A True Irish Leader 9/2/07

My grandpa, Uncle Mike Jennings, was a full blooded Irishman whose parents came over on the boat to New Orleans from Ireland to escape the potato famine. His mother and father died in a yellow fever epidemic and he, his brother and sister were placed in a Catholic Orphanage. A family in New Orleans adopted his sister out. His brother escaped when about 16 years old and lived some where in Texas. He came to visit years after escaping from the home, told his brother of his family and work, then just up and walked off and no one has heard from him or his family since. Grandfather’s sisters children visited often and the two families became rather close.

My grandfather remained in the home until he was about fifteen and a family from North Louisiana took him out and indentured him. Indentured was the same as slavery, because the child was not officially made a member of the family and therefore the family could do with the child as they pleased. In those days the orphanages were glad to let children be indentured because they were overflowing as a result of the yellow fever epidemic. Landowners and others over the south would come to these places and get the children usually with no questions asked about their future well-being.

Grandpa lost his eyelashes as a result of yellow fever and wore dark glasses to hide the defect all his life. He smoked a pipe until lip cancer forced him to have treatment and left the corner of his bottom lip disfigured. He began crusading against smoking about 1946, years before the government got involved. "One of these days people will find out how bad tobacco is and will quit fooling with it", he predicted He was a short rotund person with a very beautiful Irish tenor voice and could sing with the best. Always in good spirits he also liked the spirits and had a little nip up until about 20 years before he died when he began crusading against the evil of alcohol. Of course he was a Catholic but never actively practiced the religion because there were no churches where he lived. In the early thirties he carried his youngest daughter to Monroe, Louisiana to St. Francis Hospital for an appendicitis operation and while there was a very good Catholic and consequently got the operation for free. He claimed he was a poor farmer and a good catholic in spite of the fact he could not practice the religion where he lived. About fifteen years before his death he became a Baptist and was baptized in "back water" that had flooded into his field. We grandchildren wanted to attend but he said, "there would be no singing, and shouting and no one was going but him and Tom Ratcliff", the local pastor who saved him. Grandpa seldom attended church after he was baptized but always bragged about being a good Baptist.

He was a good farmer and a better politician and got a job as a night watchman at the state highway equipment barn and there began his experience with the pickup truck. He lived off the main gravel road about two miles and one of his boys had to drive the truck out to the highway on rainy days because he would slip in the ditch. They met him at the main road on rainy days because if they did not he would slip in the ditch and they would have to get a team of horses and pull him out. In later life he got his road graveled and his driving improved greatly but he would not drive in the nearby town except to a parking lot near a service station. Later on he required some one to drive him to town and there was no arguing, you had to go if grandpa said so. Twenty miles per hour was top speed in his truck regardless of who was driving. He predicted that some day the motor car would be one of the leading causes of death in the country.

He and some of his boys went to a large town about forty miles away, and he had a little bit to much to drink and insisted on driving. He caused a wreck and put the blame on the other driver saying he was drunk and blind but his sons got him out of town before the cops could get there. The next day he predicted that cities and towns would need a cop on every corner to keep down crime. He also predicted at he same time that alcohol would be a big problem with drivers, and that they would cause people to be killed because alcohol caused a person not to be able to "drive right".

When Grand Pa was a young man he had a fight with his brother in law Uncle Newt and got a knife wound in his knee. This wound troubled him most of his life and he was always seeking remedies for his bad knee. Hadacol an elixir developed by a politician allowed him to bend it up fully after only three doses. The Dudley J. LeBlanc developed medicine had a large percent of alcohol as a base and this helped free up the movement in the knee. Another time the only relief he could get was from rattlesnake oil that had been rendered out of a snake by the heat of the sun.

At the beginning of each school year he would come to my Dad’s general store located about fifty feet from the school yard, get a pocket full pf pennies and nickels and give the first graders a nickel when they came to the store at recess. He would usually scare them at first but after pulling them up too him singing a song, he would give them a nickel, and they would fall in love with him. He would keep this up for about a week every year. He predicted back in those days that someday, young people would have lots of money to spend but a lot of families would not be complete families. That many would be a one parent family because every one would have to work in order to make a decent living. He also said, "someday that about half of the marriages will fail and one parent will have to raise the children".

My grandfather Mike Jennings was a great Irish American. He and my grandmother who was one half Irish produced 10 children who were all successful. Some farmed, one was a builder, another helped install electricity and natural gas in all the towns in the area and then wired the houses for electricity and piped them for gas. Some worked in Cotton gins and the girls were good housewives. Some of the girls even worked a little out of the home back in the thirties, forties and fifties. The grand children became accountants, school people, farmers, carpenters, mechanics, bus drivers, good wives, and some wives worked outside the home and still raised a good family. They entered into just about every area of life and have scattered all over this great nation and do everything from being entertainers, pharmacists, tradesmen of all kinds, in practically every profession. There is not a real bum among the whole lot.

My grandfather came to this country. was indentured by a wealthy North Louisiana family that never recognized him as a part of the family in any way, met his wife plowing a yoke of oxen, married, worked hard, and never complained because he was looked down on as an Irishman. He never asked for or even heard of "quotas". He would have been insulted if someone had told him to join a group that was going to help get him special treatment because he was not treated fairly as a child by the old time settlers of the country. He would never even had recognized the fact if someone had violated his civil rights. He did receive a small amount of old age pension money when he reached sixty five years of age. What this country needs is some more "settlers" like My grand Father Honorable Mike Jennings. People like him are the real big people of this country, they made it great not some Irishman who was lucky enough to be born to high society and fortune. Roots are what holds up a society and people like Uncle Mike Jennings a real Irish leader down the roots. Our leaders of course put down roots. They will be reflected on later in my writings.