Frank McCourt

Singer Liam Clancy writes on his messageboard:

So… Frank is gone. His legacy is that he took misery and made into a laughing matter. A good legacy! The more things we can laugh at the better.

The Clancys and McCourts were very close. Angela used to baby-sit my nieces and I recall Sunday dinners together at Frank’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights where she’d moan about life to the point where we’d split our sides laughing. One evening we were to have dinner together in the Lion’s Head in Greenwich Village. Owner Al didn’t have a table big enough for all of us so he seated the families at opposite ends of the restaurant. Our table’s conversation went political. The McCourt table erupted with raucous laughter at regular intervals. Not able to contain my curiosity I had to visit and ask, “What’s the guffawing all about?” Frank put the answer succinctly.
“DEATH!” he announced triumphantly.

Probably the most stimulating cocktail hour on the planet was at the “Lions Head” every evening at 5pm. David Amram would play the horn. Archie the bartender would produce his husky repertoire of jokes. Pete Hamill et al would range from baseball to James Joyce. Frank McCourt would arrive with his hangdog look and proclaim his hatred of landlords, “Effin landlords – they’re all like Cromwellian bastards – should be hung, drawn and quartered!”

At some point he got the money together and BOUGHT the apartment building he lived in. He was now the Landlord! Oh! how we longed for him to show up at the “Head” – to watch him squirm under our taunts.

When he finally did show he breezed in, looked neither right nor left – curtly said to the bartender, “Archie, a beer please – double whiskey backup … “
Pause!

“Effin TENANTS!”

The there was the night with Richard Harris at Malachy’s pub…

But that’s another story.

Liam

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Liam Clancy’s Messageboard is at:  http://www.liamclancy.com/cgi-bin/teemz/teemz.cgi?board=_master&action=opentopic&topic=2132&forum=Messageboard