Green Blood
15-05-2012, 04:36 PM
I stumbled across the following article online and thought I would post it for all to read. Think its a super article and hope the author does not mind me posting it on here.
Well worth a read!!
Part 1
As I have written before, it was 1895 when my grandfather, John, arrived in Edinburgh from Co Leitrim via Brooklyn. His brother, Michael, had preceded him and already had established a grocer’s shop in the southside, on the corner of South Clerk St and Hope Park Terrace. My grandad, with the money he had saved as a tram conductor around the Brooklyn Bridge, quickly opened his own shop in nearby Buccleuch St, bordering on the Meadows, where he also set up house with a new wife and growing family. They sold fresh produce sent over from Leitrim and fairly soon Michael moved through to the Gorbals to carry on the business there, in London Rd, or Great Hamilton St, as it was then known, in the east end of Glasgow.
The fact that I would start off a piece about a Hibs v Hearts Cup Final with such a paragraph probably tells you all you need to know about my feelings for the Hibs.
Hibs, and Hearts, had started out as loosely arranged teams playing kickabout games on the Meadows. In the twenty years before John’s immigration, Hibs had moved to a park down at West Saville Terrace, called Powburn and would have changed in St Mary’s Street Halls and trekked down to the pitch along Buccleuch St. However, two years before he reached the city, the Drum Park, near Easter Rd, became their home.
As a popular grocer, one of the ‘Paddy Macs’, servicing the southside Irish population, no doubt, in 1896, John would have been aware of the chatter amongst customers about the football cup final match to be played down at Logie Green. The Hibs were to play the Hearts: it was establishment v incomers, Scotland v Ireland, Gorgie v Leith and the Southside.
I like to think that’s when he got interested in the Hibs – and started four generations of support for the Cabbage amongst his descendants. All his sons became Hibs daft – and I do mean daft. The oldest, Joe, died of Great War gassing in 1923 and so missed the season in 1927 when his younger brother, James, actually played a half dozen games for the Hibs. The youngest boy, my uncle Frank, chose the Depression year of 1929 to emigrate to the USA. Despite that, he was a success, and, over fifty years later, his grandson’s regular Sunday task was to run to the newsagents in Sag Harbor in the Hamptons, and come back with a paper that would tell his Grandpa how the Hibs had got on the previous day.
Perhaps my dad was daftest of the lot. When my mother was expecting me, she was confined to bed rest for months before the birth. We lived in Piershill, a crowd’s shout from Easter Rd, and, as an act of kindness, my Dad would leave open the bedroom window before going to the match so my mum could hear the roars as the goals went in! There would have been a lot to hear, as the year I was born, the Hibs won the title for the third time in four years.
So, you get it. Even in the womb, the Hibs were becoming an integral part of my life.
So what does an Edinburgh Cup Final mean to me? Something that has not occurred since the first year that my family were in Edinburgh, 116 years ago!
Well, initially, terror! What could be worse than losing to our oldest rivals in such an important match? But, on reflection, so much more than that.
Actually, and this may seem an odd statement from such a committed and devoted supporter, the result isn’t the most important aspect. Of course, I’m desperate for Hibs to win and I’ll be devastated if we lose the game, but, if I’m honest, the emotions involved are about something else altogether – not the winning, but the experience.
The word I keep coming back to is continuity – and, given my dad and all but one of his brothers were dead by the time I was 8, that’s a word I have to struggle to reach out to most of the time. There’s the continuity of time, memories and actions.
I went to my first Hibs’ game in January 1956 – Hibs v Hearts. I was three – far too young really, but the memories are vivid. I was vaguely aware of the green far below and some men moving about, but I spent most of the time with my back to the pitch watching my dad and Uncle James – the one who’d played for Hibs. It was the only time I would see them acting as James and Paul, rather than Uncle and Daddy. It was the only time I was to attend a football match with them – 18 months later, my dad was dead, to be followed by James in another year or so. But how important it is to me, still, to be able to say: I went to see the Famous Five play – with my dad and my Uncle James? In the last game before that old stand was demolished, in 2001, with my match going buddies and my then 13 year old son, I sat very close to the spot where we had sat that January in 1956. The feeling was reflective but not maudlin in any way; it was that feeling of continuity.
There’s an old kid’s blackboard in our loft., with a green easel. One night, on a visit to our house, a month or so before I started school at St John’s Portobello, Uncle James had decided I should have a spelling lesson. On the board, permanent through age, are the chalked words: Rib, Fib, Hib, written by Uncle James, the Hibee. I can still vaguely remember the adults’ discussion on whether Hib was a word and whether fib was a suitable word for a 4 year old to be learning. Looking at it, I can almost reach out and touch that generation of my family – the jokes, the laughs, the concerns and the love.
I felt the same on May 14th 1994, when, as a 6 year old, my son Patrick sampled Easter Rd for the first time to see Hibs v Kilmarnock. It was a pretty dire 0-0 end of season draw, but, apart from family reasons, memorable as Tommy Burns’ last game as a player. There it was again – that feeling of continuity – giving Patrick a link with his granddad and great uncles that he could never otherwise have achieved; something of a taste of who they were, what got them excited, what they liked to do.
I don’t think I ever walk down to Easter Rd without giving a thought to those who went before me. It’s not a gloomy feeling, quite the contrary; it’s comforting and uplifting to know that I’m following in my dad’s footsteps – physically, yes, but also, and more importantly, in what I do to enjoy myself. It’s how we get close to people, sharing things we enjoy together. His early death robbed me of so many opportunities to do that, but going to see the Hibs enables me to capture some of it, even now, and to be conscious that I am setting up memories and connections for my son. Put simply, supporting the Hibs is what our family do; it’s as much part of our DNA as our Irish/English/Eurasian/Scots heritage, or our faith.
