I was born and raised in Ireland in a nice middle-class household, and I went to college in Dublin. I had reasonable employment after I graduated, but then it all dried up because of the economy. With some savings to tide me over until I had a new job, I did what any guy with a good college degree would do, and I blew it all on a trip to America, starting in New York City. I have since lived almost my entire adult life in America, but if you are worried about a life spent pining for the greenfields back home in Ireland, perhaps move on to another podcast. This is Not Your Old Danny Boy. These are my stories of an Irishman living in America. Names and places have been changed to protect the innocent who may have wandered into this narrative. So my mother passed away not so long ago, and it set me thinking about some things about her, specifically laughter and travel. My mother, whose name was Shirley, could literally cry with laughter. Now, for most of us, this is like an idiom, but for her, it was absolutely real. the tears would flow and she would not be able to stop. It would go on and on and on. And then she'd finally pull herself together only for the whole thing to start up again a minute or two later. It was very often occasioned by something my dad had said, usually him trying to impose some dad logic on a completely illogical situation or a discussion being had around the dinner table over a couple of bottles of wine, I'll admit. An example, we had this vacation home on the wild Atlantic coast. It was a fabulous place we used to go down to. It was in County Galway and it was down this very uneven laneway full of potholes. And there was another big house behind it, which was inhabited by this elderly couple I've mentioned elsewhere called the Beagles, who lived there all year round. So it was important to develop a relationship with these people. And in fairness, my parents felt it was the right thing to do. So a few days after Christmas, on an incredibly dark night, no light pollution as they call it these days in Galway, in response to an invitation from the Beagles, we were all shepherded up the dark lane by my father with a flashlight, with a battery that was running low, and my mother. Very soon, my younger siblings started falling into these deep, muddy holes on this rutted lane. Then my mother almost fell over into one and my dad started to get cross. There was more falling. The flashlight started to lose its power. And then somebody fell into a ditch on the side. My mother started to laugh and the tears started to roll. And the more my father suggested we all got it together, the more she laughed. Finally, we got to the Beagle's front door and it was this huge, big, old Victorian run-down house, which had this amazing brass door knocker. You know, like the guy with a beard and the knocker part hangs from each side of the ear. That kind of thing. And as he stared down on it, my mother was down on us. My mother was still trying to stop the tears and the laughter. My father, in one final effort, said very sternly, Shirley, pull yourself together for God's sake. Which, of course, only set her off even further. Finally, control over the entire situation. My mother pulled herself together. She clutched her coat tightly around her. We were all ready. My dad looked at everyone, made sure we were all good, reached up to grab the door knocker and it came off in his hand. At which point my mother lost it again and the door swung open. And there were the beagles staring at my mother, crying with laughter. The rest of us also trying to keep it together. My dad looking utterly perplexed. And that, my friends, is how you impress the neighbours. My mother loved to travel. She loved hearing about it. She loved knowing where we went. She loved knowing where our friends went. She read about it. When I moved to America, she was never happier than I would tell her I had been to somewhere I hadn't been before. Because she just thought this was the greatest thing, even if it wasn't a particularly exciting place in America. Unfortunately, she married a man who, my sister put it this way, he preferred not to cross the road unless there was a nice golf course with his favourite vodka and lime juice at the 19th. So they were very much of different stripes in this regard. In fairness, my father, when we were younger, had to travel a lot for work. So he was always in Germany, Dusseldorf or in Holland and Amsterdam. So I get it. As time went by, this all mellowed. They started to travel a lot more. And then we all, me and my siblings, moved away. So there was us to visit and then there was grandkids to come and see. So the dynamic changed. When they came to see you, you experienced what I like to call the Neil and Shirley Roadshow. She would be like a stone in a slingshot, ready to be flung at any experience you had to offer. any hill to climb, any restaurant to visit, any museum to go to, any beach to walk on. She just loved it all. Whereas my dad had this pawl over his head for the first couple of days that clearly suggested that the wisdom of this entire adventure was in doubt. And so it was when they came to me when I lived in Venice Beach, California. Now, This was not my parents' first trip to LA. They had before been to visit these great friends of the family, Dan and Rita Fishers. Now, the Fishers, I'll say a little about because we'll meet them again. They were like great family friends, and they still are. They were like cousins almost. But when my parents went to see the Fishers, they'd gone up north, Santa Barbara, Carmel, Sonoma. They'd done all that. So when they came to see me, I was left with two options. Go east towards Palm Springs, after which there is miles of desert, or go south to San Diego. I figured they'd like Palm Springs. There's all the whole Bob Hope of it all and Frank Sinatra Drive and all of this, that and the other. So I sent them off for a break for a few days. And then the following weekend, we decided we would all take a trip to San Diego. Problem is, I really didn't know what there was to do in San Diego. Visiting decommissioned aircraft carriers was not something that my parents would have enjoyed. No offence to the men and women of the US Navy. I did have two ideas. For my father, there was the Del Coronado, a glorious and very famous hotel resplendent with beachside cabins on a spit of land off San Diego. And this, for those of you who know, is where the