It was good hard digging work those Irish who dug the Erie Canal. They were the first and more fortunate Irish; they had already established themselves by the building of the Erie Canal. The new canal began to change America right away, as more ocean ships lined at at smallish New York harbor to offload their goods into barges that could now bypass Niagara Falls at Buffalo.

Here it was all the way over to quickly growing Fort Chicago, to go west, or down the river south. Soon a canal allowed barges to enter the Great Lakes system all the way past Fort Chicago. Soon this smaller river and canal allowed you to continue that barge past Chicago to the Mississippi and down to New Orleans opened up America.

Opportunity was here for the taking, and peoples from Europe began to pour in. Irish had become accepted inland as honored members of the town. It was after the potato famine ravaged Ireland, drifting off ships from America with some mist that wilted the potato crops, everything changed for the Irish.

Soon, Irish were being evicted from lands now owned by absentee English, wandering the lanes, dying in the ditches. Those who could were on the cheapest, closest port in America or Canada. That was Halifax in Canada and Boston in America.

Soon most of all in Boston these wretches were begging for hand outs, asking for any kind of work to feed themselves or their dying children. They were in rags and seemed diseased. Soon, Boston windows had signs for service help that added No Irish Need Apply.

And these later Irish were not the strong officer O'Malley of New York City but some sub human wretches to be avoided. At any rate, my grand mother Keough born in the Dakotas, always lorded it over my grandpa born in Butte, Montana, that the Stacks should hardly be allowed to clean the stables of the Keoughs.

Mostly because her uncle Miles Keough was second to Custer and died a heroic death. However,since then,I have visited the Stack Hills in Ireland and, obviously, hung upside down and kissed the Blarney Stone. And also, I once walked around Little Big Horn.I prayed for peace to all, mostly my great great uncle Miles, a good man who died too early in life, under orders to follow that fool.

And by now my cousin, my sister,my aunt, I and our fathers have learned more family history. And the photo of that fine head stone in Rochester means Thomas Stack was a pre famine worker on that canal as he is buried near it.

So, ghost of my snooty Irish grandma, your poor Irish husband came from highly respected Irish who did not die a fools death, and his home was fine. This only matters to those related to Miles Keough perhaps, but the Stacks were also early higher status Irish as well!

Grandma Keough will roll over in her grave, several times. My dear Irish American Canadian grand mother was so concerned or bothered by my English Canadian father if he ever made slight of the Irish.

So, having a baronet in his English closet had my high English dad give my high Irish grandma his best shot every chance he could, and grandma would fume and simmer.

You understand; most families have a person who finds a stick and must poke people with it and think that is so funny while others say ow, stop. Meet my dad, now in heaven, where they do not allow sticks.

On our main site, we talk about that behavior, which is the opposite of the eight steps to bliss. Naturally after so much English oppression, my Irish grandparents did not like the English; and my English dad wondered why. My French Canadian great grand mother met me once.

She seemed to hiss at me when I shook her hand. Little English boy on his way to hell. Yet while my beloved Irish American grandparents both loved me dearly, there was one shaky moment in grandpa's 89 years. After grandma died, there was that evening once.

Grandpa and I were in his kitchen preparing what he called our Irish seven course banquet; a six pack of Guiness and a potato. He mentioned he did not like the English. I felt I had to be honest and remind him, so I said, but grandpa, remember I am half English. He looked at me quite startled, and for a scary moment I was afraid he would stop loving me.

He regained his composure and shook his finger at me and with a smile, said that is right. And you are sitting on your English!And never forget it! We both burst into laughter. I loved it, we clicked our glasses, both laughed long and heartily from the belly, and shook hands on it.

We loved each other even more after that, and every Irish side of the family thought that was great, that I showed the pure heart of an Irishman, and the sense to go along with it. They could take a little English crap from me as I would need to keep getting it out of my system.

So unlike the killing in northern Ireland we had bridged that gap in that song that my father he was orange and my mother she was green. My English dad did not laugh. Nor would have my French Canadian great grandmother.

They both who had known the bias against Irish or French in the west even on the prairies where English was king, they became some of the worst old bigots I ever knew, the elders tell me.

Grandma loved me, I know, but there were times I could hear grandma shouting about something or other. It seems that my Gaelic speaking Irish grand mother whose family had first built the Erie Canal and created a mighty achievement to grow America, did not like these latest immigrants.

Now they were from China, and had come over to not build a short canal, but a railway from sea to sea. And then it seemed they planned to stay. And they do not even speak English. Tax them, punish them, burn down their shanties, cut off their pigtails. HA HA.

And my Irish grand mother once refused to allow a small Chinese girl to enter her house for a birthday party. Now all our kids have playmates from China, who usually score the highest, and every which nation of Asia, and shop the malls and bring them home to the e malls.

Grandmas everywhere, if even Irish did very well, and so can the others if we allow them to join in.