The Book of Tolan: Volume I - Banking, Beer & Robert the Bruce

Banking, Beer and Robert the Bruce

Volume I

THE BOOK OF Tolan

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 T. I. Wade

Book and jacket design by:

Jack Hillman, Hillman Design Group, Sedona, AZ

Coat of arms 3-D images used with permission of the following:

Gold in Chest by Liao Shang Heng

The Angel Bard Tavern & Inn by Dennis Seavey

Rugged Cross by Joseph Lawhorn

Idea by Satya Narayan Rajpurohit

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Wade, T. I.

Banking, Beer and Robert The Bruce / T. I. Wade.—2nd ed. p. cm.— (The Book of Tolan; v1)

ISBN 978-0-9761170-4-9

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my dad, John Gordon Wade, who died at the ripe old age of 76.

Dad, thanks for the humor you gave me and everyone else who knew you.

A man who loved English humor and lived by it, despite being struck down with polio only a few days before the first polio antidote reached African shores in 1956.

Permanently disabled, he still had his sense of humor. I was not at his deathbed. He died in his sleep the way we all hope to go.

I am sure that if he had been awake at the time of his death, his last words would have been the formation of a joke. His belief was that life was a joke and that he would die laughing and happy!

I am sure he did. I hope you, the reader, can see my dad’s vision and I hope you can also see life as a joke. Laugh at it and die happy with laughter in your heart and a joke on your lips.

Dad, this story is for you.

Diggie.

Acknowledgements

An author is never alone in writing.

Many thanks to my wife Cathy, who firstly allowed me to write, fed me, paid the mortgage, read and re-read Volume I a hundred times. Thanks, kids, for putting up with Dad, spending hours on the computer when you wanted to play.

A special thanks to my friend, Jack Hillman, for his dedication and patience in typesetting, for his dust jacket design, and for having a good brain to lean on in times of need.

To Stacey Bigliardi for her expertise in grammar editing and proofreading.

To James Andrews, who was the first brave man to believe in the work and who helped start the process of success. To the complete list of team members who have contributed to the success of this 2,500 page epic in many different ways; Bob and Carole Noxon, Reese H. Henry, Brian Jenkins, Cyle Williams, Dr. Kyle Sullivan, Kris Wolf, Todd Nelson, Amie Chilson, Melissa M. Monroe, Aundrea Rosdal, Joe B. Scott, Tom Chavez, Kim Cousins, Jesse Wilkinson, C.J. Mulkerrin, Bonnie Baldwin, J. Ann Craig, Stephanie May, Julie Payne, Aurelia and Kennon Ward, Jackie Simmons, Marcie Hanhart and Tori Blackhart.

Without all these great people, you would not be reading this fine novel today!

Irish/Scottish Family Tree

Murphy Patrick Tolan 1779-1832 ----Moira McCartney 1787-1841

Maureen Tolan 1802-29 ----wee-Georgie Harrison 1801-unknown

Peter Murphy Tolan 1817-63 ----Mary Audrey Tolan 1820-69

Robert Ian Tolan 1839-70 ----Sheryl Starr 1829-75

Robbie Tolan 1864-1916 ----Monique Du Pape 1869-

Audrey Tolan 1888----Wee-William Tate 1886-

Betty Tate 1925-

English Family Tree

Dickson Albert Hawkins 1799-1834 ----Mildred Joan Lennon 1783-1822

Big Dick Hawkins 1817-53 ----Josie-Anne Starkey 1823-53

William Frederick Hawkins I 1843-65 ----Joanna Pringle 1845-1915

Little Bill Hawkins II 1864-1916 ----Beatrice Potter 1870-98

James Fleming 1873----Maud Hawkins 1891-

John Gordon Fleming 1925-

Table of Contents:

Wanton Ramblings from the Author

Introduction

Chapter 1 Murphy Patrick Tolan 1779 1832

Chapter 2 Dickson Albert Hawkins 1799 1833

Chapter 3 Robert Ian Tolan 1839 1870

Chapter 4 Big Dick Hawkins 1834 1843

Chapter 5 Robert’s Son Robbie 1883 1892

Chapter 6 William Frederick Hawkins 1843 – 1865

Chapter 7 Robbie Tolan 1892 1895

Chapter 8 William Frederick Hawkins 1864 – 1880

Chapter 9 Robbie Tolan Third Chapter

Chapter 10 James Fleming 1879 1893

Chapter 11 Robbie Tolan Fourth Chapter 1897 1899

Chapter 12 Little Bill Hawkins II 1880 1916

Chapter 13 Robbie Tolan 1899 1916

Chapter 14 James Fleming 1893 1929

Chapter 15 Audrey Tolan/Wee-William Tate 1904 1912

Chapter 16 Wee-William Tate/Audrey Tolan 19121930

WANTON RAMBLINGS FROM THE AUTHOR

Our beloved round ball called earth has been around since heaven knows when.

We, as the Bible tells us, originated from Adam and Eve. Everything would have been just dandy for us if Eve did not like apples and wasn’t able to talk to snakes. Well, we humans have been naughty and bad since we existed and have had to be pulled out of the crapper by the one who originally made us. Not once but many times since the Garden of Eden and Eve’s eating those apples.

God was kind and loving enough to save humanity from total destruction through Noah, when he destroyed much of what he had made himself by flooding the Earth of sin all those years ago.

His mathematics in building Earth is so precise that the figures go into thirty-odd decimal places to give us the beauty of this livable planet. Blue is my favorite color. Maybe God’s as well, as he painted it right across the sky. Great job!