movie Some Like It Hot was filmed. One of my dad's favourite movies, and mine too. So that would please him. For my mother, I had a more radical idea. Because just south of San Diego is what? Tijuana, or TJ. Okay, not your Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, but I knew my mother would just love to simply say she had set foot in Mexico. Now, I enrolled a very good friend, as it happens, daughter of the previously mentioned family friends, Dan and Rita Fisher, Jocelyn Fisher. And Jocelyn agreed to drive us over the border to Mexico. My parents loved Jocelyn, so I hoped she would settle my dad's mounting concerns. Now, a word about Jocelyn's car. It was brand new. Jocelyn was the first of my friends to buy a brand new car. The rest of us, myself included, were driving around in creaky old Chevys and Toyotas with an aroma of last week's to-go food from the local Chinese. Jocelyn's car had that brand new car smell. On the way to the border, my mother, very overcompensating, loved everything she saw. Oh, Neil, look at that. Oh, and isn't that interesting? Oh, how marvellous. Trust me, there is nothing interesting or marvellous on the road between San Diego and the border with Mexico. Meanwhile, my father is rigid. I can tell he's trying to figure out who at his office, he was a lawyer, would he have to call to pay the ransom when we were all kidnapped by Tijuana drug lords. And which count should the funds be drawn from? Well, before you can say cocaína, por favor, señor, we were over the border and in Tijuana. Word about downtown Tijuana. It has, it probably still does, a grid layout. I don't know what it's like now, but back then, most of the cross streets were unpaved. So we were bouncing along in Jocelyn's brand new car past graffiti splattered bodegas and dark little alleyways with malevolent glances coming at us from local people and my mother going, Oh look Neil, I wonder what those people do for a living round here. Oh my, there must have been a terrible fire in that house. My mother was genuinely curious and not a naive person. She was just trying to make the best of this difficult situation I had landed her in with her very travel-leery husband. And worse, it now dawned on me in the middle of an unpaved road that whatever I did not know about San Diego, I absolutely knew nothing about what there was to do in TJ. Was there anything of interest or cultural significance down here? At this point, we rounded a corner, and there, standing in the middle of the road, was a surprised-looking donkey. Surprised, because two men were deliberately painting this donkey in vertical black and white stripes to look like a zebra. I am not making this up. I toyed for a few seconds with claiming this was some indigenous Mexican ritual. Dios de los pueros surprised, but decided to keep my mouth shut. Would you look at that? How extraordinary, said my mother. My dad's only comment was to say, be careful driving around that donkey, you might get some wet paint on your car. At the next corner, I saw hope in the form of a brightly coloured restaurant, adorned with international flags, US flag, British flags, probably even an Irish flag. While this is not the kind of place Jocelyn or I would have chosen, we'd have gone where the locals ate, but under present circumstances, this I could very much work with. We found a lot that had a bunch of US registered cars in it, at which point the penny dropped with my now even more appalled father that we were not only going to drive around Tijuana, but we were going to park the car and get out of it. Now he was going to have to explain to his great friend, Dan Fisher, that he not only got his daughter Jocelyn kidnapped for ransom in Tijuana, but her car was stolen, her brand new car. In the restaurant, we were led to a table on the patio by a welcoming senorita in a colourful festive skirt with frilly top. My father didn't sit. He stared at the bar as my mother and I exchanged a wearisome look. This was it. Make or break time. Then his shoulders relaxed slightly as he saw a known brand of vodka. Even he knew that in Mexico they'd have good lime juice. Four menus were placed on the table, big thick tomes of books with spiral bindings and pictures of the dishes. I can assure you this was the first time either of my parents had ever eaten a restaurant with pictures of the food, except perhaps with small grandchildren. My father spotted a picture of a steak he liked with fries, so things were looking up. Then the waiter arrived. I was looking at my menu, so the first thing I saw was his feet. He was wearing high heels. I next saw bulging tight pants, then a shimmering top, semi-exposed glistening chest hair and what looked like the remains of last night's drag show smeared across his face. And finally this glorious bouffant on top that would have done little Richard proud. This was not the kind of man my father had ever interacted with in his entire life, but here he was waiting to order Neil's vodka and precious lime juice south of the border in TJ, Mexico. I looked at my father, whose face had turned to complete bewilderment. What I absolutely did not do was look at my mother. I knew she would start to laugh. And the tears would flow, and it would go on and on, and she would not be able to pull herself together. I don't recall the rest of the lunch. Pleasant conversation, I'm sure. We returned to Jocelyn's car, which still had approximately the right number of wheels on it, back over the border to the Del Coronado, which my father, standing on the sands where Marlon Monroe once stood, declared a great place. then off back to L.A., where having gazed into the very drawers of Armageddon and survived, my father thoroughly enjoyed the rest of his vacation with me, as did my mother. Years later, after my father had passed, I was sitting in my mother's front room with this lovely viewer with Dublin Bay, and the subject of that trip to Tijuana came up. And my mother said, Your father did not enjoy that. And I said, Ah... But I did get you to Mexico. Her health had been deteriorating, so she generally didn't look too happy. But she took a slow sip of coffee and smiled thoughtfully. Yes, I have been to Mexico. Thanks for listening. This has been Don't Rush Me. I am in a hurry. And please do rush to subscribe and be in a hurry to tell all your friends about this podcast. We're doing our best to get new episodes out as much as we can per month. So keep listening.