My father left Ireland because he did not want to muck horse manure for the rest of his life, and he wanted to come to New York.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My father's parents were Irish. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a week to look at the old homestead.
My dad is Irish. I spent my childhood going back and forth between Ireland and America.
My father lost his leg in 1927 playing soccer. A kick broke his leg; gangrene set in. They sawed it off. So he didn't get what a lot of Irish immigrants got, which was a job on the Waterfront - he didn't get that.
I remember my dad came from Ireland and Scotland, and so he carried with him the fear of poverty. So when I wanted to break loose, it kind of made him very nervous.
My father was a creature of the archaic world, really. He would have been entirely at home in a Gaelic hill-fort. His side of the family, and the houses I associate with his side of the family, belonged to a traditional rural Ireland.
I came to Ireland 20 years ago as a student, hitch-hiking round for a week and staying in Dublin.
I'm used to riding horses. My father used to breed horses when I was a child. I grew up in Tipperary, in the country, and lots of people have horses there.
Both sides of my family had come from Ireland in the 19th century for the same reason: There was nothing to eat over there. Since then, I've tried to make up for the potato famine by making the potato the only vegetable that passes these lips.
Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: 'No Irish Need Apply.'
My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.