He made clouds so clean and white that they cleanse the sky with beautiful colors that can never be boring. God uses shapes, colors and densities that only a perfectionist could think up. The vivid greens and browns of the earth blend in with any sky color, and the differences in sensing air, ground, and water could never bore anyone during our short lives on Earth.

Yet God also made us humans. The total opposite of what Monet would call a perfect work. Bad, naughty, smelly, horrible two-legged beings that eat apples, make a lot of noise, and certainly do not, on Earth, do what we are supposed to do!

Could God be a closet masochist and have invented us to give himself a hard time? Or are we a never-ending soap opera that keeps him from getting bored? Living for eternity must be tough!

The Other Possible View:

Then there is the other view. Some little critter that used to look like a bacteria walked out of the sea and ended up becoming and looking like us.

Somehow our evolution went from living and breathing underwater and having fins to then having four feet, breathing, and needing to stand up on our two hind legs to reach those apples.

Now, as the major occupants and pollutants of our home, we have University degrees, drive cars, consider ourselves to be civilized and do our level best to mess up our little round ball in the middle of nowhere. We pollute it, make holes in it, use all of its resources as if there were no tomorrow, invent trash that will outlive us by a thousand years or more that we leave as our legacy, and generally do our utmost to mess up God’s original thirty-odd decimal places.

Yes, we all do it in some way, and we don’t even use seventeen percent of our brainpower, even those of us who are extra very intelligent, they say!

A way that the English describe it, which somebody else actually said first:

We are civilized now.

Great! How come we still eat apples and act worse than most of the uncivilized animals out there? God also killed off most of those guys that didn’t eat or even like apples, keeping two for breeding purposes; people who, in my view, did not do things wrong like us and lived a simple existence.

Evolution, commonly called Mother Nature, on the other hand, got rid of, or shall I say gets rid of, anybody she doesn’t like. Nice Mom! Everything except us, that is, so the assumption is that somebody somewhere out there must like us!

Anyway, getting back to the two-legged apple eater being civilized. It has come to my attention that most apples available on this earth are in supermarkets. Now, it has taken about 2,000 years since the great flood, or about a billion years, for us pesky little bacteria sea critters to get civilized. Yet! If all those supermarkets around the world closed their doors all at once and never opened up again, how long would it take for us civilized humans to get very uncivilized again?

How about four days before someone comes to your house and wants to take possession of the apples you have left! Get my drift? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that something out there is not right.

Here we are after a billion years or so, or two-thousand years after Noah, of bettering, educating and teaching ourselves, and where have we actually gone? And how much have we achieved?

As you will notice by reading THE BOOK OF TOLAN and its first three novels:

Banking, Beer and Robert The Bruce,

Easy Come Easy Go, and

It Could Happen

life is an entanglement of trying to be civilized yet still being ourselves. Trying hard to be good and better our ancestors’ ways of living, trying to get this winding road of life to go in a straight line, yet never actually learning from our mistakes, generation after generation.

Am I all that different, then, to you? I ask. Of course I am. This is my life and the life of my family and family tree. I bet your ancestors lived totally different lives than mine but also are exactly the same as my family!

Has your family’s past been as interesting as my family’s? If it has, and you feel like you bond with this piece of literature, read on and laugh and chuckle at the curves and corners of this long and winding story.

If you think I have totally lost it, fine. But get a life, and get real, because often we humans believe that we are so civilized that it blinds us to the fact that life could end at anytime it wants.

In the Beginning, there was nothing.

Now we have civilization and we are on course for a pretty big shock!

Do we actually have anything?

Will someone remember us a hundred years from now? How about a thousand?

How about a hundred-thousand years from today?

Are we the apple of God’s eye or the new dinosaur about to happen?

Read on and find out!

N.B.

All ramblings by the author are from the author’s brain cells only and cannot be transmitted to any other brain cells without prior permission of the brain cells of the author, as well as a few brain cells of members of the FBI, IRS, and any other government department that wants to get involved with brain cell distribution.

Sorry, but this is the work of an average human, total fiction, and to make sure that you believe me, I have made up false and totally uninteresting names to protect those many unfortunate humans and animals mentioned here who are already dead, still living or not even born yet.

This is for the legitimate purpose of not giving their names to the CIA, MI5, the Baseball Hall of Fame, Osama what’s-his-name, the Chinese Far Right Party, Noah, the author of The Life of Brian, the IRS, INS, Democratic Party, and any politicians who want to use this literature for political gain.

I am also totally fictional! That means that the author’s name doesn’t actually exist, so anybody mentioned in this book who also doesn’t actually exist cannot sue me, shoot me, beat me up, crap all over me, or find me in order to do any of the above.

If you don’t read Volume I carefully and laugh often, this book might self-destruct thirty seconds after being put to use as a doorstop!

INTRODUCTION

The Beginning of The Tolan Family Manuscripts

I sit gazing out of the study window, entranced by the seagulls diving and swooping over the windswept sea. The beach is just over the brow, across the deserted road, and can be seen from this third-story window during the day. Even through the double-paned window glass I can hear the thunderous crashing of the waves. The wind is strong, hitting the heavy bricks on the side wall of the house with screaming anger.

My name is Ian Fleming, and I’m in my family’s old house on the beach road called Henrietta Street in Girvan, Ayrshire. Girvan is a remote, small and unsheltered fishing village on the west coast of Scotland. I sit next to a glowing coal fire in this large, old, but comfortably furnished study with its fair share of ghosts. The light of day begins to slowly fade outside.

