My Story (of Sorts)

Introduction

I'm new to this platform, so I want to start with offering up my bio to start with. I'm not sure what readers on Byline are looking for so I'm planning to offer up short stories and excerpts from my weekly podcast, The Village Oak Tree, that comes out every Wednesday. For more about who I am, I invite anyone reading this to visit my website at www.crann-na-beatha.com for more.

I will rely on any responses to my articles here to decide what I write in the future and gauge my writings based on those responses. My hope is to find an audience that I can maintain engagement with. I'm not big on social media as I don't post regularly but I am good at responding to people when they leave comments on my meagre writings.

Continue reading for a more detailed autobiography:

My Story (of sorts)

Part 1

By Terrance Ó Domhnaill

To start, I am fourth generation American on my paternal side, descended from Irish immigrant great, great, great grandparents, Daniel Ó Domhnaill and his wife, who arrived in Canada in the 1830’s from County Mayo, Ireland. His grandson, James Ó Domhnaill, immigrated from New Brunswick, Canada in the late 1800’s to Maine. I’m also the grandson of a maternal great grandfather who immigrated to the U.S. from Maritime, Canada in the late 1800’s. He was a McDonald or MacDonald, depending on which record I found.

I don’t know much about my late mother’s father other than he was an electrician and he died an early death in 1952, leaving behind a wife and daughter, who was my late mother. He was only 48 years of age when he passed.

As for my late father’s family, we know a lot. They immigrated from what is now known as New Brunswick, Canada to a place in Aroostook County, Maine called Castle Hill. This little town (if you can still call it that), still exists but there’s nothing there now. I used to live near there from 2005-2015 and drove through what’s left of it many times. My father’s great grandparents couldn’t make a go of it and they eventually moved to York County, Maine, where Portland, Maine is now, and settled. They had twelve children, one of which was my great grandfather.

My great grandmother died when my grandfather was a wee child, in a dentist chair in 1903. My paternal grandfather was born in 1901. Back then, dentists weren’t very good and my great grandmother bled to death from a pulled tooth surgery that went bad. I don’t know much about my great grandfather other than his name but my grandfather was sent to an orphanage after my great grandfather married his late wife’s sister. Take that for what you will.

My paternal grandfather was also the victim of the times in that once he became old enough (about twelve to fourteen years old or so). He left the orphanage in Skowhegan, Maine and found work wherever he could until he eventually wound up in Aroostook County, Maine, working as a farm hand (we think).

He eventually married a local woman from Stockholm, Maine and they had three children. My oldest uncle was only a year older than my father, and they were both born in Washburn, Maine in 1928 and 1929 respectively, but their youngest brother was a few years younger and not my grandfathers son. That’s a whole other story in itself. They're all dead now so I won’t disparage them now that they’re gone.

They all had a rough life during the the depression years, and it didn’t help much when my father contracted polio in his early teens. It was also during the 1930’s when my grandparents split up because of the issue regarding my youngest uncle and they eventually moved to California, leaving my oldest uncle and my Da behind as free farm labor for a cousin of his wife’s that was reputed to be a child abuser. More on that in a little bit.

My late father and my eldest uncle were mean drunks and child abusers. My father had massive PTSD symptoms from his Army infantry service in World War II and his lackluster, on and off career in the Air Force. He was also a Korean and Vietnam War veteran. Back then, they just told him he had issues with authority and kept busting him down for fighting and insubordination. The child abuse went on throughout my childhood until the day I ran away from home and joined the military the summer of 1974. My eldest uncle also had PTSD issues from his World War II service with the Navy but this is about me and not the other members of my family. They can tell their own stories, if they want.

I was born in Orange, California in 1956 while my father was stationed there in the American Air Force. This is a little suburb of Los Angeles. My birth certificate doesn’t look like a normal birth certificate. It just lists the bare minimum info needed to show when and where I was born, and who my parents were. I was able to use it to get my first passport, so it must be okay.

