In 1957 John Healy went to Holyoke, Massachussets as an exchange writer under a US Government scheme. The newspaper was the Holyoke Transcript. The town, as far as the Irish contingent was concerned, was dominated by people from Kerry. Next came "the Connachts", immigrants from Mayo and Galway. The Mayos were from Belmullet and some from Achill and "that in-between point", Inishkea (Inish Ge) in Blacksod Bay. Not all the Mayos, he tells us in his wonderful book 19 Acres had been as successful as the Kerry people who got there earlier. Here are John's own words:
"One bright sunny New England spring day I was posting some mail home and passed three men sitting on a park bench watching the squirrels. They recognised me as `the Irishman in the Transcript' and told me they were from Achill: they'd been out here these forty years.
"`Did ye never go back?"
"`We'll go back when they build the bridge across the Atlantic.'
"`But sure it's only five hours from Boston to Achill on a plane!'
"`The step is a bit long in the plane, young fellow'.
"`And ye were never back once since ye came out?'"
They didn't answer at first. One man said: "We might go the year after next Then another said: "When were you last in Achill? Are the houses still whitewashed?"
"There was a tentativeness about the question, as if he feared the answer. I told him I had been there a year before I came out. The houses were still neat and whitewashed every spring; they still cut turf with a slean.
"Now was all he said. That `now' from an Achill man is a speech. It has a wealth of meaning. It is at once protective, noncommittal and bespeaks a doubtful satisfaction or a satisfied doubt." (That's the end of the exchange.)
No wonder Brendan Kennelly wrote in the foreword of "this story of the truth in one man's life, told in a way that cannot fail to enrich the lives of all those fortunate enough to read it". First published by Kenny's, Galway, now by the House of Healy, Achill.