Travellers' Rest

Pat had been courting Mary in the old Irish way for over ten years when her father, if not she, began to betray some signs of impatience and so subtly began to hint that some commitment on Pat's part might be welcome. But for several more years, their relationship straggled along apparently aimlessly while Mary waited for Pat to "make his move." She loved his shyness as a match for hers but began to fear that he would never find the courage to express the love she was sure was in his heart.

Her father demanded an ultimatum and, finally, one day Mary said outright: "Pat, we've got to get something settled. For almost fifteen years we've been walking together and going for buggy rides and you've been coming over on Sunday evenings to listen to the radio with me and Da'. Don't you think it's about time we got married?"

Pat: "At our age? Don't be daft, girl. Who'd have us?"

How I spent last Summer (Spring, & Winter, too):

About a week ago, I received an e-mail from a well-known Traveller in Ireland. It seems that he had been in contact with another e-quaintance of mine, a noted Irish anthropologist named Dr. Sinéad ní Shuinéar. She and I have maintained a personal correspondence for a number of years now and I consider her to be an inspired and scrupulous scholar as well as a personal friend. He was concerned: "I was on your website a few times recently and noticed there have have not been updates [lately]. I bumped into Sinéad [who] said you were not too well.."

As the Traveller went on to put it so well: "I was just thinking that the Internet is amazing device; I have never physically met you, but because of your presence on the WWW, your name and concerns about your health popped up in a conversation in a coffee shop, 2500 miles away in Dublin."

I too am amazed, not only at the ubiquity and immediacy of electronic communications these days, but also at the intensity and scope, even the nuances of human emotions that they are able to convey. And at the innate kindness of other human beings as well, Travellers and Country People alike. There have been many expressions of concern and good will extended via e-mail during the last year and I fear that I have probably not been able to respond to them all individually. To those whose messages "slipped through the cracks," I can only apologize and repeat my response to the correspondent above:

I'm coping pretty well. At least I'm back to typing with both hands, even if it is still mostly hunt and peck. Actually the principal reason Travellers' Rest has been quiet for the last nine months is because the times have been quiet over here vis a vis Travellers and the media. My site is basically reactionary.

Quiet is good, even if it puts me out of a job, so to speak. At the peak last year, following the Kohl's incident, the site [Travellers' Rest] was getting more than 50,000 hits a day though, and generated a lot of e-mail especially from Country People. You wouldn't believe how quietly that affair wound up after the media and politicians milked it for all that it was worth.

Quiet is better.

I would still like to add one segment more to TR : a somewhat mythical speculation about the foreshadowing nomadic culture(s?), from pre-historic Ireland on to almost the present, that have contributed, very probably, some of their genes and some of their values to the Travelling People of today. I think I would title it "The Children of Lir."

Thanks for thinking of me, D____. Life is good for me and I wish the best for you and yours. And isn't Sinead grand?

Richard

Yes, that's a fair assessment of Travellers' Rest , authored by a wanna-be Socratic gadfly, counter-spinning slanted news in a passive-aggressive sort of way. It's not very important in the grand scheme of things, though it still downloads about ten megabytes of data daily to inquiring minds even in quiet times. That is a fair amount for a small, unpublicized web site that is almost all text, the equivalent of several thousand printed pages every day, all of it opinionated and none of it impartial.

Well, I do actually have a life, of sorts, and that does take a bit of my time now and then. And I have maintained a fairly active e-mail correspondence with and about Travellers; although now it's nowhere near as busy as it was before I pleaded Parkinson's in response to the avalanche of messages last Fall [2002]. Honestly folks, it's not catching in person, much less electronically. (:>) Or perhaps, my ISP is losing mail on me (paranoia is one possible side-effect of my meds).

Last winter, give or take a few weeks, Queen's University, Belfast, published a textbook titled, Travellers and Their Language , edited by John M. Kirk and Donall F. O'Boaill, to which I contributed a chapter. Gnostics and purists, not to mention Travellers, need not fear: my paper contained no lexicon of Cant, but instead was a critical attack on some of the seminal academic studies of our language.

Old time Irish Travellers might get a kick out of that self-deprecatory bit of Cant, especially since it could be translated several ways, at least one of them being mildly vulgar. In this case, it's a metaphor for "I overstepped my bounds."

Last August I was presented with an opportunity to break new ground for Travellers' Rest, "test the Waters," so to speak (and commingle metaphors). It was seductive: the chance to mold a very small bit of history beforehand as opposed to picking up and rearranging pieces of it afterward. I'll let the various messages back and forth speak for themselves.

