The Son Of A Belfast Man

This is in part a story of my father's memories and life. Joe, growing up in Belfast in the nineteen thirties. A man of the times he lived in. Struggling to survive as a child hungry and poor, then put into the Christian brothers home to be schooled, fed and disciplined.

 Joe, like some other people of the times, hired a horse and cart and traded in goods as a fifteen-year-old teenager. A second class catholic, making a living in that divide, of discrimination. Having to fight with his hands gaining a tough reputation. Then having to flee Belfast. Giving him twenty-four hour to leave the city. Joe had a spirit in him that you didn't want to cross. It would put a haunting fear in rivals for he would come back to fight again.

Joe ends up in London as a seventeen-year-old with a gun he gets sentenced to borstal training. Then returning home to Belfast. He meets my mother after a couple of years. They move to England to make a living.

My story, my father's son John and my memories growing up was always a struggle along with learning problems, disturbed by the violence as a child. A quite Irish lad seen and not heard withdrawn and bullied at school. Taken under my father's wing and learning how to stand up for myself.  Boxing was a turnaround but ending up in trouble. Then sentenced to an institutional borstal of correction training and the fights that followed.

Myself john, and my father Joe worked together throughout the later years more like two brothers than father and son. My father had, maybe not the right way, but a way to overcome a situation learned on the streets of Belfast.