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The Leader Interview with Alphie McCourt, Angela's youngest son
He may have been overshadowed for much of his life by his older brothers, but Alphie McCourt has written his own memoir, 'A Long Stone's Throw', because he had his own version of history to tell.
AS HARD as he tried, Alphie McCourt never quite fitted into Limerick. True, he had all the habitual trappings of a Limerick man - he grew up in the city's back lanes, he went to the Christian Brothers, he played rugby with Young Munster and was a member of the Limerick Debating Society.
But for some reason the general thrust and feel of local life still eluded him.
Sitting on a bench on O'Callaghan Strand, he looks out on the river and remembers rowing once with St Michael's Rowing Club, and on other occasion, climbing up on to top of Sarsfield Bridge in 1949.
"It feels a little bit delirious right now," he says, motioning me at sit to his left, as his right ear "isn't so good."
Shortly after checking into the Strand Hotel, the 69 year-old lowers himself gently down on the bench, pulls out a Camel cigarette, and drinks in his surroundings.
Much like the title of his first memoir, it has been "A Long Stone's Throw" from there to here.
His flight to Shannon was diverted to Dublin, where he caught a bus, and was dropped off near King John's Castle, "lugging two big bags with me and cursing all the way.
"If you want to arrive in Limerick, where else would you want to arrive but at King John's Castle? It's a good feeling. I was tired and I was weary after the trip, but I couldn't help but stop and look around. The sun was shining. It was perfectly auspicious and it's a great occasion to be coming back."
It's not easy looking out on a life you've left behind, or one you were never truly part of. So he left for the promised land at the age of 19, and alternated between living in New York, then Montreal in Canada, before moving down to California, and settling back in New York.
The youngest of seven, Alphie was the last to leave, and left with his mother Angela. "It was very difficult breaking away," he recalls, especially as there was a polite understanding with his mother that he would come back.
"But I knew I wouldn't come back. She eventually settled in New York and it was okay (for her], just okay, never good. If you're going to New York, you have to go at a young age, 19 or 20.
"Going away from Limerick at that time was par for the course. Just about everybody I knew left, except people who had family businesses or something. Our situation would have been enormously different if we had a piece of land.
"We were pretty much first generation in Limerick. We didn't have the close connections that other people had. I always felt a little bit one step removed."
Every ten years or so he comes 'home' to Limerick, the place of his birth.
The last time he was here was in 1997 when Frank received a honorary doctorate from the University of Limerick, after his debut, Angela's Ashes, received the Pulitzer Prize.
Now, 13 years later, Frank is no longer here, but his brothers – Alphie, Malachy, Michael – were back in the city last week see a bronze bust of him unveiled outside his old school, Leamy's on Hartstonge Street.
"When we were landing in Dublin I had a touch of it (nostalgia], because I began to realise all the people who aren't here. All the time that has passed. I don't want to get too deeply into that, but we're here today and we're gone tomorrow. We had our good times, enjoyed each other and made the most of each other. We're all passing on through."
Whereas Frank had his moments of outrageousness and bravado, Alphie is nearly at the very opposite end of the spectrum, both in terms of age and outlook.
He admittedly possesses a sense of melancholy, and a sense of introversion, which he has shaken off to some degree over the years.
He reveals his sense of 'otherness' in the early pages of A Long Stone's Throw: "I often don't talk much. There is a rhythm to talk, a definite beat. Sometimes my mind wanders and I lose the cadence of a conversation. Especially if I'm in a group of five or six or more. Once, during a lull in the conversation, I was thinking out loud. "Too much," I said, "I think I live too much in my own mind."
But today he has thrown off these shackles, having "learnt to speak up" and a bright and breezy persona breaks through on many subjects, accompanied by a hearty, warm laugh.
"Maybe it's in the nature of things that when you're the youngest brother you tend to be quieter in the company of your big brothers. I don't know if it's typical ... I think it probably is, especially when you've had such heavyweights as I've had to deal with. They were men of accomplishments; men of large, large vision. But they always encouraged me, and I had a particular understanding with Frank. And I think we had a respect for each other."