As a child, we moved around a lot. My younger brother was born in 1959 somewhere else while our Da was stationed at another Air Force base. He was born sickly so Ma gave him a lot of extra attention and left me to fend for myself a lot. At least that’s the story I was told when I got older.

By 1960, we were living in Big Springs, Texas, another out of the way Air Force base in west Texas. Do you see a pattern here? I was four years old in 1960 and we had lived in at least three different states in those four years. That’s not normal, even for the military.

What I do remember about west Texas, was that it was dry and dusty, and I remember the night the tornado went through. Soon after, once again, my father got orders to transfer. This time to a place called Dreux, France, not too far from Paris.

I listened to my Ma tell me stories, when I was older, of the hardships she endured trying to get a rambunctious four-year-old (me) and my baby brother through the airports and finally on to the MAC flight to France, where my father was already working. This was typical of the military back then, where the unit would deploy and leave moving the family and household goods to the spouse.

I remember a few things about living there during those three years. I remember my abusive father, when he was home, always yelling about something and drinking his beer. I tried my best to stay out of his way, even at that early age. My mother was a saint for keeping him from doing more to me than he did throughout my childhood. I didn’t always get away but it could have been worse.

After I turned five, we received instructions in order for me to start attending school on the military post. There was no kindergarten offered there at the military dependent school system so books were sent home instructing the parents to teach their children French. We had to be ready to attend the first grade the following year and there were no English-speaking teachers available.

My mother set about teaching my brother and I French. When I went to the first grade the next fall, I was pretty fluent in French, which eventually replaced my English.

In 1963, we returned to the United States. My father got stationed at a base in Michigan and I enrolled in the second grade after school had already started. The only thing I remember about that time was the teacher, who chewed me out unmercifully in front of the class on my first day because I couldn’t speak English. My mother was given new orders to teach me English quickly so I wouldn’t fall behind the other kids.

This was the start of my anti-social anxieties. I got picked on, naturally. The time between 1963 and 1965 is a blur until we moved into a house away from everyone after another military transfer. This time, into something my parents actually bought themselves. It was a lonely house near Alpena, Michigan, out on a back road all by itself.

It was a definite fixer-upper, which my father spent most of his spare time making it livable for us. During all of that turmoil, there was the constant drinking, yelling and Shell Shock (now called PTSD) issues.

Then, in the fall of 1965, my father got orders to go overseas for the Vietnam War and he took off for a year. My mother had to go find a job to support us while he was gone so that left me and my brother to fend for ourselves a lot.

Understand, this house was a mile from the nearest major highway, a half mile from any other road and back in the woods with no other neighbors, other than the wildlife.

I got into trouble at school a few times for misbehavior and was definitely not a stellar student. I got into fights a few times with other kids and my younger brother while my poor Ma was doing her best. My Da returned home in late 1966 and tried to be good for a short while but it didn’t last long. He got into trouble again at work, and then became sick. He had nervous disorders that took him away from us again for nearly a year, to a military hospital. When he finally came home again, he had been medically retired with nearly 20 years in the military with almost no pension money. Just a couple hundred dollars a month.

Some history for you. My father started his military career during WWII in 1945 at age 16. He had followed his older brother into the military to escape their indentured servitude. They lied about their ages and managed to fool the folks at in processing. There was a lot of that going on back then. After basic, he was sent to the Philippines to fight the Japanese and got wounded in action. That was how they found out he was underage. By the time he recuperated from his injuries and was sent home, he was 17 and as soon as he turned 18, he was drafted into the Army, then he switched to the new Air Force in 1949. He then got deployed to the Korean war theatre during the Koran war.

So, my dear ‘ole Da, was a WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam War veteran by the time he was medically retired in 1968 and as crazy as a loon. He was also a raging alcoholic and an abusive drunk. This is the family unit I grew up in and my mother did her best to save us from the brunt of a lot of it.

