We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It

We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It, a Memoir of My Irish Boyhood by Tom Phelan

When I see a book blurb that says something like “if you liked that you’ll like this” I am always a tiny bit suspect. I do understand that we are being hand sold and guided toward something we might like. In the case of We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It, it was the cover that got me. There is no mistaking where this book is set and when. Ireland in another time.

Tom Phelan tells us what it was like to live in rural Ireland while he was growing up in the 1940s. He tells us chapter by chapter about the experiences of his young life, from his father’s plan to bring a wife home to his childhood with four siblings living on the farm without electricity, plumbing, motor vehicles or much thought to what the future would be, and in spite of those don’t-haves having a full rich life.

In each chapter Tom is a little older, new people in his life are introduced and there are new smiles and sometimes out loud laughs from us. We meet Nurse Byrne who birthed the babies and washed the dead and tended anything needing her attention in between. We watch turkey eggs hatch in the kitchen

cupboards, go to school, watch his father’s devotion to his mother, and then there’s the influence of the church and the nuns. Oh, my.

Sometimes we think we like a certain kind of book – adventure, loud, mysterious, scary or car crashing movement. And sometimes we want to just sit at the table after dinner and tell stories to each other, sharing our early lives and revealing how we became who we are. That’s this book. A quiet, funny, reflective telling of a life. It puts one in the mood to plan a dinner party so we can share our own stories.