At 07:12 PM 8/8/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear Mr. Waters,
>
>I am a children's book editor at Random House Children's Books and am
>currently working with an author who has written a young adult novel with
>characters who are Travellers--we will be publishing the book in the spring
>of 2004. The author herself is not a Traveller. I came across your web site
>while doing research for the book and wondered if you would be interested in
>reading the book for accuracy. We can pay you for your time and effort, and
>would be grateful if you would be willing to take a look at it.
>
>Would you let me know? And my apologies if this is an intrusion.
>
>With many thanks in advance for your time,
>Sincerely,
>_____________
>Senior Editor
>Alfred A. Knopf and Crown Books for Young Readers
>_________@randomhouse.com
>

It's no intrusion, Ms. _______; my curmudgeonry is largely reserved for the abstract expressionists of media "reporting."

Since the avowed purpose of my web site, Travellers' Rest, is to correct public misinformation about Travellers, the avoidance of such in this fashion would seem to be its next logical extension. I will be happy to read your ms and there will be no charge. If it warrants and requires comment, in my opinion, I will provide what I can and what I may. In that case, I should like your permission for another Irish Traveller of my choosing (I'll know which after I have read it) to read the ms for his or her reactions as well. I would prefer whatever honoraria that you pay for such services be made payable to that other party solely.

Please bear in mind that the most you can expect is perhaps the correction of some inaccuracies, not necessarily the generation of fresh information, nor any consequent endorsement of the finished work.

If you need a confidentiality agreement, just forward one for my signature beforehand.

Richard J. Waters

After some delay due to the blackout, I received two bound sets of galley proofs on 9/3/03. Because of Parkinson's disease, I've slowed down a lot and it took me about a week more to read it and marshal my thoughts on the matter. I've scanned the letter that accompanied them for you below and my email response is shown after that:

Knopf Delacorte Dell
YOUNG READERS GROUP

August 20, 2003
Mr. Richard J. Waters
P.O.Box 884
Tcnafly NJ 07670
Dear Mr. Waters,
Thank you again for agreeing to review SEE YOU DOWN THE ROAD. I've enclosed two sets of bound galleys should you wish to have someone else review the book after you've read it. We would be happy to offer $500 to you, or the second reader, for your time.
As I mentioned in my email, this is a novel for ages 12 and up, and will he published in February 2004 by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers. We would be happy for your reactions to the accuracy of the Traveller lifestyle depicted in the hook, as well as any comments you might have about the use of Cant throughout and references to non-Travellers as “country folk” or “country people.” The author had originally used “ref “ to refer to non-Travellers but was unable to find any information about the derivation of the expression and so switched to the other phrase. Do you have any thoughts one way or the other about that? Lastly. the author has chosen to use the one “I” spelling of Travellers based on research she had done—if this is a huge misstep. we'd be happy to hear that, as well.
And our official disclaimer from the Legal Department: please be aware that we are sending this for your review and comment only and the galleys may not be used for any other purpose.

Many thanks in advance for your time and attention—the author and I are extremely grateful and I'll look forward to hearing from you. Email is best and here is that address again: _________@randomhouse.com.
Sincerely,

________________

Senior Editor
Alfred A. Knopf and Crown Books for Young Readers

At 08:29 AM 8/25/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Thanks for your note, Mr. Waters. They're on the way and should arrive early
>this week--the blackout slowed things down a bit... Thanks in advance for
>letting me know when they arrive.
>
>Best wishes,
>__________
>

The proofs have arrived.

You specifically asked about the word "ref." It is not commonly used to refer to run-of-the-mill non-Travellers; instead, it is an insult that pretty much translates as "low-life." So I think your choice of "country" instead was probably a good decision.

"Country" is generally used as an adjective to describe a person, place or thing as "Non-Traveller" with some measure of appropriate respect. It should be noted that "country," the English loan word in Cant, does not connote "rural" or "national," but rather it confers on the following noun a territorial affiliation. The "Country People" belong to the country-side we pass through; Travellers belong only to the road and our families. Incidentally, I capitalize the initial letter in "country" where it would seem appropriate in any ethnic reference, much the same as you would capitalize the "t" in "Traveller."

The employment of one or two "l's" in the latter is certainly optional. When I started my web site, I chose the longer Irish spelling in place of Dateline's, proclaiming the choice as a personal affectation and there it remains; though it does seem to have caught on somewhat, elsewhere as well.

