Here’s the transcription of a conversation with Patrick about my mom and some other family members, recorded on 18 March 2017 in a very noisy restaurant. If there’s interest, I’ll convert the audio file to YouTube so you can hear it.

Patrick: One of the stories I haven’t really worked on, but I’ve got the title: “Barefoot and Pregnant.”

JP: Okay

Patrick: That’s what John Dillon said when he was introduced to me. One Easter, we went down and spent time in her uncle Ed’s garage apartment.

JP: Ed was a great fisherman, that’s what I remember of him.

Patrick: What I remember of him…

JP: And he drank a lot,

Patrick: What?

JP: I think he drank.

Patrick: Yeah? He was part of the Military Police in Vienna.

JP: Unn

Patrick: And he met Maria, a beautiful Viennese woman and brought her to the States and she couldn’t stand living in a …

JP: Uncultured?

Patrick: What do you call it, a row of houses all alike?

JP: Oh yeah, tract homes…

Patrick: Anyway, he worked at Cape Canaveral and they had a car pool and we would drive out together to work and one of the guys was going nuts and Uncle Ed said, the guy would put his finger to his head and said ‘they’re talking about me… again!’

Patrick: Anyway, we stayed in his apartment and we met John and…

JP: Evelyn, at the time.

Patrick: Evelyn?

JP: That was his second wife

Patrick: Eleanor

JP: Eleanor, rather, that’s right.

Patrick: And the guy across the street from them, well not on that trip, but another trip after you were born and when I was teaching in… My first job was in Vero Beach.

Patrick: Yeah. And I used to work on weekends with Eleanor clearing land down by the river where they had an A-frame house.

Patrick: Yeah. And what was I talking about that because … ?

JP: John and barefoot and pregnant?

Patrick: Eh-yeah. Well that’s what he told her when we first met, that first round, that first trip, and later it was true.

JP: So he said that’s what you would do to her, or…?

Patrick: Yeah. That if she got involved with me, she would be barefoot and pregnant. He got that right.

Patrick: Anyway, when I was visiting them in their house in Indiatlantic, across the street from them was a guy whose name I’ve forgotten, who was a very well educated and cultured man. I was very interested in talking to him…

Patrick: more than to John and Eleanor. But, although they certainly were cultured people…. Or at least he was. Although he had a little book of a cartoons about nurses and so on. One of the cartoons was of this guy running out of the room holding onto his genitals and the doctor saying “I told you to prick his boil.”

Patrick: He liked that kind of humor.

Patrick: He was painting, and so I started painting too. I painted a palm tree outside the house. But this guy across the street introduced me to a book which I enjoyed for many, many years. “Eleanor And The Four Kings” by Amy Kelly, and it’s about a queen in France…

JP: Oh, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Patrick: Yeah. I think she was married to a couple of ’em and one of them was her son, Louis XIV. Wonderful book. Eleanor of Aquitaine , and it’s called Eleanor And The Four Kings.

Patrick: And here’s this Eleanor of course, and ….

JP: Yeah, right.

Patrick: Judy…

JP: I remember Aunt Judy, least that’s what I called her.

Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. And Phyllis.

JP: There’s a character.

Patrick: Yeah.

JP: Alright, stop that one? Or is there more to this story?

Patrick: No, I think that’s about it for now.