My immediate family and I currently live a world away in the trendy ski town of Park City, Utah, where we have made our home for the past three years.

Laying on a specially-made desk in front of me, on this cold and dreary start to a winter’s evening, is a large book. Most probably the largest book I have ever seen. The book, with its deep brown, rich leather cover, is a diary that my ancestors have painstakingly kept up-to-date for the past two-hundred years.

I open the cover. The weird, semi-legible writing on the first page is scribbled in very bad English, and the page begins in the year 1819, with the story of my first recorded ancestor, Murphy Patrick Tolan. After years of deliberation, Murphy did finally pluck up enough courage to write his life story. A note with his name on it is still pasted on the inside of the cover. It reads:

To Murphy Patrick Tolan, born December 28th 1779. This manuscript has been given to you to write the history of your life, as well as each generation spawned by you. Once you get old, pass it on to your eldest son.

If there is no son, pass it on to your eldest daughter, and she shall continue their stories until the completed book reaches me.

Signed, Tischan Tolan The Last.

Murphy had noticed the book by accident one day, sitting on top of a large table, as he searched for something in the attic above the pub he now owned and ran. He had never seen the large brown book before and was totally surprised, wondering how it had got into his attic in the first place. He had found the book in 1817 but was too scared to touch it for the first two years he knew it was up there. Murphy read the yellowed note often, though, and slowly found the courage to open the book and make his first mark, dipping his quill pen into the inkpot beside him.

It is now dark outside, and again I stare at the book. At twofeet wide by two-and-a-half-feet long, the manuscript is impressive in size, and at exactly three pounds it is much lighter than the mind would expect it to weigh! When closed, the large book is twelve-inches thick, with a thousand white pages of a type of paper that even in 1999 I have never seen before. This paper is crisp, thick and very strong.

The book is very dominating, and I understand Murphy’s hesitance to start what the note ordered him to do. Even after a hundred years of being kept in a locked, custom-made writing desk of heavy teak wood, the white pages are still in perfect condition.

Anyone looking at the leather-bound book can immediately see that it was certainly not from Murphy’s time, or even ours, and the sudden and mysterious arrival of the book in his old house remains a mystery, even to this very day!

The writing is often hard to read and the words are spelled differently from our current and modern era. Corrections have been made to the wording over the centuries by later members of the family, giving answers to words that wouldn’t have been understandable in today’s modern English language. Even the original changes have had changes made to them over time.

A later family ancestor, Robbie Tolan, made the writing desk the manuscript sits on seventy years after Murphy’s death in

1829. He had designed and hand-built the solid teak roll-top desk to be a perfect fit for the large book, with a heavy roll-top panel that slid upwards toward the rear of the desk. When opened the manuscript covered the desk in precise measurements. Screwed onto the side of the writing desk was a small gold plate. It had this inscription:

Built By these Hands of Robbie Tolan. Finished in the Month of December 1899.

About a hundred or so of the first scribbled pages are hard to read, even with the corrections added, but after spending many hours of writing notes on a legal pad next to me, I have decoded most of the writings of the first three writers.

With these hundreds of hours studying the manuscript, my notes finally tell the story, and you are one of the first to ever understand the history of my ancestors.

I hear the weather outside getting worse. The manuscript conjures up wispy tales of the past that spring to life in the shadows of the study, like ghosts returning to make sure that the writings are continued. It is sometimes eerie in this room, high on the third floor of the house. The wind is picking up outside, rattling the old windows and doors and the large hearth is still alive with a solid coal fire glowing in the grate.

Nobody has lived in this house since my great aunt Ella, who died over twenty years ago. My great grandfather, Robbie Tolan, transported the manuscript to Henrietta Street and hand built the desk in this study in 1899. Before this, the writings had been secured a few streets away in the house where his father, Robert Tolan, was born in 1859. That house was destroyed in a fire in 1901.

My mother’s youngest brother, Uncle Buddy, retired from the bank in London after Aunt Ella’s death and returned to Girvan to play golf. His job was to keep our proud ancestral home in perfect condition. Funny, but my grandfather’s three sons Robert, Robbie, and Buddy, never have shown any interest in opening the manuscript and left it to my mother, Betty, to add her life. It’s really weird how the manuscript seems to pull certain members of the family and not others.

My grandfather, James Fleming, and grandmother, Maud Fleming, nee Hawkins, on the offer of Robbie Tolan, started the English family writings in the manuscript. Robbie was my great grandfather on my mother’s side. This, I think, is the reason there are fewer words written in the English chapters. All I know is that I must continue adding my words to the book. My brother and sister do not even have the time of day to discuss the manuscript.

My Uncle Buddy and I frequent the old pub, MacToole’s most nights when I’m in town and he leaves me alone during the day to bring my side of the manuscript up-to-date.

It is uncomfortable to actually write in such a large book, yet both sides of the white pages that have been written on, filled to capacity with many different styles of handwriting. The ink does not smudge or run. The paper does not tear and ink mistakes can easily be erased with a pencil eraser, if one is quick!

We have a family oath never to allow any other person to see this strange book and feel its magical paper, other than the immediate family member seemingly chosen by the book to keep it updated.

I hope to give this honor to my firstborn son, Alexander Michael, when I get too old to continue. He is currently only four months old and is downstairs in the guest room being put to bed with his four-year-old sister, Tischan Anne, by my wife, Cathy.