I should have something more for you within a week. By the way, the only Irish Traveller to whom I would have forwarded a copy of this book for comment has been taken seriously ill and is not expected to recover, so if and when you feel that my cumulative commentary has qualified for remuneration just cut a check for the $500 payable to Catholic Charities and send it on to them if you will.

Richard Waters

The preliminaries over, I read the book, wrote specific and general criticisms of the text and story-line respectively and sent them out via e-mail to half a dozen Travellers for comment, and waited...and waited....

(This was the cover note to Travellers:)
Would you please, please take a look at this for me? It's the final draft (for now) of a critique I wrote on a book project Random House plans to publish in February. They asked me for input and since I can't get it canceled, I'm hoping to at least get them to give a fairer picture of Travellers.
Richard

PS: RH sent an extra copy of this girl's book; it's a bound paperback. Would you like to read it yourself? Sorry to say, as is, it paints a pretty ignorant and damning picture of us. But I'll send it if you like.
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[HERE IS MY REVIEW:]

You may mail your contribution check, payable to Catholic Charities USA, to the following address: Catholic Charities USA, Attn: Donations, 1731 King Street, Alexandria, VA, 22314.

First, I must make it quite clear that all of the following observations are strictly the opinions of just one man who has loved and been proud of his extended Traveller family for all of his life, now approaching seven decades. I am not a criminal, any more than the vast majority of my cousins are, and I have no special "insider" expertise in their traditional workaday activities either, most of my life having been a "settled" one. There are over thirty thousand of us in the U.S.A. by my reckoning, but I speak for one alone and to the facts alone. Traveller Cant and Traveller blood flow through me; no more than that is claimed.

The plain fact is that this work is well-written as to structure and style but poorly researched. Ms. Whitney seems to have relied, perhaps directly or indirectly but for certain extensively, on the work of a man named Don Wright, whom I would categorize as a "house-organist" for the recreational vehicle industry. That group can best be described in this context, I feel, as a sworn enemy to the Travelling People. Mr. Wright's "inside source" for information on the Travelling Life and his chosen paradigm for it was actually a fourth cousin of mine (somewhat removed in more ways than one) and his immediate family, whom Wright himself described as "the most dysfunctional family I have ever seen."

Poor Wright never seemed to catch on that Jimmy, his half-Traveller source, was the most dysfunctional of them all. The "skills" that he considered hallmarks of a master Traveller con-artist were just those of a garden variety psychopathic liar: an encyclopedic memory for gossip; a fertile and somewhat malevolent imagination; a facile wit to mix fact and fancy; an enthusiastic charm to sugar-coat the resulting fabrication. I never met Jimmy or his siblings; they, especially he, were avoided by decent Travellers and said to be very bitter for all of that. Their lifestyle choices were completely antithetical to our mores. Jimmy's Traveller grandparents were thought to be fine people, though.

One amusing and not so amusing result of Jimmy's collaboration with Wright is that the writer apparently believed the former's contention that his crippled first cousin was the representative result of inbreeding: "B_______ was born with only one leg -- not an unusual affliction among the Irish Travellers...," he wrote. Odd that! I'm sure I would have noticed had there been a lot of hopping at family get-togethers. No, just table-hopping; no pogoplegics that I recall.

Another fact that seems plain: given the momentum required to advance a book project this far in a corporate environment such as yours must be, and a planned publication in five months, I have to expect that your request for input from a Traveller is a pro-forma one only. If so, I must wish you bad luck, because it is slanderous as is, painting virtually all Travellers with a charcoal palette: gray, small-time thieves; black, big-time thieves. What a shame that all this defamation results from a careless strewing of negative fictoids (like factoids, only not) as synecdoches for the Life, merely to flesh out an already moving story with "authentic" detail. What a pity that the Daugherty and Murphy families' older characters are so under-developed when they could have easily and economically been endowed with traits that reflect the trichotomy of lifestyle options open to real-life Irish Travellers today: outright outlawry; honest muddling through in the old and honorable ways, with ever diminishing returns; and complete assimilation. Those options, of course, would parallel the destinies Ms. Whitney eventually assigns to each of the Daugherty children.

There is no real consideration in this novel of the joys of the Life either, traveling from reunion to reunion, always our place reserved among kith and kin, which for most of us are one and the same. Kim Ablon Whitney undoubtedly has a great deal of talent; on one level I enjoyed her story a lot, the personal level reading about a sixteen year old girl's survival of internal and external conflicts to become a decent human being. It's just that she should have sited it in her own neighborhood. Detailed comments are given below.

