The way we really were.

Not long ago, I got a phone call from someone whose voice I had not heard for twenty-five years. We had sung together as boy sopranos with the Paulist Choristers, then a well-known choir which appeared regularly on radio and in concerts. The choir had been an oddly bonding experience, quite unlike Little League or other organized activities that now occupy young people. The cohesion was church music, most of which was in Latin. But there were also the Victorian and sentimental hymns whose words and images still echo in my ears after many decades.

The choristers sang in the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle, a large cavernous building where the voices and organ echoed ethereally and hypnotically and attracted worshipers from all over New York City. Until the building of Lincoln Center, the parish was in a gritty Irish and Italian neighborhood contiguous to Hell's Kitchen.

The music and mentoring by the directors and adults of the choir helped many of the boys to enter Catholic high school, get part-time jobs, and stay out of trouble until they could attend college. Many siblings of choristers did time in jail, became alcoholics, or worked in dead-end civil service jobs, eking out their lives in quiet desperation.

During the Depression, the Irish had little economic power, excluded as they were from the Protestant establishment. During this time, many fathers lost their jobs, and families barely subsisted on home relief. The lucky ones worked for the city or state, with regular paychecks and some job security. They lived in coldwater flats with a single toilet on the hall and a weekly kitchen bath in a bathtub that also served as the kitchen table with a board or enamel metal covering.

Parents were all distant figures who did not interact much with the young friends of their children. We were told what happened to others' families was none of our business. Yet as we got older, we realized that not all families are alike, and "each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I know now that the parish was the constant, and nearly the only cohesive element in the lives of many Irish families. The pastor often gave money to the wife to put food on the table, or urged the landlord to have patience with late payments of rent, and even paid the rent if there was no income. The children who went to the parish school were subsidized or given financial help to go to Catholic high schools where the successful students went on to make the American Dream a reality.

The father was often a feared or embarrassing figure because he suffered from low status and income. His work was rarely satisfying, and on payday he often ended up at the local saloon. Often, the frustrated father returned home on Friday drunk and guilty, to abuse his wife and children physically and verbally. Frequently, the wife, the strength and stability of the family, would meet her husband at work to escort him home before he spent his money on drink.

In spite of the damage it has done to Irish families, the mystic joys of alcohol continue to be celebrated in literature and it remains very much part of the Irish literary tradition--with its undercurrent of great sadness, futility, and despair. Even to this day, scarred survivors remember their mother saying "Go down to Malloy's (or Murphy's) and get your father."

The cycles of drinking, physical violence, and abuse were rarely discussed unless they became too public to deny. Denial, in fact, was part of the Irish way of life. Anything personal or negative about family was met by silence. Until recently, alcoholism and mental illness were considered moral weaknesses rather than diseases and caused unspeakable shame. The failure to seek help for either has crippled families for generations.

Poverty, prejudice, frustration, and a sense of helplessness fueled by alcohol were the demons that cursed many an Irish family in the pre- and post-World War 11 generations. All seemed to change in 1960 with the election of John F. Kennedy. With that single event, the Irish felt absorbed into the great America that had excluded them for at least a hundred years. They have also forgotten their past and have romanticized the "good old days" that never were. Somehow, the ugliness has faded to the point that in people's minds it may never have happened.

And yet in the last twenty years, the middle-class Irish who have made it are increasingly worried about drugs and crime among the poor and people of color. They see no connection between their own struggle and that of African-Americans and Latinos. They should realize that drug use is often caused by the same poverty, frustration, and failure and, like alcohol, it helps the victim forget, while it also destroys families and relationships. Only recently have we acknowledged that alcohol is a drug and addictive, but it is socially acceptable and portrayed by the media as sophisticated. Yet our terrified reaction to drugs and crime is repression and incarceration rather than such long-term solutions as quality education. We refuse to see the parallels with our own past because we are basically prejudiced or racist) and prefer not to visualize how we were formally perceived by those in power. It is far more comforting to criticize those whom we can assign to an inferior status and feel nostalgically superior about our own antecedents.