Since you are here with me in this warm study tonight, I will open the manuscript and read to you from my notes, those from the beginning of Murphy’s scribbles.

I may be called by Uncle Buddy to visit the pub with him in an hour or so, around eight, so please excuse me when he arrives…

CHAPTER 1

The Irish Side of the Family Tree

Murphy Patrick Tolan 1779–1832

In The Beginning there was nothing! Then, on God’s first day of creation, God made Ireland!

Why Ireland? you may ask. Well, included in his Irish design, he designed Murphy’s Law… and since Murphy’s Law pertains of all of us, then he must have made it first, and that means we all have some Irish in us!

My great, great (plus some more greats) grandfather was lower-middle-class. The lower-middle-class did not have houses or mortgages. Most did not even live with a roof over their heads. I don’t even think they had that many roofs in those days, and the ones they did have often leaked badly.

At sixteen–years-old, Murphy was single, had no children (or at least none he knew of) and lived a traveling gypsy kind of life.

Allow me to set the stage. In those days people either robbed or got robbed, raped or got raped. They got drunk on beer in local taverns; rarely, if ever, bathed; and yet called themselves civilized (as we do today). Toilets were unheard of, as was running water.

My ancestor’s name was Murphy Patrick Tolan. He was born December 28th 1779 in a small house somewhere in County Cork, Ireland.

Murphy did not remember much about the first dozen or so years of his life, but at the tender age of sixteen he saw himself as a rather decent fellow. Rather decent fellows did not believe in robbing old ladies, young children, cows or politicians. He never raped any women, or men, at least whilst of sober manners, and he doffed his hat to anybody who looked like he had more money than he did. He was a pretty nice guy for this modern and civilized era.

Murphy didn’t own much of anything. The only things he actually had were the clothes on his back, one hat, a pair of old and holey shoes, a small knapsack with nothing of any real value in it, and a rusty hair-comb he used to check for fleas and lice. He got through each day by doing odd jobs here and there.

As the potato bug invaded Ireland and destroyed the potato crops, life got tough. Most of the middle and lower class became hungry, and as civilized people do, they first robbed their friends and neighbors, until those resources were also exhausted.

Now the population of Ireland had to make a decision about where to export themselves. The richer ones managed to move themselves and their potato hordes to secret locations before their friends and relatives attacked them. Many stood in queues for the great ships bound for Boston. There weren’t many ships destined for the Americas, and thus the cost was close to a ‘King’s ransom’ to get a berth aboard one of them.

Murphy had no idea that the more knowledgeable wealthy were on the move, but he did see a sign in Dublin that made him think:

Will the last person to leave Dublin Please turn out the lights!

After enjoying a last couple of pints in the next pub he came to, my young ancestor decided to leave and walk to the harbor so that he would not be held responsible to turn out those lights.

The harbor was a bustling mass of humanity. People, suitcases and boxes of all shapes and sizes were moving in all directions, all over the harbor, except for in one area. On the third quay, he saw a man sitting behind a desk placed on the wharf and next to a smaller sailing ship. Murphy moved closer and overheard from afar that this tall and gray-bearded man, who was wearing a smart and fancy uniform, spoke with a very strange accent. The recent couple of pints had given him the courage he needed to walk up to the desk and doff his hat.

The Sea Captain seemed friendly and explained to him that, as the owner of this fine vessel, for five shillings he was offering people passage across the Irish Sea to a great new land on the other side. There was only one problem, though, the Captain explained to single Murphy Patrick Tolan; only married men could have passage across.

Why only married people? you may ask. Well, the Captain, born in Scotland, had crossed the Irish Sea with passengers often during the previous years and had realized that the income from transporting a married couple or a family on his smaller than average vessel was far greater than that of a single person. The overnight cabins aboard his ship were few in number, and he had learned that he could double his income by getting two people to share the tiny single bed in each six by six-foot cabin. The hardest part in solving his problem was that all of the people who approached him and needed passage were single males!

The canny Sea Captain having found himself a dozen or so of the ugliest, most diseased and pockmarked tavern girls he had laid his eyes on, explained to Murphy that he had to be married to embark for the trip across.

Well! replied Murphy. What do you suggest, sir? You can see perfectly that I am not a married man.

Dinna ye worry yourself rotten, young man, for I have a wee young lassie up there... he said, pointing to a dozen or so of the ugly old hags staring down at Murphy from the ship’s railing above, ...you can marry. She needs to get across but has nae money, replied the Sea Captain.

But they are the most unfortunate women that I have ever the chance to lay my young Irish eyes on, sir, a white-faced Murphy told the Sea Captain.

So! D’ye want to get over there or no? was the reply from the much taller seafaring man, who had changed his tune pretty quickly.

How much is it going to cost me to get a passage aboard your ship? Murphy asked.

It’s good you ask, young man, as I have a solution to your problem, returned the Sea Captain with a generous smile. As ye well ken, we Sea Captains are allowed to marry young men like you on the high seas! Since you cannae get passage board my sailing vessel unless you are married, or aboot to be married, I suggest that I do you a wee favor and give you a wife to complete the regulations of boarding my vessel. My offer to you, young man, is twelve shillings. Five shillings for your passage, another five for your new bride’s passage, and two shillings for the marriage license.

But that’s a fortune! Murphy replied, reeling backwards and nearly toppling into the harbor.