He lights up when he talks of Frank, as if a different force enters his spirit. The first anniversary of his death is approaching in August, and he admits life without him has been "strange".
In the last dozen years, they'd meet "on occasion, for an occasion". He remembers meeting him by chance in a supermarket in Columbus Avenue. "I was at the cashier and I looked and there was Frank. I said what are you buying, and he said: "Spuds."
"He was a great lover of mashed potatoes. I remember in the Plaza Hotel, when he was honoured as Irish American of the year, they had a buffet and he was walking past and said: "I heard a rumour there was mashed potatoes."
Often it's the seemingly innocuous moments in life that have a habit of resonating most, and Alphie, another natural storyteller, is able to recall plenty.
And so he sits by the river, where Frank once joked his ashes should be scattered, and rakes over the sands of time, unearthing 'new' memories, or some which may prefer to lay dormant.
The most fitting image of his relationship with Frank, and his most treasured, was written after his death, published initially in the Villager magazine in New York.
He recalled walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in the early hours of the morning after having a few beers with Frank.
It was 1961, and the metaphorical bridge which separated them in their early years had since closed in.
"Two men, walking side by side: fat or thin, tall or small, rich or poor. There's a magic in that. By this time I am as tall as Frank, my oldest brother. Out of the night and into the day we walk, out of the darkness, into the light and the promise of the future. Only in retrospect, and only after many years, did I see the symbolism."
Frank published his trio of memoirs and a children's book, Malachy followed with a further two memoirs, and Alphie then succumbed to the repeated queries of "When is your book coming out?" and has written his own version of history.
"I felt I should tell my part of it because my experience was very different from my brothers. Somebody asked me that before and I said 'So I would not be a footnote in the history of my own family!"
While he wrote half of it in a few days, the second part "took only a few years." A Long Stone's Throw was the result, published in 2008, "when Obama was elected and the economy collapsed", and has been praised as a "nomadic adventure worthy of Ulysses."
During his youth he toyed with the idea of journalism, and later undertook a degree in law at University College Dublin, which he didn't finish.
"I had this idea of being a lawyer in the most idealistic sense," he says, as if there's a bad taste in his mouth. "But being a solicitor just wasn't it. I suppose I could have done it. You can do anything you want to do. But you have to be old enough to know, and young enough to do."
He muses that he may have been "the victim of a formal education", where it is pounded in, rather than drawn out.
So life, as for many people of his generation, was his university. He built swimming pools in California – "a different kind of university" and "a happenin' place", where he smoked marijuana and practiced yoga and meditation in the late 60s.
He was drafted into the Army for two years, where it was decided he would be a food inspector.
"Why, in the name of God, I don't know," he says, in the midst of another burst of laughter. "I wanted to go to the language school or work on a newspaper, but the Army, in its wisdom, made me a food inspector."
He explains that it involved working in a warehouse, tapping cans of tomato sauce and other tinned foods to see if the seal was sprung. "Very exciting stuff."
Then he worked in bars and restaurants, becoming a little too accustomed to the taste of alcohol, but gave up when he "frightened" himself when he drove while under the influence one night – "the first and last time."
The birth of his only child, Allison, also cemented his decision to live a more sober life.
Now 34, she lives at home with Alphie and his wife Lynn, whom he first met in 1966. Alison, he says, has various problems – "speech, language, learning, and behaviour" - similar to autism, "but she also has a 1,000 songs in her head, is a great dancer and is a very joyful person."
As he approaches his 70th year, what else lies ahead? The McCourts are, after all, known for living second, third and fourth acts in life.
"Oh, there's more left. Absolutely. Nirvana? Of course I have to write another book, that is paramount."
A Pulitzer Prize winner? "Hardly likely. Lightning doesn't strike twice."
And America – was it the promised land, as he believed it to be?
"Yes. Yes. It's all there, and it's still there for anybody who wants it."
PERSONAL FILE
Home –The west side of Manhattan, a block from Central Park
Favourite book – I'm a big fan of John le Carre and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Favourite film – Probably all the westerns and Cool Hand Luke
Favourite music – Willie Nelson and the The Crusaders
Motto – "A man's a man for all that." - Robert Burns
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