Richard J. Waters

COMMENTS ON THE PARTICULARS
OF SEE YOU DOWN THE ROAD

PAGE: 13 TEXT: We left Miami a few days later and spent a night in Georgia, then headed through Tennessee to Kentucky, where we bought another trailer and towed it back on Jimmy’s hitch through North Carolina to South Carolina.
. . . .
It’d only been a few days on the road, but it felt like weeks. Even after months of not traveling, it was easy to fall back into it. To get used to the slow lurch of the trailer, the hum of the diesel engine, the whoosh of the air rushing by, the smell of Dad's stale coffee, the black asphalt falling away behind us and stretching out endlessly in front of us.

PAGE: 13 COMMENT: It's bad Traveller economics for the whole family, complete with Dad's pick-up and fifth-wheel trailer*, to escort Jimmy's pick-up northwest through four states just to hitch up a travel trailer and come back southeast through three states. The whole family is losing earning power meanwhile, and accruing extra over-the-road expenses of maybe half a buck a mile. As far as the "diesel" pick-up engine is concerned, first of all they don't "hum," and second, they're not generally used by Irish Travellers.
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PAGE: 33 TEXT: Ann, Patrick, and I were sitting outside the Murphys’ trailer playing poker when Patrick decided we should do a pigeon drop**.

PAGE: 33 COMMENT: I'm no expert on the "pigeon drop" (and neither are 99+% of my Traveller cousins) but I don't believe that this particular version is easily comprehended by the reader (perhaps by the author), especially as to the means for motivating the pigeon. Since Bridget is under legal age, why not have her find a "winning" lottery ticket instead? The ticket is bought (say on the 4th), the number chosen to be the same as a recent (say on the 1st) winner and only the date has to be "adjusted" slightly to come up with a nice bit of bait to dangle.
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PAGE: 89 TEXT: I was outside with Dad unhooking the fifth wheel* when

PAGE: 89 COMMENT: Unhooking? Strictly speaking, safety chains are "unhooked"; the "fifth wheel* would call for "unhitching" or "unlatching," although I admit a lot of trailer owners wouldn't bother to make that distinction.
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PAGE: 90 TEXT: Since so many of us shared the same last names and even the same first names, nicknames were common: Whitey, Mikey Boy, Big Jim. Country folk thought we were strange to keep using the same names, but it was hard to track down one particular James Sullivan when there were six of them at the same campground.

PAGE: 90 COMMENT: If Travellers really traveled day-to-day in large herds like zebras, then markings like "Patrick B_____," "Pete ________," "Bridget _____" and "Winifred N_______" might serve as protective coloration. As it is, Irish Travellers who are fortunate enough to bear our traditional Christian and family names, continue to do so out of respect and pride, despite the fact that they stand out "like a sore thumb" among Country People and are on every law enforcement watch list. All too often, it may not matter which Traveller with one of those names is being sought for questioning; any and all Travellers that might be in the general area will do. The "extras" will sometimes be hassled until they're literally forced to leave the town or county, whether their business there is finished or not.
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PAGE: 90/91 TEXT: It was a few years ago at the Spring burials, the year we buried Pop, Dad and Big Jim’s Father. Even though most Northern Travelers wintered in some part of Florida, they scattered all over during the summer months, and so when our people passed away we didn't always bury them right off. We kept their bodies on ice and twice a year, spring and fall, everyone came for one big funeral. Those were the times for weddings too.

PAGE: 90/91 COMMENT: Well, Bridget is supposed to be a Northern Irish Traveller and I only recall one funeral among my extended family, also Northern, that was held up more than a week or two for that purpose.
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PAGE: 91 TEXT: Dad cranked the trailer up on its wheel. Jimmy stepped forward and reached for the hitch crank

PAGE: 91 COMMENT: I think the author means "extended the leveling jacks."
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PAGE: 94 TEXT: I was happy enough to leave, but Jimmy stomped out and let the screen door snap behind him.

PAGE: 94 COMMENT: "Slammed the screen door behind him" would be more accurate, I think. I don't recall ever seeing a trailer on the road supplied with a spring-loaded door closer. There's no landing just outside the door, only steps, and a self-closing door could be a real safety hazard at worst and is awkward to handle at best.
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PAGE: 107 TEXT: Traveling in Jimmy's truck was different. As far as putting on real mileage, going hundreds, thousands of miles, I'd only done that in the back of a trailer. A trailer's ride was smooth, skimming over the pavement. In a truck, each spin of the tires jolted you in your seat; each crack in the blacktop bit into your back.

