Madness everywhere! I'm in an Irish pub in Atlanta and newspaper cuttings on the wall show they celebrate the IRA!

[PufPuf23]

52. I was in County Down the day in 1981 when Bobby Sands died visiting relatives for the 1st and only time.

Found out one branch of Irish family was Catholic (3/8s Irish and the rest Western European mutt); and that my great grandfather had sold the family store and gone to California in 1880 with intent to bring family to the USA. Great grandfather abandoned family. Grandfather came to California in 1888 looking and finding his father. I knew of the existence because father's oldest brother had kept written contact with a 1st cousin.

Had no idea great grandfather came to California before grandfather and was lacking in personal knowledge that family was Catholic or specifics of the Troubles. My Jewish now exe-wife played fiddle in a band that played Irish music was my level of awareness though Irish surnamed. We had driven a rental car from Rosslare to Galway to County Down and stayed on a farm where my great grandfather and grandfather had lived as a child. I have a tile from the of their childhood home here in my office.

Bobby Sands died that first night. Northern Ireland went on strike. Relatives from Belfast and elsewhere came to the farm because of the strike and the oddity of my visit. There was a picture of JFK on the wall in the dining room. The countryside as quiet with UK military checkpoints. We went to the parish and met the priest and visited the ruins of a flax mill ruin on the River Mourne where family had worked. We were pulled over in the empty countryside by a group from a military helicopter that landed in the field in front of us after tailing us by air.

That evening part of the family took us to a pub in the small, largely Catholic, village. We went in quietly through a back door as the village was subject to the general strike. The pub was owned by a woman who had re-immigrated back to the village of her family after owning a bar in Brooklyn. Lots of singing. Some folks had taken temperance pledges. All were hardcore supporters of the IRA, singing IRA songs. One of the family members, my 2nd cousin, that lived on the farm was an IRA widow with a teen son. While we were in the pub the IRA came through the village, hung banners and spray-painted slogans on buildings. We went on some hikes but stayed the next several days on the farm.

Our schedule was to go to Dublin the day that turned out to be the day of Bobby Sands' funeral. Family dove with us to border where there was a military checkpoint. Every town and village on the highway to Dublin had funeral parades. We had a hotel booked and the car drop in downtown Dublin, got near, parked the car on a sidewalk and walked to planned destination with luggage. Caught an airport shuttle and flew to London on first plane seats available.