Nanny

   She came from Ireland at the age of 18 and lived in Troy. A brother was already here.  I have no story of how she met and married her husband, her widowhood, or much else about her life in Troy, which ended when her teenaged son died in a tragic fall when the scaffolding gave way  from a building he was working on.  With the $200 she received as some kind of settlement, she was able to move from Troy, where she had suffered that bitter loss. She ached to get away from that city.  She bought a place in the country.  There is no record any more of how and where she met her second husband, the father of her last child. I vaguely remember  some Hogan relative being there in her kitchen once in a while, and recall going to a funeral for one of the Hogan's, perhaps that man, or a brother maybe. I remember the name, Jim.
    The point is, there is no information about my grandmother.  Our only memory , at least mine, is of her sitting by her kitchen table, and when we were really little, walking with her and Helen and us around her property.  She had a little tan dog, named Tiny, which she had trained to jump over her cane when she held it out.  Tiny never looked too happy about performing that trick though. Not back in the day when dogs had to obey their masters, or else.  I can recall her visiting us only once or twice.  I think it may have been when we lived in the house on the curve, possibly just before or during our move to Valley Falls.  She was anxious to get back home.
   Years later, Ann Burke Donovan would mention to me that she used to walk by the house in Troy where the Donovan's lived.  She would be  walking with her father and  her brothers and sisters, and he  would greet Nanny as they walked by. Ann said Matt was most likely one of the unknown kids on the porch who she would later meet and marry under entirely different circumstances.
  Apart from a few brief references, Nanny's life, as far as we were concerned, was spent entirely in her kitchen.  Even though she must have been an adventurer in her day, to emigrate into an unknown country, with no resources at her disposal and to give birth to 6 children under what must have been in conditions of dire poverty.
  Anyway, though my mother was not one to dwell in the past, every once in a while, she would tell a tale: I remember the story she told me of Nanny and the pot of chili sauce:
    They lived in the city, she and her brood of kids, back in the day when kids were like weeds, kind of  a nuisance.  Another woman, maybe a next door neighbor, or maybe a tenant in the same building, and who also had a flock of kids, brought Nanny a pot of chili sauce.  I suppose they ate of it.
   The next day the woman asked how they liked the chili, and Nanny said it was good.  "Oh," said the woman, "I have a funny story to tell you about that chili.  While I was cooking, I put the pot on the floor to cool, and when my back was turned, little Timmy saw the pot and peed in it.  But it would be okay to eat.  He's just a baby."
   I don't know what else happened at the time, but Ma said Nanny never spoke to the woman again.