David: Do you remember your grandparents?

Hughie: My grandfather was Hughie.

Greet: And his grandmother lived with them after the grandfather died. She couldn’t speak English.

Hughie: With the Gaelic, oh, yeah. They did a lot of talking about it.

David: What did he do?

Hughie: He was a coal miner… You’re darn right it was hard work, and the pay was poor, but I guess they were satisfied with it.

Greet: They only had two children, eh?

Hughie: Yeah, Pa and Uncle Dan.

Greet: And nobody ever saw Uncle Dan.

Hughie: No, after he left home, he never came back. He was about 20 or 21. Grandpa Ferguson told him he’d have to smarten up. “Why don’t you do like Mattie?”

Danny drank and Pa never had a drink. So Danny left.

They start hearing from his writing to Grandma once a month. And it wasn’t very much news, but Pa was very glad to have it. To say “we were over to see Sandy Ferguson” or something like that, living out in California where he was.

February 26, 2006