After he came home with his discharge, life got worse. He was there all the time now. No more deployments and TDY’s. He couldn't hold a civilian job for very long because of his PTSD. His drinking was a steady daily thing and the mental and physical abuse got worse. Our poverty was pretty bad but our Ma did everything she could to shelter my brother and I from that. Then in late 1968, his mother died suddenly out in California.

All I remember was a lot of arguing over funeral arrangements between my Da and the two uncles, one in California, and the other in Maine. Finally, everyone agreed that my grandma was to be interred in Maine at a cemetery plot near my uncle’s dairy farm in down east Maine.

We drove halfway across the country to the funeral. After it was all over, we returned home where my crazy ‘ole Da decided he wanted to move back to Maine.

I remember the late-night arguments, one in particular that woke me up late one night, when he made my mother cry. I had never heard her cry before and never again afterwards, at least not when anyone was around. After a few months, they managed to sell the house and we moved to Maine, close to my uncle’s farm.

In the spring of 1969, we arrived in Maine and I entered the eighth grade with the school year nearly finished. It was a small, rural school and it didn’t take long for the two class bullies to zero in on me.

I tried my best to avoid these two clowns to no avail. I didn’t want to fight as I was the new kid, and I didn’t want any trouble with the teachers and such. My Da had told me not to start any fights in school because I had trouble controlling my anger. When I did fight, I would fight like a berserker, trying to kill the other with no restraint (which I almost did to someone in the sixth grade once). He warned me that he would “Kick My Ass” if I got into trouble again. I was more afraid of him than any bullies.

The eighth-grade teachers didn’t care much for me either so I took the abuse thinking things would change when I graduated to ninth grade the next year. Was I ever wrong.

I did get into trouble that year because of the same two bullies. I also got on the wrong side of a teacher who should have retired years before and a hot-tempered vice principle. I was accused of something I didn’t do one afternoon by this really elderly teacher, and this vice principle jacked me up in the entryway to a dark classroom at the end of a study hall period about the accusation from the old bat of a teacher, and then he called my mother.

When I told her my side of it, she sat in the V.P.’s office and ripped him a new one for physically laying a hand on me. That was the first time I had ever heard her stand up for me like that with anyone, including my Da.

The next year, 1970, after starting the ninth grade in a different school, the two bullies started in on me again whenever they had a chance. A couple of months into the school year, my dear ‘ole Da announced that he had bought an old farm up in Aroostook County, Maine and we were moving once again.

I was relieved to be leaving that school and those bullies behind. Little did I know that I was just jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

The old farm he bought had been built in 1911 by a Swedish immigrant who had been given a land grant by the U.S. government as part of a deal made to a bunch of Swedish immigrants starting in 1879. They settled themselves in a little part of Aroostook County and called the towns New Sweden, Jemptland and Stockholm.

The house needed a lot of repairs before we could move in but we finally arrived a couple of months after the school year started. The house barely had indoor plumbing, was cold during the winter along with a myriad of other things straight out of the early twentieth century. We quickly learned about the extreme winters up there and how to work on a farm, courtesy of dear ‘ole Da.

School was a whole other problem. Once again, I was the new kid starting part way through the year with new bullies to deal with. I wrote a fictionalized story a while ago about a particular incident that happened to a teenaged boy. It was a story about me with a few details changed to obscure my identity. The biggest fiction about the story was the ending.

A Story of Ethnic Prejudice (paywalled at Medium.com)

In the real world, my Ma did not come to my rescue like I wrote about in the story and I did get into trouble for fighting. You’ve heard stories about how kids stand up to the bullies, and are left alone afterwards? Not so with me. It only started a parade of wannabe fighters who wanted to take down the outsider who beat up one of their own.