Well now, look at it from my point of view. Not only do I find you a wife, but you also get passage across the Irish Sea to the New World, continued the Sea Captain with a grin. Now! You seem like a rare, nice and intelligent laddie. I’ll do you a very special favor. If you don’t think this wee lassie is the one you want to live with for the rest of your life, then once we reach Scotland, I’ll throw in a complete and final divorce, papers and all, with no strings attached. I certainly don’t want you to be unhappy in the New World. This small and special favor to you, sir, will be another twelve shillings, making our dealings one pound of Irish currency in all. Murphy could do nothing more than gape at the man. Well, young man? I’ve said my piece and now it’s entirely up to you!

But I don’t have that kind of money! stated my great, great, etc. grandfather, putting his hand in his pocket and mentally counting his total wealth of three single pennies.

My ship here, laddie, The Honest Sailor, will sail with the tide an hour before dusk tonight, and you will either be happily married on it…or you won’t, replied the Sea Captain, now stony-faced.

Poor Murphy! Having to marry one of those well-used old ladies still waving and smiling at him as he stood below, he searched for any ray of hope that there could be a decent one among them, but counted less than a dozen teeth in total between them, and the youngest looked older than his great grandmother, whom he had never known. What was he to do?

Imagine what my future generations would say if they ever found out! Me, marrying one of those old hags, he thought to himself as he unhappily left the harbor.

Murphy was in a pickle, as Dublin had just about run out of all edible potatoes, and things were going to get very dangerous pretty soon.

Within a couple of hours of leaving the Sea Captain, Murphy had picked out a wealthy-looking gentleman to receive the sizable piece of driftwood, which Murphy had found earlier on the beach, on his cranium – not so hard as to kill him, mind you, but enough to put him to sleep long enough to relieve him of his financial worth. As stated earlier, the person selected to be the victim of this unjustly deed was not too old, too young, too poor, or a current politician of favorable standing.

After flittering through the unconscious man’s clothing in the shadow underneath a balcony, he found seven shilling pieces and nine pence, a crumpled letter from a sweet-smelling person called Fanny Slocombe, a button, and a half-eaten piece of a very small, ugly-looking potato in his right trouser pocket.

Hungrily consuming the meager remains of the evil-smelling potato, Murphy pondered his next move. He wrote a short letter of apology to the poor, unsuspecting victim, giving no forwarding address, and then wondered off to find the rest of the money he needed.

In those days, people frequently had the overpowering need to consume a couple of pints of the local brew at weird times of the day. Nobody knows why this strange feeling suddenly came over Murphy, but it did. And again, he walked into the nearest pub to satisfy himself.

A few hours and several pints later, and after returning from the only Ladies and Gents communal toilet, namely the outside rear wall of the building, his stumbling gaze noticed a very dirty, unshaven, and rather evil-smelling gentleman sitting at his same table. The man had fallen asleep, and his face was dead center in his half-emptied plate of horrible-looking food.

Murphy quietly sat down, and upon reaching over to dig into the man’s remaining food, glancing down to make sure that it wasn’t a setup and that the man’s hand didn’t hold a knife or piece of driftwood in it, he noticed a very decent pair of leather boots on the gentleman’s feet.

He grabbed the snoring man’s pewter tankard, gulped down the remains while looking around to see if anyone was watching him and, with reasonable force, whacked the man further asleep with a dull thwack to the head. Swiftly, he ducked under the wooden table, sat on the floor, out of view of anyone else, and transferred the new boots to his own feet. Being a decent fellow, Murphy placed his own old holey shoes next to the man’s feet. Remember! Electricity was not yet invented and most of these establishments were dark inside and not well lit.

During the boot-removal process, he slipped his right foot into the second boot he had inconspicuously removed and felt a small bulge in the left corner. On inspection, with prying fingers he dug out two Irish one-pound notes carefully folded in the part of the shoe where the man’s big toe had been. These notes had clearly not seen fresh air for several months and stank worse than the man himself, but Murphy felt like he had just won the Irish lottery.

Sitting back in his original seat, acting innocently, and not looking at his neighbor still snoring into his now-emptied plate of food, he motioned over the pockmarked wench of a serving girl and paid for his and his sleeping friend’s bill with a shilling found in the jacket pocket of his first victim. He tipped her enough to get a kiss blown, and trying to look as invisible as possible, he left for the harbor, The Honest Sailor, marriage, and a new life.

The Scottish Sea Captain, still sitting behind his desk, looked up and acknowledged Murphy’s return. An hour or so later, just before dark, and with a dozen other good-looking and young middle-class Irishmen, Murphy was married in a communal ceremony to the lady the Sea Captain had graciously supplied.

My ancestor handed over his one-pound note and was given for the overnight cruise one of the very small cabins, while his newly wedded bride held tightly onto his arm.

Murphy couldn’t look at the lady for more than a second or two before his eyes watered and he had to turn away. He didn’t know what was worse: her looks or the vile smell coming from deep inside her clothes. She must have been well over eighty, if she was a day, and he had been lucky, because he had gotten the best-looking one of the bunch.

Poor Murphy endured many hours of fending off the ugly lady’s hot and excited advances. She was very eager to enjoy her short time with this good-looking young man, as well as to search every nook and cranny of his person for any money he might have hidden away.

As the sun rose many grueling hours later, a couple of miles out from the Scottish port, Murphy and the other men were rudely awoken by loud knocking on their doors and lots of shouting to get up on deck. The old hag was snoring loudly on the bed as he picked himself up off the floor. She had finally given up an hour or two earlier after realizing that she was not getting anywhere with this man.

