Issue Nr 57, May 2009
Newsletter
What a Week!
by Jim McArdle
45 years ago I had left the Consett area and now in March 2009 I was going back on mission. I was not too sure what to expect because the previous year I had passed through Moorside and was shocked to see that St Pius church had been knocked down and levelled to the ground – a church whose opening I had attended, where I had served as an altar boy, joined the S.V.P. and taken the collection each week, where my sister had been married and to where, I remember, Kathy *** had walked in her wedding dress and Wellingtons when the snow had been so bad that the wedding car couldn’t get up the hill. And where my father’s funeral had taken place.
I enjoyed the picturesque drive up the M6 to Tebay and across the moors through Kirkby Stephen, Barnard Castle, Tow Low and Moorside and easily re-found St Mary’s church even though, because of the death of the steel works, the immediate area round it was completely different.
At the Saturday evening Mass I introduces myself – “born in Green Street, Consett; spent my early childhood in South Moor; and had my later childhood and youth in Moorside; I feel that I have truly come home again”. After Mass I stood outside the church distributing the scripture leaflets and then it all started:
“Do you recognise me: my name is Elizabeth ***?”
and my reply: “We were in standard six together at St Patrick’s Junior School and you lived with your aunt in Green Street next to the undertakes”.
“Do you remember me, Andrea ***?”
“You lived in the big house next to the bus stop”.
“Do you remember me, Doreen ***?”
“You lived opposite us and four houses down: you and your sister looked like twins except you had dark hair and she had fair”.
“Do you remember me, Sadie ***?”
“You lived opposite us in Surrey Crescent”.
And after the Mass on Sunday it continued:
“Do you remember me: we lived in the same street as your grandparents?”
“Maeve *** and you lived at nr7 while my grandparents lived at 10 and you moved from there to a house next to St Patrick’s. I met your cousin on mission last year at a parish near Durham and she had a school photograph of us in standard five”.
“Do you remember me: Arthur ***; we lived at nr5 and you lived at nr11?”
“And you had a younger brother Terry who was the best friend of my brother as a child and died when he was only 9 years old; I still have a photograph of them together in our front garden”.
Even on the Monday after faith sharing in the second church I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned and before he could speak I said “Eddie ***: the last time I saw you as on the football pitch at grammar school when we were both sixteen”.
By now I was expecting Eamon Andrews to appear with a big red book and say “Jim McArdle: This is your life!”
The week’s mission was great. I was driving along streets and visiting areas I remembered from when I used to drive a van delivering bread and groceries and I met a parishioner who had worked for years alongside my brother at the steel works. Before I knew it we were up to Thursday and I was due to leave on the Friday. At tea time Michael proclaimed “we visited another of your relatives this afternoon”. I tried to emphasise that not ALL the McArdles in the area were related to me but he stressed that this one was since she told him all about my wife Gerda, my children Joseph, Austin & Monica and how I had taught in Malawi. It turned out that she was actually my aunt Olive whom I hadn’t seen for years.