Joe O'Leary and Maureen O'Hara

This is a neat one, but not for the obvious reasons. Yes, Maureen O'Hara was a fabulously famous actress but the most interesting person in this photo I think is Joe O'Leary.
He was absolutely crazy about my great aunt "Kay" (Catherine McIntyre) and even though they were quite advanced in age by the time they met, he was rather insistant that he wanted to marry her and asked her several times before she finally, tentetively, said yes.
I remember his coming over the house in Roslindale many time but one day when I was in the dining room watching TV I was absolutely shocked at what I saw. Mr. O'Leary came in the back door, swept Kay up in his arms and greeted her in a big bear hug and a very passionate kiss on her neck.
Highly charged romantical-type greeting, stuff in my very young mind that only happened when either Olivia Newton-John and/or John Travolta were involved and preferably when both were involved in a song and dance number.
Even tho I knew that "Kay was going to marry Mr. O'Leary", in my young mind, romance was surely the last thing they would ever be thinking of, "old people" just didn't think about those sorts of things, did they?!?
In the end, the event never happened, as I recall Kay dragged her feet a little too long and Mr. O'Leary passed away.
But I could be wrong on how it ended, like I said, I was viewing the whole relationship from the corner of my eye and the point of view of an 11 year old more occupied with the TV in the dining room.
A few posts ago I mentioned friendships but going through old letters sent to Kay it is clear that she had many admirers and some serious relationships developed from those. These men who were never really related to us in any way have no real branch on the family tree but I do remember Mr. O'Leary and how significant his relationship to Kay was.
Even if he was never really realted to us, the relation is worth remembering.

This picture was most likely taken at a fund raiser of some sort, I am quite ceratin that Maureen O'Hara was never a dinner guest at the Roslidale house tho that's a bit of a shame, I bet the plastic would have come off the furniture for her....

My Grandfather Charles Joseph McIntyre was hired as a City of Boston "military substitute" patrolman in June 1941 by September of that year he was hired permanantly and retired from the force in 1976. In the 1950's he worked a lot of details outside bars and nightclubs in Boston's South End. By the time he retired he was working a desk job.
A couple of years ago I had a bit of a "brain fart" and sent and email requesting his employment records from the City of Boston. (to the best of my knowledge, I didn't have to pay anything for this service)
What I got in the mail a few weeks later was a documented almost month by month history of his life from the time he was about 30 til very near his death.
His medical records as well as employment records were all included in the 100 some odd pages (some hand written) that were sent to me.
My Mother listened to me talk about these documents with a sort of quiet patience that parents reserve for kids who get all excited about something the parents find hopelessly dull.
Then I read from a medical examiner's letter that detailed a night when my Grandfather was:
"struck on the head with a glass by a prisioner he had arrested outside the G&N Restaurant, 518 Tremont Street, City."
At that point my snapped her head around and with a very surprised look on her face said,
"I remember that night!"
When her Father came home the night of this incident she was sent to her room. Having no real reason to remember it, she had almost forgotten it.
As any kid would remember thier father coming home injured, she remembered the night but being only about 11 at the time, and a girl as well, she was not told what happened at the time and the memory kind of slipped away to the back files of her mind.
Charles Joseph McIntyre's employment record turned out to be such a wealth of information to me. Not only did it contain interesting glimpses into his day to day life but it records time off he took for his parents deaths and his children's births and childhood injuries. It also is a priceless record of his medical history.
We got a bit lucky that he worked for one employer for so long but I often wonder if other "companies" still in business would still hold records of former employees and what hidden genological/historical gems may be out there just waiting for some interested party to dig them up and blow the dust off....

Car Wash Babes

The woman in the middle might be my grandmother "Claire" (Cummings) McIntyre but it's hard to tell.
This snapshot was not in an album,
(some other old pix were in albums that look like they were made by whoever processed the roll of film and sometimes the other pix in the album hold clues but this one was adrift on it's own in a box with many others from different occasions and differnet generations)
and had no markings on the back so I don't really know who the women are or whose car they are washing.
I do know that I have an almost identical lobster pot to the ones in the picture in my kitchen right now. Not much to go on but I am hoping that by searching through more pictures I will find snapshots of these outfits in other pictures, perhaps one's with writing on the back, and be able to indentify who these women are.
In the mean time, this snapshot is going up in a place of honor on our garage wall and may even get sent to the editor of a "tasteful" Hot Rod magazine or the transportation museum if I can identify the vehicle in it.

Til then, forever in posterity these women are having
"fun, fun, fun til her daddy takes her T-bird away..."