He quietly rearranged his clothing, sneaked out of the smelly room, and was the first in line to dissolve his marriage certificate, as did the other men, only seconds behind him. A one-sentence paper note of Divorce was issued to all of the exhausted men by the freshly groomed and ever-smiling Captain.

After finally berthing the vessel at the port of disembarkation, hearty goodbyes were issued by the crew, who made sure that none of the captain’s ladies made a disappearing act and hurried the male passengers down the gangplank.

As soon as the last still-snoring man was literally thrown off the vessel into the murky waters of the harbor, the ship’s lines were tossed, and she left for her return trip to Ireland. The captain was getting thirsty, and the taverns were much less expensive over there.

It won’t take me long to get all of my girls remarried again! He laughed aloud and waved goodbye to his departing audience below.

Welcome to Bonnie Scotland!

What’s this? Did I see a short skirt on that man over there! Are my eyes playing tricks on me? What’s that wailing music? Sounds like somebody’s killing something… slowly! These were Murphy’s immediate thoughts as he walked up what seemed to him to be the main street of the small harbor town.

Having no passports or customs officers to check up on duty-free liquor or the importation of taxable merchandise, my ancestor was a free man in a new land. Upon checking his stash, Murphy Patrick Tolan still had one pound six shillings and sixpence of Irish currency in his pocket. Being a man of substance, and having money in his pocket, that odd feeling of necessary beer consumption returned, and he decided to enter the first pub he came to.

Do you serve beer? was his first question to the publican, who had just opened the bar for his morning trade.

Aye, laddie, we do, was the reply, and Murphy realized that the man had the same guttural accent the sea captain had had. Fresh over from the old country? he asked. Murphy nodded.

Arrived by sailing ship just an hour ago, my ancestor stated. You must have sailed over with my older brother, Wallace MacTavish, the bartender grinned, handing Murphy a rather smallish tankard of a brown brew that had smelly bubbles rising from the bottom. That is good Scottish beer, and I will have none of your lousy Irish remarks about it! ordered the man, looking at his customer in a rather mean way, and then at the foreign coin Murphy was handing over.

He certainly does look like the brother of the Sea Captain, Murphy thought to himself.

Most establishments don’t accept Irish money, and this here Public House is one of the few places where you can get Scottish currency in exchange for Irish. I’ll do you the favor if you do as I ask, the publican continued.

Here we go again! Hope he hasn’t got the same old hags in the back of his bar as his brother had on the ship, Murphy thought to himself, and a shiver of dread moved up his spine.

Once you finish up your pint, we have a bathhouse out back. You will use it. Murphy nodded. Then I will serve you a hearty plate of eatable food for lunch, and a large slice of first-class Scottish Angus beef for your dinner in your own private room upstairs. Here, the famous Maggie Murdock of Kilmarnock will give you a night’s pleasure, all for just ten shillings Irish. Now laddie, how much do you have on you? the publican ventured to ask.

Murphy obediently told him and handed over all the Irish currency he had, since it didn’t sound as though it would be much use to him in the new world anyway, and he hadn’t seen any Irishmen returning on the Captain’s sailing ship. The brother of Wallace MacTavish professionally flicked through the coins.

I take ten-percent for the currency transaction; that’s three shillings. Ten shillings for your room and board in my fine establishment here, including the services of the famous Maggie McMurdock from Kilmarnock, but she will require an extra shilling from you after her hard work as her tip. You can drink as much beer as you want today, and I will give you a wee bottle of Scotch to take with you on your departure tomorrow morning, stated the publican, doing the math in his head while looking directly into my ancestor’s widening blue eyes.

Poor Murphy, suddenly understanding what this was all about, watched his second and last Irish pound rapidly disappear into a drawer under the counter, as well as all the remaining coins of his Irish currency.

Here’s your change; eighteen shillings and one sixpence of good Scottish currency. Now drink up and run along to the bathhouse, as I see another young man needing my exchange rates. Murphy looked around and noticed one of the other men who had sailed with him the previous night walk into the darkened interior of the pub.

He knew that it was a total rip-off, even for those days, but understood that easy come normally ends with easy go in the world of dishonest men.

Murphy had a feasting day of good plain food and lousy beer. My ancestor tried to console himself that the high price did include a lot of beer, food and pleasure. The food, meat and Maggie were tasty, tender and enthusiastic, in that order. He had his night of rough and tumble sweat with the young and famous Maggie McMurdock from Kilmarnock, whose real name was Maggie O’Neil, a young colleen from Ireland.

He left the bar early the following morning with his promised bottle of liquor from the publican. Upon leaving, Murphy noticed three of his shipmates from the previous days also heading out from the upstairs rooms in different directions.

Not having had a decent breakfast that morning, he was now hungry, and after a short search he found a type of breakfast diner around in those days. With gusto, he lashed down a massive helping of Scottish sausage and eggs. Curious, he asked the serving wench what the main ingredient in the tasty sausage was.

Blood! she replied, as if he were stupid, and he quickly rushed out of the diner and deposited his two-pence-worth of breakfast on the nearest street corner. The same happened with lunch after trying the Dish of the Day at the local up-market hotel further down the street. This time the main ingredient was animal guts! and Murphy realized that the streets of his New World were not paved with gold but partly-digested remnants of his fellow Irishmen’s breakfasts and lunches!

