AUNT KITTY MAKES BROTHERS SAY UNCLE.Byline: Dennis McCarthy Dennis McCarthy may refer to:
I come from a family where the women have always been smarter and tougher than the men, and you won't get an argument about it from the men. Maybe the smartest and toughest of them all was Aunt Kitty. Her given name was Kathleen, but no one ever called her that. She was always Kitty. With the heart and bite of a lion. She was 14, the oldest of six kids, when her parents died in the late 1920s, and the city of New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of wanted to step in and break up the family. Wanted to send the McCarthy kids off in pairs to different orphanages so they'd have some adult supervision. Kitty told 'em there weren't enough cops in the city to bust up Verb 1. bust up - smash or break forcefully; "The kid busted up the car" wrack, wreck ruin, destroy - destroy completely; damage irreparably; "You have ruined my car by pouring sugar in the tank!"; "The tears ruined her make-up" her family, and she was right. There weren't. When the child welfare people showed up at the door, Kitty was standing there with her grandmother and five spinster SPINSTER. An addition given, in legal writings, to a woman who never was married. Lovel. on Wills, 269. aunts right behind her. Knute Rockne Knute (pronounced "kah-noot") ("noot" is the anglicized nickname) Kenneth Rockne (March 4, 1888 – March 31, 1931) was an American football player and is regarded by many as the greatest coach in college football history. never put together this tough a front line. The women told the city to go find a family that needed help because they didn't. The McCarthys would take care of their own. And they did. The six kids moved in with their grandmother and aunts who were living on 179th and Arthur Avenue in the Bronx in what they called a railroad apartment A railroad apartment is an apartment with a series of rooms that connect to each other in a straight line just like cars on a train. Often, there is an entrance at only one end, so a resident must walk through each room to get to the next, though sometimes there is a narrow hallway. back then. You had the kitchen and dining area at one end, then a long hallway with bedrooms off both sides of the hall, and finally a big parlor at the other end where the family spent the nights listening to the radio before bed. The three brothers, Hughie, Jimmy and Harry, shared one bedroom. The three sisters, Kitty, Rose and Elizabeth shared another. No one complained. They were together. All the aunts worked and pooled their money to keep food on the table and a roof over the heads of their new, extended family. The girls cleaned and cooked after school. The boys went out and hustled nickels and dimes, trying not to get in too much trouble while they did. But they were Irish. Trouble tailed them like a shadow. When they were small and got in situations they couldn't handle, Kitty would step in. Like the night an older kid on the block tried to push his weight around with one of her baby brothers. Kitty saw it, took off one of her shoes, and came at the bully like LaMotta went after Graziano. Hit him right in the middle of his forehead with her shoe. The bully went down and stayed down for the count. Nobody fooled around with Kitty McCarthy's baby brothers. Nobody. Only time could do that. Hughie was the first to leave home for a stint on the road at 15, winding up helping build Cooley Dam. Jimmy took off later for World War II. Harry followed him into the service a couple of years later before moving to California. No one remembers for sure when it happened or why, but the brothers stopped talking over the years. Irish stubbornness or something like that. It hurt the sisters, particularly Kitty, who had worked so hard to keep her family together after they were orphaned or·phan n. 1. a. A child whose parents are dead. b. A child who has been deprived of parental care and has not been adopted. 2. A young animal without a mother. 3. as kids. For more than 30 years, she tried to patch things up between the brothers, but, like I said before, the women in the family were always a lot smarter than the men. The brothers never made up. They continued to go their stubborn, separate ways. Until this week. This week Kitty finally got them together and talking again in a room where no one wanted to be. ``She was one tough cookie Tough Cookie is a UK based independent record label and a producer of audio and video content for the internet. Tough Cookie was set up by Andy Wood and Neill Sullivan in 2004. , wasn't she,'' Hughie, the oldest, was saying to Jimmy and Harry as they stood together inside Moloney's Funeral Home out on Long Island. Stood together with tears in their eyes in front of an open casket where their big sister Kitty was sleeping peacefully with rosary rosary [rose garden], prayer of Roman Catholics, in which beads are used as counters. The term, applied also to the beads, is extended to Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist prayers that use beads. beads cupped in her hands. What she couldn't do in life, she did in death. Kitty had finally brought her baby brothers back together again. ``Remember the time we were supposed to be home for dinner and we were out playing stickball instead?'' said Jimmy, 75, a retired New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. Police Department detective. Hughie, 80, and Harry, 71, laughed. What a beating they got that night. The brothers traded a few more stories, then stood in reverential rev·er·en·tial adj. 1. Expressing reverence; reverent. 2. Inspiring reverence. rev silence and deep thought before bending down to give their big sister one last kiss. Tough guys don't cry? Bull. They cry. Half an hour later, the McCarthy brothers walked out of Moloney's Funeral Home arm in arm. ``So, Jimmy, how high did you go in school after I left?'' Hughie asked. ``The fifth floor,'' Jimmy said, breaking up everyone within earshot ear·shot n. The range within which sound can be heard by the unaided ear; hearing distance: listened until the parade was out of earshot. . As I looked back at the casket, I could have sworn Aunt Kitty was smiling from ear to ear. |
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