A Proud Walking Tour Rises From ‘Angela’s Ashes’

I spent the first weeks of January walking the great writers’ environments of Ireland--Joyce and Shaw’s Dublin; Heaney’s Ulster coast; Yeats’ Sligo. Remarkable about these areas was the preservation of ambience; stepping into the text and across the locale revealed what the land had coaxed out of these men and onto the page. And so, prodded by the display in every bookstore window I passed, I added one more stop: McCourt’s Limerick.

The film version of “Angela’s Ashes” was about to open in Ireland, and the newspapers and talk radio shows were consumed with new debate about Frank McCourt, his autobiographical book and the recently published sequel. One theme was prominent: that McCourt’s memory of 1940s Limerick was highly inventive. The result was a Limerick divided. One side saw “Angela’s Ashes” as slandering McCourt’s parents and the town of his youth. The other side hailed the writer as a hometown hero and his book as an honest, if not true-to-the-letter, portrayal of alcoholism and poverty.

I got off the bus across the river from central Limerick, half expecting to see McCourt lionized in a monument or hanging in effigy on the Sarsfield Bridge.

The description of the river, the Shannon, was the only passage I remembered from “Angela’s Ashes,” about how his mother could hear the river sing. The water ran fast, the color of Guinness, all black flow and tan swells. Rushing toward the Atlantic, it sang a song of urgency, and yet the city seemed a model of tranquillity--at least the face turned toward me did, the bank lined with quality hotels.

My first stop was the gleaming modern tourist information center at Arthur’s Quay Park on the south side of the Shannon. The agent provided me with a Web address to find current information, outlined the tourist sites and pointed me to shelves full of curios of the “Kiss Me I’m Irish” ilk. Nary a mention of Limerick history or “Angela’s Ashes.”

“I sort of had a walking tour in mind,” I told her. “Something about the true Limerick past, like King John’s Castle and the Treaty Stone.”

“Yes, you can do that,” she said, “or you can take the ‘Angela’s Ashes’ tour.”

And that is how I wound up in the company of Michael O’Donnell, local historian, and a Radio France reporter in town to cover the movie premiere.

O’Donnell pumped my hand and began talking as we walked. “Frank McCourt said to me, ‘Mick, I just wrote a book. I never dreamed this success would happen.’ But we get people who come all the way here to Limerick just to take the ‘Angela’s Ashes’ walking tour. From England, from America, all the way from America, can you believe it?”

We stood on Arthur’s Quay, a flat green park fronting the Shannon where once stood “the lanes,” a maze of poverty and damp. A convoy of semis rumbled behind us, sagging under loads of construction materials. O’Donnell raised his voice above the din.

“Of course, people want to see the Limerick from ‘Angela’s Ashes,’ but it doesn’t exist. The city has changed so much, and I’m proud of that.”

O’Donnell walked quickly, belying his 65 years. He flicked a Major out of its pack, lighted it in one quick motion and led us across the traffic.

“I usually do historic walking tours of Limerick. But in 1997 [the year after the book was published] people kept coming to the visitor center asking about a tour, so I sent [McCourt] a fax asking his permission, and the next day I received a fax that said, ‘Dear Michael, Every success on your “Angela’s Ashes” tour. Frank McCourt.’ ” O’Donnell grinned wildly. “Now follow me!”

What followed, for the price of four Irish punts ($5.20), which O’Donnell said goes to charity, was a retelling of events from the story at the sites where they occurred.

Up Henry Street and past the General Post Office, O’Donnell smiled his way through a retelling of McCourt’s coupling with Theresa, wherein they have “the excitement.”

The French reporter wanted clarification of the euphemism.

O’Donnell leaped to his cue: “The excitement is the act itself, done up against a wall, two people straining on the tips of their toes.”

The reporter hit pause on his tape recorder.

O’Donnell led us past the old Dock Road, formerly the setting for picking up stray bits of coal, now the home of a luxury hotel. Mill Lane, where Malachy begged for work, now hosts an office block. Limerick is a clanging, booming town, and Dell Computer filled billboards with messages like “Bored with your job? Join us! No experience necessary.”

The scenes of poverty in “Angela’s Ashes,” O’Donnell noted, had to be filmed in Dublin and Cork. Limerick doesn’t have scummy enough streets anymore.

We bustled past kids in Catholic school uniforms to Windmill Street, site of the McCourts’ first Limerick home. It looked ordinary, working class, not a slum. This part of Limerick is flush with new development and industry, and the residential streets were a sea of “To Let/For Sale” signs.

O’Donnell took us back by retelling stories about flea-infested mattresses and dying babies. He’s a grand storyteller, Michael O’Donnell is, and I suspect he has stories that outdo McCourt’s.

We continued on to Heartstonge Street and Rodin Lane and Barrack Hill. The early winter dusk was slipping over the city’s green hills, and we heard about some more of the excitement, this time between Angela and her cousin.

Then it was on to St. Joseph’s Church and the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Leamy School.

O’Donnell paused and pointed to the school’s entryway. “Can you imagine? A Pulitzer Prize winner coming from the lanes of Limerick and going to this very school. Why wouldn’t we be proud of him?”

We stopped at J.M. South’s pub, where McCourt’s uncle bought him his first pint. O’Donnell and the Frenchman sipped Coke, explaining they were working, while I savored a fresh, creamy Guinness.

O’Donnell explained that the fees for the tour go to a church program that funds house-painting, hedge-cutting and window repairs for the older parishioners.

“The people of Limerick are still benefiting from ‘Angela’s Ashes,’ ” he glowed.

The drinking done for now, the three of us walked past the Carnegie Library (now an art museum) and People’s Park, where McCourt had auto-excitement. Youth hostels lined Perry Square, a neatly manicured fenced-in lawn.

I was surprised by the wealth of architecture, monuments and neighborhoods we walked through, details omitted from McCourt’s narrative, which made Limerick sound like a wasteland. Maybe it used to be.

After two hours we were back on O’Connell Street, Limerick’s main commercial strip. Bookshop windows displayed McCourt’s works, and I wondered, with the movie hitting theaters, if O’Donnell’s unique and charitable corner on the “Angela’s Ashes” market will survive, or if someone with a double-decker bus and megaphone will arrive on the scene. O’Donnell shrugged off any such worry. He is a pleasant man, a kind man, an intelligent man, and one got the feeling that in today’s Limerick bad things don’t happen to pleasant, kind, intelligent men. Plus, he still leads the Limerick history tour, and to study history in Ireland, you can’t pick a much better place than the City of the Violated Treaty, so named for an English promise broken in 1691.

“I’ve only a small little bit more to tell, won’t delay you,” O’Donnell said. He ended with McCourt’s arrival back in the United States and his having the excitement with an anonymous woman at a party.

Again with the excitement, I moaned.

As the street filled with rush-hour crowds bracing against the cold wind, O’Donnell concluded the “Angela’s Ashes” walk with the book’s ending:

“And someone says to McCourt, ‘Isn’t America wonderful?’ And Frank says, ‘ ‘Tis.’ ”

I spent the rest of the evening relaxed in a fire-warmed pub, surrounded by cheer, regretting not having asked O’Donnell if he knew any good limericks. Seeing the movie could wait for another night in another city, farther from its source, and further from the memory of the telling. Which is how good stories become great stories, as the Irish know so well.

For more information: Tourist Information, Arthur’s Quay, Limerick, Ireland; telephone 011-353-61-317-522, fax 011-353-61- 317-939, Internet https://www.shannon-dev.ie.

For a virtual tour of the sites of “Angela’s Ashes,” visit https://www.iol.ie/~avondoyl/angelas1.htm.