Mae the Moonshiner and the Revinoors

Mae Sullivan Crean probably made that entire outfit including the hat.

My great-great aunt Mae, was a Sullivan from Gort-na-Screena, a farm in Drimoleague, on the Bantry peninsula, She married Ed Forbes in San Francisco, by way of Home Ranch in Nevada. But he died in the great flu epidemic, along with their young daughter, leaving the widow alone, in a foreign country, if I'm remembering the story right.

During the Prohibition, Great Aunt Mae (my grandmother always called her mother's sister Great Aunt Mae, though she was technically my grandmother's aunt, thus conflating my mother's generation with mine own...unless, of course, Mae was just great anyway, which is more likely the case. She was one of those women who broke the mold.

Anyway, Mae made some mighty fine bathtub booze. There was always a steady stream of customers, San Francisco's finest coppers, firemen and priests paid their due respects at the house. Not a dry eye in the Forbes house. She did right well, indeed.

They got an early wind, a small bird uttered a warning that a raid was eminent. May and her nieces hid the coil and still, dumped the mash down the toilet but very nearly got caught by the Revinoors when the mash plugged up the plumbing and the toilet backed up, hiccuping potent 30-proof burps.

They manage to dump most of the stash, except for one jug, so she lay down on the bed with the baby, the jug between the baby and and her rather ample breasts, and feigned sleep.

When the Revinoors came into the bedroom, seeing her in disarray, with her hair tumbling from her chignon like wildfire, stepped back, She let out a proper banshee screech, the bebé began wailing in earnest. The coppers were most apologetic and slowly backed out of the bedroom like dumb draft horses without continuing their search, saying Sorry to disturb you, ma'am. Sorry, Sorry.

Great-great Aunt Mae with her nephew, a young Daniel Sullivan
The two girls in the back, Julia and Kitty, are Mae's nieces.
I love the fake car and the painted backdrop.

My great-grandmother was a Sullivan

Jane Rose Sullivan Walsh

My great-grandmother was a Sullivan who married a Walsh. They married into the McCarthy family as well. My grandmother was Walsh who married a Reilly. I also have Sullivan 2nd & 3rd cousins In San Francisco.

There are a lot of other Sullivans we think we're related to. There's a Sullivan family in San Geronimo Valley, they even look like us. But without family records it would be very hard to prove much of anything in Ireland before the 1860s as most church records were destroyed.

Marin wasn't particularly Irish. It was an admixture. It did however, have large immigrant groups from the Azores, Ireland, Italy, etc. I remember my grandmother pointing out the Italian Swiss colony. Some moved to Asti.

Our family had a summer home in West Marin that became their full time home. I think many San Franciscan families did that. It was not a wealthy enclave. Not like today.

Also, when there was no cure for TB, and other infectious diseases, it was thought that moving to the country would improve one's chances of surviving. It has a long tradition dating back to the mission days at San Rafael when acolytes were shipped to San Rafael to heal, but few Natives survived European diseases.

During the '06 quake, and fire, most people had no place to live, so many moved to Marin. There were a lot of Irish in San Francisco. My grandfather was responsible for, and patrolled a tent city on one of the hills. Maybe Lone Mountain.

Then, during the Depression, more people moved to Marin from San Francisco as it was easier to survive in Marin. My grandfather commuted by train and ferry to San Francisco.

My grandmother's garden on Coomb anOr in Forest Knolls fed more than one family and she had eight kids. The place looked just like her father's farm in Bantry, hence the name.

One St. Patrick's Day I was teaching kids poetry in Alexander Valley and there was a little party and one of the room mothers and I got to talking, comparing Irish last names.

Imagine this conversation:

My family are Sullivans and Walshes.

Yeah? Funny. So are mine.

Mine are from Bantry.

You're kidding. So are mine.

Get out! Our family had a ranch in Nevada.

So did we. Really.

Are you kidding? Omigawd, were you related to Wild Bill Walsh?

Yeah, he was my grandfather.

No way. He was my great uncle, my grandmother's brother. That makes us, let's see, 2nd cousins. We're related. We're actually related! (More screams, etc). It happened, it really happened like that.

And here I had been teaching her young daughter, Samantha Estomba poetry—not knowing we were 2nd cousins once removed. We were related. I must admit we had hit it off like a house afire.

Folklore fragments from my grandmother on the Sullivans

Folklore fragments from my grandmother, Jennie Walsh Reilly, collected in Forest Knolls, 1982

Death Superstition

The pictures fell off the wall and the glass broke. (Death.) All the boys— I’m getting superstitious. Ricky is already gone. There is still David, Kevin, and Guy. All those wars.

Before the English came, keening rituals
The voices moved up the hill. The women were crying when grandfather died. All week long it went on. We got used to it. All around his bed the birds singing, singing for Old Donough Sullivan Beare, he was the last of the clan.

The Sullivan Babe, keening ritual
I was facing the window, looking out, and I heard the voice of a woman crying, that was the banshee, it means fairywoman. The voice traveled from one row of trees to the next, and all along, down the houses, the Sullivan babe had died. It was the Rh factor, I think. I don’t know how many they had lost. It was an ongoing grief with no end in sight.

Sullivan Men, bog men and bog butter, and why you need to wash linen.
The Sullivan men were all so tall, square shoulder and handsome, my niece was married in England and the Sullivans standing beside her were all related. The isolated peninsula across the bay was known as the bear place. The boys looked for the cave where the bear skeleton was. Only the Bantry Sullivans are O Sullivan Bear. There was once a real bear. The skeleton is in the Irish museum that belonged to an earlier era. A huge skeleton of a man was found with it—when I was growing up. He was nearly 8 feet tall, you see, the bog preserved him. They used a special type of basket, a firkin and wrapped him up in linen. Linen absorbs the moisture. A firkin of butter was so many pounds worth – they took it into town. They used to sink the butter into the bogs for years. Flax grows on wet ground. That’s why you have to wash your linen tablecloths, to keep them alive.