Frank McCourt09: On Limerick army widows, Story-telling, not taking a test...

A lot of the women in Limerick were widows from the British Army. They used to get pension payments and if you brought a telegram from somebody else wishing them "Merry Christmas" or something like that, and it wasn't a telegram from the British Army, they'd attack you because they were so frustrated waiting for the money. They'd take one look at it and then look at you and then you knew the attack was coming. So you'd run down the path and hop on the bike. So I became a psychologist; I could see anger coming.

I did that for two years, and then I was encouraged to take the exam for permanent telegram boy and the morning came and my mother wanted me to do it so that I would have a bigger income and security and the pension, and I'd get a uniform. As a temporary you didn't get any uniforms and we were out in all kinds of weather just with a jacket on or a sweater. Pouring rain, we were always wet. I don't know why I didn't die of TB.

The morning of the exam I went down to the building. The headquarters was in something called the LPYMA, Limerick Protestant Young Men's Association. I went as far as the steps to go in. I was handing the man my form, and I drew back. He said, "Are you coming in or what?" And I said, "No. No." And I went home.

I hung around for a while before I went home. I wanted my mother to think I took the exam, but she found out that I hadn't taken it and she was furious. But it was the right decision, because three years I went to America.

What influence did your parents have on you?

Frank McCourt: My father was an alcoholic. By day, when he wasn't drinking, he was the perfect father. When he'd get money then he was a maniac. He was two different men. I know this is a racial generalization but it was typical.

The country was so inhibited emotionally, I think, because of the church and because of the traumas that arose out of history, like the potato famine. The people had gone into themselves and it wasn't like that in the old days, way back in Medieval Ireland when they sang and danced in a wild orgiastic way. In my generation and the generations before me, the people had gone inward.

So my father would sit by the fire and read the paper. He was very laconic but at the same time he would tell us stories and teach us songs. My mother was depressed because she had lost three children, but we learned song from them and we learned storytelling.

My mother was always amused by my father. He had a laconic sense of humor, and she was a good storyteller too, because she'd go to the movies and we couldn't go. We didn't have the money. She'd come home and tell us the whole movie frame by frame. She went to see a movie once called Reap the Wild Wind with Paulette Goddard and John Wayne who was a bad guy in there, and Ray Milland, and she told us every line of that and we sat around the fire. I remember that fire, looking into the flames darting and leaping, and she's telling the story and we're having tea. So this is what we got from them. No television. There was no television. No. We had none of that. We had no electricity so we couldn't have anything. But there was always this stuff going on between us at home and in the streets and with the neighbors. That was rich.

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Reap the wild wind ,ace