The man in the hat’s great-grandfather was buried in a place called The City of the Dead. It wasn’t a cemetery or a churchyard, a graveyard or a resting place, nor was it a necropolis or a memorial park. It was a small acre of tilled land full of dead people, a woodland depository. Wilfred Aloysius 1900-1982. His great-grandfather was buried with his favorite fedora placed at the proper angle on his head, his lifeless head. As in life as in death, his great-grandfather was seldom if ever seen without one of his favorite fedoras on his head, his lively head. The topmost crown of his lively head was lifeless, a place where hair had ceased to grow. His favorite fedoras, of which he had several, protected the lifeless part of his head from rain and snow, from hail and flying objects, from too much sun and too much wind, the elemental elements of life. Next to the man in the hat’s great-grandfather was a Cooper by the name of Simms, and next to the Cooper Simms was a Tanner named Larose, who died in 1889 from whooping cough and the chill. The City of the Dead sat behind the aqueduct across from the Waymart not far from the church where the church-woman held they’re church-bazaars every other Saturday.
The man in the hat’s grandfather told him how the Irish bury they’re dead in peat-bogs, the smell of burnt charcoal and iodine wafting over the Irish Sea, and a mausoleum a thousand feet high ‘shoes my boy, thousands of shoes piled higher than the eye can see’. The man in the hat had no idea where Irish people lived, dead or alive, or what burnt charcoal and iodine smelled like so dismissed his grandfather’s story as rot, just another one of his tall-tales. He knew they liked potatoes, boiled, baked, cubed and diced, mashed and covered in cream-corn and that they ran out of them a long time ago and were forced to eat they’re children, dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits and rats. Other than that he knew very little about the Irish, nor cared to for that matter. The man in the hat’s grandfather liked cabbage and corned-beef boiled in the same pot. Often he would add potatoes, carrots (uncut and with the greens still attached) and a sprig of ginger-root to the boil as he said it added a starchy-gingery pong to the boil. 'Wouldn’t be caught dead with potatoes and carrots in the same boil, potatoes and God, two things the Irish can’t live without'. His grandfather figured most people was halfwits or potato-diggers ‘and some what’re just plain stupid’.
The man in the hat’s grandfather told him how the Irish bury they’re dead in peat-bogs, the smell of burnt charcoal and iodine wafting over the Irish Sea, and a mausoleum a thousand feet high ‘shoes my boy, thousands of shoes piled higher than the eye can see’. The man in the hat had no idea where Irish people lived, dead or alive, or what burnt charcoal and iodine smelled like so dismissed his grandfather’s story as rot, just another one of his tall-tales. He knew they liked potatoes, boiled, baked, cubed and diced, mashed and covered in cream-corn and that they ran out of them a long time ago and were forced to eat they’re children, dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits and rats. Other than that he knew very little about the Irish, nor cared to for that matter. The man in the hat’s grandfather liked cabbage and corned-beef boiled in the same pot. Often he would add potatoes, carrots (uncut and with the greens still attached) and a sprig of ginger-root to the boil as he said it added a starchy-gingery pong to the boil. 'Wouldn’t be caught dead with potatoes and carrots in the same boil, potatoes and God, two things the Irish can’t live without'. His grandfather figured most people was halfwits or potato-diggers ‘and some what’re just plain stupid’.
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