My Life In Potatoes

Who knew when we began our blog last year that 2008 was the International Year of the Potato? Check out http://www.potato2008.org/en/index.html. Stephanie suggested “Cook’s Choice” again for this round. What’s on the menu today? POTATOES! Watch out, this is served up rather raw.

SPUD BLOOD
My great, great, great grandfather, John Corr, a freeholder in Ballydoo, was considered a lucky man. Armagh was one of only four counties in all of Ireland that did not request relief from the blight. John’s land yielded half the average potato crop, so you’d think he’d only be half as hungry as others.

But John and all his countrymen watched the exodus of famine ships loaded with their loved ones longing for a better life. His eldest, Mary Anne, was only nineteen when she boarded “The Emblem” in Londonderry, bound for Castle Garden. John, his wife and the younger children, Margaret, Ellen and wee John, all felt Mary Anne’s absence.

In 1850 a long awaited letter arrived, yet Mary Anne's words were too few. Each reading reminded John that happy, prosperous days were past, friends and family dispersed, and he was left behind. To call this dull, persistent ache “hunger” didn’t describe the depth of it.
(John Corr's response to Mary Anne's letter was found in an old family Bible)

In the Irish Diaspora, it was the younger family members who left—a rite of passage. Unlike other emigrations through history, in Ireland, women ventured out in the same numbers as men. I have followed Mary Ann. The only girl, I am the one with longing, who left the others behind.

MR. POTATO HEAD
Two years after Hasbro introduced Mr. Potato Head to his Mrs. I was born. I came with a whole range of stick-on facial features.

TWO POTATO
One potato,
two potato,
three potato,
four …

Dave,
me,
Jeff,
John

POTATO SKINS
I am the family garbage disposal.
Give me your bones and skins.

MEAT AND POTATOES
Night after night,
never touching
separated by greens.

BURNT POTATOES
Too long in the pressure cooker
Mom removes the pot
and moves us away
from her heat.
There’s hell of divorce
in that smell of burning.

POTATO PRINTS
Hale means “whole.” Yet I was listed in the phonebook as “Half.” I was split down the middle at an early age. What can you do with half a potato? Make a mark. Carve it. Print it. Make patterns—design a whole life with potatoes.