to ‘moonlight’, painting houses with my brother Maurice. We called ourselves ‘The Island Painters’. Our motto was ‘We do a good job cheap’. I’d say we painted twenty-five to thirty houses in the Springfield area over the years. I don’t know how we found the time. But the extra money sure came in handy.
Gaelic Football in America
I have always believed that the Irish should keep together and keep our traditions alive in America.
A group of about twenty of us decided to play Gaelic football. We played other teams from Massachusetts and Connecticut. There were teams from Springfield, Hartford, Holyoke, Albany, New Haven and Bridgeport. Our home games were played at Pratt Field at Springfield College. We would charter a bus for the away games and have a social event in the evening. We had up to 3,000 people at some games. We practised in the evenings at Van Horn Park right on Hungry Hill. Mostly, it was good clean fun. But sometimes it was rough.
Hartford always had a tough football team, and I told our team we needed to be even tougher. The Springfield–Hartford game always seemed to end in a fight. When we played in Hartford, we played in Colt Park, adjacent to the Colt Manufacturing Company factory that made the famous pistols. Nobody ever knew who won the game. And then, of course, we’d have some beer at a big get-together for both teams afterwards.
From the Great Blasket to America Page 14
