MY IRISH GRANDFATHER

I haven't used a photo since my DEADWOOD posts I think, so thought I'd add a little visual to the blog by posting this photo a cousin sent me awhile back of our Irish immigrant grandfather who, according to family lore, was the first policeman in South Orange, New Jersey, badge #1, but who was a hard old man of few words living down the street from me when I was growing up there. It's amazing to me that a man who looked like this was my grandfather, that my own father was born in 1899 (!) and that I am now alive in 2007 with a 9-year-old boy, my youngest, who can't remember a time when George W didn't reign and cell phones didn't take photographs.