After lunch he even tried the local brew at another pub to help get the taste of guts out of his mouth and again found it not black and smooth, as he was used to in Ireland, but the same bitter beer, almost transparent, and filled with smelly bubbles floating up from the bottom of the jug.

Poor Murphy! He realized life was not going to be the same carefree sex, drugs, and rock & roll that his old country of Ireland used to offer. Here, everyone talked about money, wore skirts, played screeching ear-splitting music, and drank horrible beer.

My ancestor left the small seaport in disgust and walked east. There wasn’t much to see apart from large open fields. There was also a high road and a low road winding through the endless valleys and hills. He decided to take the low road, as it seemed the warmer thing to do and at night slept under bushes and trees.

On his third day he approached his first village and found it reasonably clean and filled with much happier people who seemed friendlier than those he had met on the coast. This village was filled with an atmosphere of contentment.

After a few months of searching for employment, he was down to his last few pennies when he finally pleaded hard enough to land a job in the town’s only bar and brewery. His first job would be sweeping out the floors of the two-storied bar and washing down the back wall of the building and the insides of the Ladies Only private outhouses. At least he got room and board with his lowly position.

He worked hard, and in his second year he was promoted to a higher position. Here he learned how to brew the smelly, brown colored beer. This local brew was a little smoother than that made on the coast but still semi see-through and filled with horrible little bubbles that gave him really bad gas—a big problem when trying to impress a pretty member of the opposite sex!

After a few months, Murphy got used to the food but could never forget about the lovely black brews of the old country.

In his third year, he was promoted to manager. Ever heard of the luck of the Irish? Well one day, a couple of years later, the portly owner of the tavern was run down by a horse while he was attempting to run across the muddy road to the local money depository.

It must have been the weight of money in the bag he was carrying, and maybe a glass or two of his brew, that slowed him down, Murphy thought as he heard of the event from behind the bar. He ran to the rescue but was too late, except to hear the owner utter his last words. These words described a vigorous sexual encounter with bloody stupid horses and the use of other disgusting verbs that would lead female horses to become pregnant and leave male horses happy.

Anyway, the old brew master had no children, and his wife had passed on just a year earlier after suffering from a transmitted disease that, as the doctor had explained, completely ate her brain away. She had been only thirty-eight-years-old, the poor woman. The deceased Publican had now been trodden on at forty, and wee-Murphy was still in his prime at twenty-one. There was nobody else around to continue the line of inheritance.

Who was now to manage the ladies upstairs? Make the beer? Deposit the money over the road? So naturally Murphy took over and did what he had to do and thanked the Lord, asking him to give special care and favor to the dead Publican, his deceased family, and those horses in his Irish prayers each and every night.

Murphy ran his newly-inherited business well for the next several years. The old publican would have been proud of him; he threw out all the hags upstairs and replaced them with young, good-quality girls whom he tested personally during their interviews. This shrewd business move on his part gave the pub an air of upgraded quality about it. Then he set about trying to copy the smooth, black beer of his old country Ireland. He didn’t do too badly, because anything was better than the current brew, and his was smoother and better-tasting, and the much darker beer became the rage of the town.

To make his pub different from any of the others, and to win clientele for the new ladies, the upstairs rooms were refurbished to look like the cabins of a sailing ship. This gave the locals a feeling of being on the high seas while at the heights of pleasure and made their experience a little more exciting and different. He had learned well from the MacTavish Brothers, as his patrons were more than happy to pay a little extra for these modern upgrades.

One afternoon Murphy was test-driving one of the new girls fresh in from Ireland—a pretty, young colleen so desperate and hungry that she would do anything for a job, when he was interrupted in mid-stroke by Moira the cleaning lady. Moira was the daughter of the local coffin maker. Eighteen and a budding beauty, Moira was a simple girl and certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed, but she was beautiful enough so that most men in town wanted a chance to woo her. Being an undertaker’s daughter, Moira’s only knowledge of a man came from her family job of washing the dead. Nakedness was no shock to her, but she had no reason to associate it with pleasure. She was just the very quiet and obedient daughter of a strict and silent father, her mother having died some years earlier.

Oops. I’m sorry, sir! Moira said in surprise as she walked in to find her boss naked on the large bed on top of a pretty girl she didn’t recognize. I had no idea this room was in use. You forgot to set the door latch and ‘engaged’ sign, she stated, looking down at the two startled bodies on the bed. So, what are you doing there? she asked with friendly interest. She noticed sweat on the lady’s brow and an expression of pleasure.

Very calmly and without moving, Murphy replied, I am testing this young Irish lassie here for a position in the pub.

What position would that be, sir? she asked in her innocent way. Moira was in her first week at the pub, cleaning during the day, and she had never realized what went on after hours.

A member of the upstairs lady staff, Moira, Murphy replied with a grin, in a sort of tensely semi-frozen position, still deep inside the girl beneath him.

Could I have an interview like this? she asked with innocent interest. Maybe I could also be one of the upstairs staff.

Why? asked Murphy in surprise.

Well, I have never seen anybody naked before, who wasn’t dead, and she looks like she is enjoying it immensely! Moira replied, not taking her eyes off the sweaty girl once.

I’ll make a deal with you, Moira, Murphy said, smiling at her and thinking carefully. Give me my peace with this lady and I’ll think about a special birthday gift for you. Then he turned back to the pretty girl beneath him and began thrusting into her again.

