We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It - Stories from my Irish Boyhood

Tom Phelan

Gallery Books

2019

224 páginas

7h 28m

ISBN-10: 1501197096

Tom Phelan, who was born and raised in County Laois in the Irish midlands, spent his formative years working under his wise and demanding father, JohnJoe, on a farm that was often wet, muddy, and back-breaking.

These stories recount Tom’s upbringing in an isolated rural community from the day he was delivered by the local midwife. As a child, Tom became aware that priests lived in warm, dry houses and saw that they never had muck or dung on their polished shoes. He began to dream of becoming a priest and traveling to sunny foreign missions, where he would baptize and teach pagan children.

We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It offers you a glimpse of life in the Irish countryside in the 1940s, a time before rural electrification, the telephone, or indoor plumbing; when the main modes of travel were bicycle and animal cart; when small farmers struggled to survive and turkey eggs were hatched in the kitchen cupboard; when the Church exerted enormous control over Ireland. We become acquainted with the never-ending efforts of Tom’s father to wrest a livelihood from the land.