I fought constantly throughout the rest of my high school days against multiple bullies, in some part due to my Da. He would start fights with their parents and the kids would follow their parents lead and pick on the kid whose father was the pariah everywhere he went. It didn’t help that we were Irish and everyone else was either Swedish or French Acadian. Ethnic prejudice was really bad up there.

Between the kids at school and an ever-abusive father at home, I did my best to keep a low profile. I built and played with model military ships and tanks when I wasn't playing outside. I would pretend I was a soldier or sailor far away somewhere fighting imaginary wars. Don’t get me wrong, we would play outside whenever we could all year round. We weren’t allowed to watch much TV unless the weather was too bad to go outside and we actually had reception. I was an avid reader for a good reason. There was little else to do at times.

During my last two years of high school, I was offered a chance to attend trade school along with my core classes needed to graduate. I jumped at the chance to get away from my tormentors but no such luck. They also signed up. We all had to ride a bus over to the next town every day where I attended carpentry class on which I was bullied badly. At first, I loved the class, despite the abuse from the other kids. Our teacher was an old Danish carpenter who taught me so much in the short time he was my teacher.

He ended up leaving at the end of my first semester right after the Danish government instituted a national health program. This was in 1972 and my beloved teacher, being a Danish immigrant, decided to go back home and take advantage of it.

After he left and we got a not so nice teacher as a replacement, my heart wasn’t in the class anymore. So, between the constant bullying and fighting in school, and all of the crap at home, I just showed up for school because I had to and barely passed any of the classes. I had lost interest at this point. I just wanted it all to end so I could escape.

In my last year of high school, things at home escalated badly. It all started when I brought home a notice for all the boys to take the military aptitude test. There was no choice given to not take it per the government. This was in the fall of 1973.

My Da became livid. He was adamant that I was not to have anything to do with the military. I was going to take over the farm as the eldest son and that was that. My mother knew that I had no choice but to take the test so she kept him off of me as best as she could. After the test results came in and I had scored really high in everything except clerical, the gloves came off. We near came to blows several times.

Once I turned eighteen in early 1974, I had recruiters calling the house, and mailing me pamphlets trying to get me to enlist because of my high scores. At home, my dad was cursing every recruiter that called and yelling at me for the slightest thing.

Once I turned eighteen, he no longer had the authority to stop me from enlisting, and I got my notice to register for the draft. My mother knew I was itching to get out of there as quickly as possible, so she started teaching me how to cook and sew a little, in order to prepare me to take care of myself a little once I left home. She knew there was no longer any doubt that I would be leaving as soon as I could.

Himself would either get drunk and abusive or drunk and nice. I think I liked abusive better. His Mr. nice guy persona made me sick, especially when he would put his arms around my shoulders and breathe his beer breath all over me, trying to convince me to stay. When we fought, he would always tell me I would never amount to anything, was no good for anything and so on. Really good for my already low self-esteem.

During this time, while I was still attending school, I started talking to recruiters on the sly. I finally settled on the Navy because that recruiter took an interest in me, more so than the Army recruiter. I had no interest in the Marines or Air Force and I never even considered the Coast Guard. I wanted to go right away but he convinced me to stay and graduate high school under the delayed entry program. A week after high school graduation, which I did not attend, I left for the MEPS station in Bangor, Maine. I had received my high school diploma in the mail just before I left.

My Ma did all she could to teach me how to get along in the outside world with what little knowledge she could impart. She confided in me once when my Da wasn't around, that she knew I was a rolling stone. She said it would probably be a long time, if ever, before I settled down somewhere for any length of time and she was right.

When the time finally came to take me to the airport and send me off to basic training in June of 1974, my ever-stoic mother probably thought she had seen the last of me. I did return home on leave for a couple of weeks after basic training and a couple other times afterward in the coming year and a half, much to my regret.

After basic and a small school, I flew overseas to my first military unit, which was already overseas on a six-month deployment in the fall and winter of 1974-1975. Which takes me to chapter two of my story, which will come in a separate post.