by Nate Mancuso
Bobby Kehan stands quietly on the concrete platform, watching the Metro North train disappear into the dense thicket of trees along the Bronx River as the November sun sets over the wooded landscape. He looks around and takes in his surroundings, resting his gaze up the hill to the west. Toward Woodlawn, maybe the only still-Irish-to-the-core neighborhood left in all of New York City and its five boroughs. Just twenty miles from the bustling chaos of Times Square. To enter a different world. Where folks can escape their past without leaving their own people and culture; assimilate without assimilating; get lost. Hide.
Bobby steps off the train platform and begins his ascent.
He pulls his Yankees cap lower on his head, and the lapels of his black wool overcoat tighter around his neck, as a cold wind gusts down the hill, swirling around him like a ghost. Maybe it’s Mother Nature blowin’ me back to Manhattan for my own safety, he muses; or, then again, maybe it’s just the wind. He walks west up 233rd Street past rows of small two-story brick houses, each separated by ten feet of driveway, their facades worn but proud. Many of them display the Irish Tricolour hanging on the opposite end of the porch from Old Glory. Reminds him of home. But back home the Union Jack isn’t sharing a porch with any other flag, especially the ole Trídhathach.
Bobby glances across the street at Woodlawn Cemetery, which looms like a silent guardian over the North Bronx neighborhood; a resting place for hundreds of thousands, including luminaries like Herman Melville, Irving Berlin and Duke Ellington. And a whole lot of others, most of whom nobody remembers; they did nothing special, just lived then died. Some died old, some died young, some died naturally, some died tragically. Maybe some even died heroically. But no matter how they got there, they all wound up in the same dirt – indifferent to their lives.
Bobby continues up the hill, his feet echoing softly on the cracked sidewalk. Nearly identical brick houses flank him on either side. Each home, modest in size and structure, displays its own unique decoration, its own little twist, so maybe it can stand out from the crowd, distinguish itself.
An old man with pale wrinkled skin and rosy cheeks walks onto his porch carrying a small green sprinkling can to water his plants. He nods with a friendly smile as Bobby walks past. “G’day,” he says, raising his hand to his forehead in a mock tip of the cap. “Hopefully those Yankees don’t let us down again next year.” Shaking his head, he adds, “At least they finally got ridda Showalter.”
Bobby smiles back with a polite nod. “We can only hope,” he says and keeps walking. Approaching Katonah Avenue, he passes a dark green wooden sign with ornamental gold lettering. “Welcome to Woodlawn Heights, Established 1874.” They’ve been comin’ in from Ireland and movin’ up here to the Bronx for over a hundred years, Bobby thinks. Lookin’ for a better life, maybe lookin’ to escape somethin’ back home, fortified by their own kin and countrymen. Sanctuary.
Walking along Katonah, Bobby passes an Irish grocery and butcher shop, each with a few smiling customers ambling about inside, then a small storefront shaded by a bright yellow awning with “Sean’s Quality Deli, All Things Good and Irish” printed in green script framed by matching shamrocks across its scalloped hem. Half a block up at the next corner, Bobby sees what he’s looking for: Finnegan’s Pub. A Woodlawn fixture for nearly twenty years, opened back in 1976 by an Irish immigrant named John Finnegan. With old John now pushing seventy, the pub is run by his son Tommy, who’s worked there since it opened when he was sixteen.
Bobby knows all this and much more. He’s done his research.
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