To his surprise, Moira pulled a chair up to the bed right next to them, sat down and leaned forward to watch every move. Her mouth was still open and her bright green eyes wide. Of course, Murphy was greatly inspired by this and proceeded with gusto, until he had completed a performance that any man alive would have been proud of.

With sweat dripping off of him, he rose and walked naked over to the washbasin in front of the curtained window. The sight of her first, live, naked man still semi-erect and in excellent condition now transfixed Moira. He looked nothing like the dead fellows she was accustomed to washing down.

She turned and continued to watch him as he walked across the room to the washbasin, picked up a hand cloth, and began washing himself. The Irish lassie, still naked, also got out of bed, followed him, and began washing his back. She desperately wanted the job.

Moira couldn’t resist joining in any longer, and in a flash she also went over to the window, grabbed another cloth in her hand and softly started wiping him down in the area she couldn’t take her eyes off of. The Irish lassie didn’t seem to mind the other girl, and while she washed his head and shoulders, Moira focused on the part that had caught her attention.

She washed him with a tenderness that caused her some innocent amazement as he responded.

Moira looked up into Murphy’s eyes questioningly, and he had to stop himself from taking her right there and then. She looked down at the growth she was still softly wiping as Murphy stood there motionless and closed his eyes. It had grown every time she wiped it with her cloth, so she gently continued to see if it would grow some more. Even the Irish lassie was impressed at what Moira had managed to coax out of her new boss.

The Irish lassie got the job. Murphy had to throw out one of the other girls, but he gave her Moira’s cleaning position. Naturally, the girl accepted, became a very good cleaning lady, and was also useful in times of overflowing demand upstairs on Saturday nights.

During her shift the next day, Moira was told of her dismissal as cleaning lady but was told to come back for her belated birthday present on the morrow. The next morning Moira returned and was given her birthday present as promised.

At first it was very painful for Moira to help Murphy get himself into her. Slowly she stretched, struggled, twisted and turned. Once she was used to him, she softly started gyrating her lower anatomy. Gently following her like a dancer, as had been forced to lie on his back, he let her have her way and patiently waited for her to get used to him.

Pain slowly grew into pleasure until she moved faster and faster and she felt the ecstasy that she had seen in the Irish girl’s eyes build up in her own body. Time seemed to move slower and finally stand still, until they both screamed in unison and fell back together, exhausted. They then curled themselves into a ball and slept for the rest of the morning.

Once awake, Moira would not let him leave her. She led him to the washbasin as she had before and washed him down. It took time, but with soft movements she got him back to size, and then she guided Murphy back to the bed where she gently dominated him for the second time that day.

Innocent and direct, she asked more of him than he had ever dreamed he could give. At last, he lay back exhausted in an unfamiliar state of absolute euphoria and held her close. He watched her smiling eyes flutter and close and felt the gentle touch of her sleeping fingers on his shoulder.

He married Moira a few weeks later. Murphy had little choice; she wouldn’t leave his side, in case he wanted to test drive some of the other girls for a change.

The daughter of the local undertaker was in love with her man and had four children by him. The first was called William, born in 1801. My direct ancestor, Maureen, their only daughter, was born in 1802, and finally Murphy Jr. was born in 1809. Moira’s care for her husband and children led to the first of the many family fortunes recorded throughout the manuscript. Any fortune before that was unlikely, since Murphy’s forbearers drank it before they could accumulate it (another phenomenon rare in today’s society).

It also took several generations before we lost this accumulating fortune to the bloody English who invaded and then taught the sober and decent Scots new rules about raping and pillaging.

Also, several generations later, Murphy’s great Irish genes manufactured a William (Volume II) who nearly met the King of England. Impressive!

Murphy had a good and rich life. His pub and brewery, as well as the undertaker business he had inherited after Moira’s parents passed on in later years, amassed a reasonable fortune for that era. He died one rainy morning many years later in 1829 after…

Yes! You guessed it; after being hit by a horse while trying to run across the muddy road to the local money depository. He must have been slowed down by the weight of the money in the bag he was carrying, or maybe by a glass or three of his very smooth black brew.

Murphy’s last two words concerned a vigorous sexual encounter that would lead female horses to become pregnant and make male horses happy!

Before his death, Murphy had finally learned to wear a skirt, listen to that screeching music, and digest the local food. And he had solved his problem of bad gas.

Murphy Patrick Tolan was laid to rest in a grand oak coffin made for himself, by himself, years earlier as a joke. In his will, he asked for a gallon jug of his latest brew to be placed in the coffin for the journey into whatever lay in front of him.

Oh! Did you hear that, now? That’s my Uncle Buddy ringing the doorbell to walk with me to the pub. I promise to get on to Chapter Two tomorrow. Be there.

Bye for now.

CHAPTER 2

The English Side of the Family Tree

Dickson Albert Hawkins 1799–1833

In The Beginning: there was Ireland, and then came England! I can prove this because the English have tried to take over the world several times, fought with everybody out there, and invented Benny Hill, The Restaurant at The End of The Universe, taxes and politics.

Life was tough in England before the red double-decker bus. There was sex aplenty, however, for all the strong young men going off to the wars to rape and pillage; this included Scotland, raping all those poor foreign girls and boys, moms and dads.

Many of these brave men did not know which side of the fence they were on sexually and sometimes got it wrong by raping the men and robbing the beautiful young foreign maidens of their financial worth. Watch Monty Python to understand these horrible times of extremely low intelligence.

There was also much fun and naughty games back home in the English countryside, in the houses, rooms, barns, taverns, and virtually