Excerpt from Tis by Frank McCourt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

A man passes us in the hallway and the priest whispers, Do you know who that is?

I don't.

Of course you don't. If you don't know the difference between a towel and a bath mat how could you know that's the great Boss Flynn from the Bronx, the most powerful man in America next to President Truman.

The great Boss presses the button for the elevator and while he's waiting he shoves a finger up his nose, looks at what he has on his fingertip and flicks it away on the carpet. My mother would call that digging for gold. This is the way it is in America. I'd like to tell the priest I'm sure De Valera would never pick his nose like that and you'd never find the Bishop of Limerick going to bed in a naked state. I'd like to tell the priest what I think of the world in general where God torments you with bad eyes and bad teeth but I can't for fear he might go on about the rich Protestants from Kentucky and how I missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

The priest talks to a woman at a desk in the Democratic Party and she picks up the telephone. She says to the telephone, Got a kid here...just off the boat...you got a high school diploma?...na, no diploma...well, whaddya expect...Old Country still a poor country...yeah, I'll send him up.

I'm to report on Monday morning to Mr. Carey on the twenty-second floor and he'll put me to work right here in the Biltmore Hotel and aren't I a lucky kid walking into a job right off the boat. That's what she says and the priest tells her, This is a great country and the Irish owe everything to the Democratic Party, Maureen, and you just clinched another vote for the party if the kid here ever votes, ha ha ha.


The priest tells me go back to the hotel and he'll come for me later to go to dinner. He says I can walk, that the streets run east and west, the avenues north and south, and I'll have no trouble. Just walk across Forty-second to Eighth Avenue and south till I come to the New Yorker Hotel. I can read a paper or a book or take a shower if I promise to stay away from the bath mat, ha ha. He says, If we're lucky we might meet the great Jack Dempsey himself. I tell him I'd rather meet Joe Louis if that's possible and he snaps at me, You better learn to stick with your own kind.

At night the waiter at Dempsey's smiles at the priest. Jack's not here, Fawdah. He's over to the Gawden checkin' out a middleweight from New Joisey.

Gawden. Joisey. My first day in New York and already people are talking like gangsters from the films I saw in Limerick.

The priest says, My young friend here is from the Old Country and he'd prefer to meet Joe Louis. He laughs and the waiter laughs and says, Well, that's a greenhorn talkin', Fawdah. He'll loin. Give him six months in this country and he'll run like hell when he sees a darky. An' what would you like to order, Fawdah? Little something before dinner?

I'll have a double martini dry and I mean dry straight up with a twist.

And the greenhorn?

He'll have a...well, what'll you have?

A beer, please.

You eighteen, kid?

Nineteen.

You don't look it though it don't matter nohow long as you with the fawdah. Right, Fawdah?

Right. I'll keep an eye on him. He doesn't know a soul in New York and I'm going to settle him in before I leave.

The priest drinks his double martini and orders another with his steak. He tells me I should think of becoming a priest. He could get me a job in Los Angeles and I'd live the life of Riley with widows dying and leaving me everything including their daughters, ha ha, this is one hell of a martini excuse the language. He eats most of his steak and tells the waiter bring two apple pies with ice cream and he'll have a double Hennessy to wash it down. He eats only the ice cream, drinks half the Hennessy and falls asleep with his chin on his chest moving up and down.

Copyright © 1999 by Frank McCourt