Patrick J. POWER wrote in his collection of short stories, 'The End of the Honeyflow" in 1993, that no man was prouder of his native county than his father who was born in Park near Duncormick and who joined the Garda Siochana in 1923 For 30 years, his father had carried Wexford in his heart across Ireland from one barracks to another and had a dream that one day he would return and end his days among the clover fields of home. Patrick grew up on stories about Wexford, and when a teen he first set foot there when he and his father set off from Tarmonbarry in Roscommon, a little village beside the Shannon where his father was a Sergeant. They travelled by train to Killinick, for many years voted the most beautiful railway station in Ireland. From Killinick they cycled the back road to Broadway, down the hill to Saint Ibar's, then on to Patrick's Aunt Susan's house near Tagoat, where they would be staying. On that occasion, the elder Power was visibly moved to be back among his own. Cares and worries tumbled from his face. Red silurian soil, he told Patrick, as they cycled along - no boulder clay here. No stone walls, either, no bogs, no eskers or drumlins. Apple trees growing on the sides of the road, and the best farmers in Ireland, where not a rush or thistle were in sight! Three years after that visit Patrick's father realized his dream and bought a small holding in Broadway, four acres on top of a hill overlooking Lady's Island lake. The name "Sunnyside" was just about visible on the crumbling masonry of the gate pier. Rusted iron gates creaked open as they walked down a weed-strewn avenue towards a two-storey thatched house. The thatch was black with age and the once whitewashed walls had turned yellow. His father did not appear to even notice the old house with all its cobwebs which had not been lived in for several years - all he could see were the apple trees on either side of the avenue, the upper and lower orchards as they came to be known, an acre in each. The month of May had come and the trees were in blossom. He feasted his eyes on them, and so began a love affair. "Sunnyside" was to become his kingdom. He came to know every blade of grass, every tree, bush and shrub. No piece of ground on this earth was more intensively cultivated. Gooseberry bushes were sown alongside apple trees, black currants grew up through hedges, pear and plum trees tangled with one another in a confused mass of branches. Wherever there was a spare foot of ground his father kept on planting. Although his father attempted to conduct a successful fruitgrowning business and had a passion for beekeeping, Patrick said that "no man who trod this planet had less commercial sense." Patrick, himself, never lived in "Sunnyside" because he started working in Dublin shortly afer his father moved in, but every year for 30 years he went down on holidays the first two weeks in July to help his father pick gooseberries. Those long, peaceful summer evenings were among the happiest of his life. As they moved from bush to bush, conversation ranged from the Reformation, the buried city of Bannow, the other side of the moon, to was Hitler in hell. So it went on, year after year. As his father grew older he found it difficult to get around to all his chores, particularly, cutting the grass, but he wouldn't let anybody else cut it, either, in case they mowed down the fruit bushes. Briars and weeds began to take over. Then one May afternoon, in 1980, a chimney fire went out of control and the house rafters under the thatch caught fire. By the time the fire brigade arrived from Wexford the place was gutted. Later that year, a new bungalow was built. His father survived the fire by two years until December 1982 and was buried a mile down the road in Lady's Island cemetery. The elder Power said he had once heard a missioner say that heaven is here on this earth, that the souls of the dead are as thick as blades of grass around us and that God permits them to return to the places they love. If so, Patrick's father is back in "Sunnyside" again - this time, forever. -- Excerpt, "Ireland of the Welcomes" >