July 15, 2011, 9:20 p.m.
Railroad
By Maurice Ticas
My great grandfather's father came from Ireland to Honduras to help build the railroads of Central America. His work was to help build the railroads of our America. He married in Honduras and started a family there. This history is according to my mother.
From time to time I and my sister play with the idea of being part Irish. What fascinates me about the identity is that I can pretend to follow with the traditions of the good Irish fighter. Everyone loves a fighter. That is the coolest part from identifying with the Irish.
Mother Jones is a woman who is emblematic of this Irish fighting spirit. She was a seamstress, mother, and wife who famously told us to "pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living". She was the great fighter who fought for working class people. For example, she participated in organizing the historic railroad strike of 1877, a pivotal moment in United States labor history. That action really does help make her legendary.
You can't win all battles. The Irish did lose the battle to survive as they were working to build the railroad: Many were dying from illness caused from drinking bad water.
It is true that many Irish helped build the railroads of the United States, but they weren't the only group. The Chinese also did contribute. In this case, the Chinese were better prepared to win the battle to survive: They boiled their water for tea before drinking it.
There are current battles worth noting. Mountaintop removal happening in Appalachia has caused harm to people. Extraction of coal from these mountains are harming communities here in our United States. The forces wanting to make money on the backs of these communities should be confronted, and the efforts of our American brothers and sisters fighting this battle should not go silent.
When you do fight in this world to survive and keep your dignity, you somehow become transformed and changed in the process. Ishle Yi Park poetically expresses the change in her poem "Railroad". To me, it is the same railroad my great-great-grandpa worked on, that the Irish worked on, that the Chinese worked on.
One day I will write a poem about my father as a mountain, and there will be no shame for the dynamite and the blasted hole, the pickaxes and steam drills paving their own resolute path, for the railroad ploughed through his core, for shattered rocks, for pungent scent of pines. My father will be a mountain surrounded by wind that wears him down as slowly as marriage, as America, as time. But he is still a man and a mountain: drilled, hammered, alive, unaware of all who love him from the far track.
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