Well worth a read!!
Part 1
As I have written before, it was 1895 when my grandfather, John, arrived in Edinburgh from Co Leitrim via Brooklyn. His brother, Michael, had preceded him and already had established a grocer’s shop in the southside, on the corner of South Clerk St and Hope Park Terrace. My grandad, with the money he had saved as a tram conductor around the Brooklyn Bridge, quickly opened his own shop in nearby Buccleuch St, bordering on the Meadows, where he also set up house with a new wife and growing family. They sold fresh produce sent over from Leitrim and fairly soon Michael moved through to the Gorbals to carry on the business there, in London Rd, or Great Hamilton St, as it was then known, in the east end of Glasgow.
The fact that I would start off a piece about a Hibs v Hearts Cup Final with such a paragraph probably tells you all you need to know about my feelings for the Hibs.
Hibs, and Hearts, had started out as loosely arranged teams playing kickabout games on the Meadows. In the twenty years before John’s immigration, Hibs had moved to a park down at West Saville Terrace, called Powburn and would have changed in St Mary’s Street Halls and trekked down to the pitch along Buccleuch St. However, two years before he reached the city, the Drum Park, near Easter Rd, became their home.
As a popular grocer, one of the ‘Paddy Macs’, servicing the southside Irish population, no doubt, in 1896, John would have been aware of the chatter amongst customers about the football cup final match to be played down at Logie Green. The Hibs were to play the Hearts: it was establishment v incomers, Scotland v Ireland, Gorgie v Leith and the Southside.
I like to think that’s when he got interested in the Hibs – and started four generations of support for the Cabbage amongst his descendants. All his sons became Hibs daft – and I do mean daft. The oldest, Joe, died of Great War gassing in 1923 and so missed the season in 1927 when his younger brother, James, actually played a half dozen games for the Hibs. The youngest boy, my uncle Frank, chose the Depression year of 1929 to emigrate to the USA. Despite that, he was a success, and, over fifty years later, his grandson’s regular Sunday task was to run to the newsagents in Sag Harbor in the Hamptons, and come back with a paper that would tell his Grandpa how the Hibs had got on the previous day.
Perhaps my dad was daftest of the lot. When my mother was expecting me, she was confined to bed rest for months before the birth. We lived in Piershill, a crowd’s shout from Easter Rd, and, as an act of kindness, my Dad would leave open the bedroom window before going to the match so my mum could hear the roars as the goals went in! There would have been a lot to hear, as the year I was born, the Hibs won the title for the third time in four years.
So, you get it. Even in the womb, the Hibs were becoming an integral part of my life.
So what does an Edinburgh Cup Final mean to me? Something that has not occurred since the first year that my family were in Edinburgh, 116 years ago!
Well, initially, terror! What could be worse than losing to our oldest rivals in such an important match? But, on reflection, so much more than that.
Actually, and this may seem an odd statement from such a committed and devoted supporter, the result isn’t the most important aspect. Of course, I’m desperate for Hibs to win and I’ll be devastated if we lose the game, but, if I’m honest, the emotions involved are about something else altogether – not the winning, but the experience.
The word I keep coming back to is continuity – and, given my dad and all but one of his brothers were dead by the time I was 8, that’s a word I have to struggle to reach out to most of the time. There’s the continuity of time, memories and actions.
I went to my first Hibs’ game in January 1956 – Hibs v Hearts. I was three – far too young really, but the memories are vivid. I was vaguely aware of the green far below and some men moving about, but I spent most of the time with my back to the pitch watching my dad and Uncle James – the one who’d played for Hibs. It was the only time I would see them acting as James and Paul, rather than Uncle and Daddy. It was the only time I was to attend a football match with them – 18 months later, my dad was dead, to be followed by James in another year or so. But how important it is to me, still, to be able to say: I went to see the Famous Five play – with my dad and my Uncle James? In the last game before that old stand was demolished, in 2001, with my match going buddies and my then 13 year old son, I sat very close to the spot where we had sat that January in 1956. The feeling was reflective but not maudlin in any way; it was that feeling of continuity.
There’s an old kid’s blackboard in our loft., with a green easel. One night, on a visit to our house, a month or so before I started school at St John’s Portobello, Uncle James had decided I should have a spelling lesson. On the board, permanent through age, are the chalked words: Rib, Fib, Hib, written by Uncle James, the Hibee. I can still vaguely remember the adults’ discussion on whether Hib was a word and whether fib was a suitable word for a 4 year old to be learning. Looking at it, I can almost reach out and touch that generation of my family – the jokes, the laughs, the concerns and the love.
I felt the same on May 14th 1994, when, as a 6 year old, my son Patrick sampled Easter Rd for the first time to see Hibs v Kilmarnock. It was a pretty dire 0-0 end of season draw, but, apart from family reasons, memorable as Tommy Burns’ last game as a player. There it was again – that feeling of continuity – giving Patrick a link with his granddad and great uncles that he could never otherwise have achieved; something of a taste of who they were, what got them excited, what they liked to do.
I don’t think I ever walk down to Easter Rd without giving a thought to those who went before me. It’s not a gloomy feeling, quite the contrary; it’s comforting and uplifting to know that I’m following in my dad’s footsteps – physically, yes, but also, and more importantly, in what I do to enjoy myself. It’s how we get close to people, sharing things we enjoy together. His early death robbed me of so many opportunities to do that, but going to see the Hibs enables me to capture some of it, even now, and to be conscious that I am setting up memories and connections for my son. Put simply, supporting the Hibs is what our family do; it’s as much part of our DNA as our Irish/English/Eurasian/Scots heritage, or our faith.