06-07 Special Memories

If there was anything I remembered most from our family trip to Ireland in 1947, was the feeling of love and joy that was part of what we did every day. In Canada, Dad never seemed to talk about the past, but he was eager to tell us everything about our Irish history when we were in Ireland.
We walked and walked and never used cabs or airplanes. It was all about boats and trains. And photographs. Love the shot of Dad outside the small house we passed in Belfast on one of our excursions.
And how about that monster house they all lived in, with those huge eight bedrooms! Even Robert had a room of his own and is seen tying his shoes one morning. Those beds had mattresses that had never been turned over, so one slept in a deep hollow between scratchy linens. And those sheets and pillow cases were all products made and distributed by Bulloch Bros., a firm owned by our grandfather Bulloch’s father and uncles.
I’m sure many of our age will remember those reindeer sweaters we all wore. But the memories of Ian and Uncle Herbert’s Royal Air Force cap is very emotional. In the photo, Ian and I are with the boat that arrived from Liverpool and brought Herbert home from India. For Herbert, it was a trip half-way around the world via ship and rail. There were no major commercial airlines then.
As a child, the history of Ireland was a big mystery. We were never exposed to the poor areas of Belfast, where there was continuous fighting between Catholics and Protestants. We left before the famous July 12 Orange parades and riots that were common on that day. I heard comments about the Shankill Road area which was Protestant and the Falls Road area that was Catholic.
I could not believe that my father, at age 18, went with a couple of football buddies and sang an Orange song in a pub on the Falls Road, only to start a “good fight”.
I do remember the signs in Southern Ireland that were in English and Gaelic. I knew something was different in Southern Ireland – that they were not actually British. In the photo, Dad and grandpa are at the train station at Dalkey, a town outside Dublin (you can see that other weird spelling).
A special memory was visiting grandma’s younger sister Gracie Cansdale, who lived just a block away, and playing with their young daughter Pamela seen in the photo. She was my father's cousin, and yet, was only a couple of years younger than me. Pamela as an adult became a real friend, and a source of so much Devon history.
An enduring memory is visiting Bangor just South of Belfast in County Down. It was one of the most beautiful places to live, and two of grandpa Bulloch’s sisters lived there, Aunty May and Aunty Ida (the weird one). The photo shows Ian and at the beach.
But what really tugged at my heart at the time, was seeing where Dad spent his summer holidays. He said his Grandfather Devon would rent a home for them as children every summer, and would pick the whole family up in an old-fashioned "coach and four," which meant four horses and four footmen, and drive them to Bangor. I saw Dad wipe away tears at the time. That made it a special memory.