CATHOLICS &; PROTESTANTS

Despite the apparent social rigidity (frigid-ty) and class tightness
of distribution of our people, there was still an amazing, human
diversity and physical variety, which would strain the documentation
capacities of a Darwin or a Mendel, let alone, a small boy passing
quickly through the throes of a Scottish childhood.

First to mind were, naturally, "the Catholics." They were only (merely)
about six families, but with their hordes of children, they comprised
about 80 per cent of the people.

Our street, Rowanside Place, was a wildly-optimistically named,
working-class street, built in the early 50's and consisting of about
40 families spread over 10 blocks of 4-to-a-block, rented houses.

My early street memories were of quietness and ample play
opportunities, for no one, but no one, owned a car and the only car
ever seen in our street would be that of a "traveller" (a commercial
salesman), who had arrived briefly from the bigger, Glasgow stores with
a van full of shirts, pygamas and the like.

Essentially, the families were all related to each other, all
first-generation, poor, Irish immigrants with names like O'hare,
Conway, McLaughlan, and all with children of devout forenames (to
please the local Priest) like Li?m, Sean, Bernadette, Joseph or
Peter.

It was difficult to keep tabs on the Catholics, because they had such a
high "turnover"--births, marriages, etc. For the most part, we
disapproved of, even despised, them for their clannishness, their
coarseness, their irreverent attitude to taste, "culture," education
or, for that matter, regular employment.

The Matriarch of their entire network was, say, Mrs. McLean, a
hatchet-faced, unfeminine, common, rough-voiced "battle-axe," who
contradicted, in her dealings with my brother and me, her Christian,
pillar-of-the-church, photo-in-local-newspaper image as a
charity-do-gooder. Many a "dust up" my Granny had with her, defending
our Constitutional rights to play football outside the McLean house
(forbidden despite the swarms of her grandchildren, who used our front
yard). I can still recall the sheer utter gall of the woman, who once
threatened to "break your bloddy jaw, ja wee bugger!"

Well anyway, one day an explosion killed four men at our one, local
factory. This shook up my father. It had been at the building where he
worked, but, luckily, during the evening shift from 2 to 11 pm, rather
than during his morning shift, from 7 to 2 pm. People were sitting in
their homes, partaking in macabre, who's-copped-it-this-time,
name-guessing, when, suddenly, a horrible "Oh No. No!" was heard being
screamed from two doors down. It was Mrs. McLean, when she saw the
police car drawing up to her door....

After a few years of widowhood, Mrs. Mclean was courted, wooed and
married. And, to the aghast scorn and amazement of the neighbours, Mrs.
McLean remarried in a beautiful, full-length, flowing white dress: a
comely, huge, hulking 55-year old! Her husband, Mr. O'hare, was a tiny,
dapper, respectable man, rather wealthy, due to his ownership of a
string of betting shops, bookmakers, funded primarily by the State
unemployment checks of the "Matriarch"'s numerous, male relatives.