PAGE: 107 COMMENT: Riding in the back of a crew-cab pick-up is a lot more comfortable than riding in the back of a trailer, even a fifth-wheel*.
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PAGE: 108 TEXT: I wasn't sure who "everybody" was, but the idea of taking pictures sounded like so much fun. We'd never had a camera growing up, and except for one of those snapshots Ann and I got once at a country fair, I couldn't ever remember someone taking my picture. Given our life, the kind of evidence photos provided wasn't a good thing to have around. I thought about other families and how they were always snapping photos. How they had stacks of albums accounting for their lives. How we had nothing to show for where we'd been, what we were.

PAGE: 108 COMMENT: I can't answer for any others here, but there was never any shortage of photos among us that I recall. Any thought that even the guiltiest Traveller miscreant would worry about the existence of family photos as potentially incriminating seems very far-fetched. And photos don't weigh much for the punch they pack; there is certainly no logistical reason for family oriented nomads such as the Travellers to shun them.
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.
PAGE: 116/117 TEXT :"Let's go! We gotta have a look at what we're gonna be selling. What we were selling were condos__and of course we weren't selling them legit. The contractor who built them had messed up and they weren't up to code. But instead of putting the money into fixing them, he'd called a guy he knew who'd find him a Realtor who wouldn't ask questions. That guy knew Big Jim, and he cut a deal that for ten percent of the money the scam was Big Jim's.

PAGE: 116/117 COMMENT: This plot device is technically a very simple version of the "big store con," a ploy** that I would not ordinarily associate with Irish Travellers, though many have both the brains and charisma to carry it off. Two things militate against that idea: one, it's grand theft and five years in the slammer would be the likely payoff for real Travellers in the event of any little bit of bad luck; two, the same brains and charisma (and chicanery) would earn four Travellers more money in the same time spent making legitimate sales than the prize Big Jim is apparently slavering over. The target amount should be raised to at least a quarter of a mil.
The author wisely glossed over details about the mechanics of the scam (escrow accounts etc.) but should address one gnawing lapse in logic: Why wouldn't the contractor burn down this development for the insurance money, destroying the evidence of his malfeasance at the same time? The simple answer is because the insurance was canceled (either because of a local history of eco-terrorism or just natural forest fires). A simple point but one that should be addressed. Sorry, but that last bit has nothing to do with Travellers, does it?
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PAGE: 121 TEXT: "A house?" The only people we knew who had houses lived in Murphy Village, and Mom wasn't friends with any of them. "It was a house. They were talking about the measurements -ten by sixteen for one room- this wasn't any trailer. Maybe your mom's planning to leave your dad. Maybe her and Russell are buying a new house together."

PAGE: 121 COMMENT: There are many, many Travellers outside of Murphy Village who live in houses, not to mention those who live in larger single- and double-wide mobile homes, both of which feature rooms larger than 10 by 16 feet.
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PAGE: 127 TEXT: I looked at him kneeling there, his eyes closed. A large scar ran from his temple to his chin on the right side of his face.

PAGE: 127 COMMENT: Travellers, even the most innocent of Travellers, prize their ability to "blend in with the woodwork." Big Jim would seem to be somewhat disadvantaged there, especially for one who has been a successful (long-uncaptured) felon wanted in four or five states. On page 90, he is already physically described, without mentioning the disfigurement, as 6' 4" and as solid as a telephone pole, "just plain big." I'd ditch the scar; it doesn't add to the character or the plot.
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PAGE: 150 TEXT: That's what this is about?" I cried. "The bride-price?"

PAGE: 150 COMMENT: "Bride-price" is a term favored by anthropologists for the purchase of a bride by the groom from her family, most often in land, horses, sheep or cattle. The old Traveller custom the author describes here is more akin to the concept of "dower" (dowry). But it's rarely found now, formally at least, among the Northern Travellers; although both families will usually contribute, to one degree or another, to the purchase of living quarters and equipping a business venture for the new couple.
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PAGE: 164 TEXT: After the arraignment, Patrick and Jimmy called to say that since they had no priors the judge set bail at $15,000 for each of them. Big Jim wasn't as lucky. With his long list of priors, bail was denied, and he was awaiting trial. Dad called a bail bondsman about Jimmy and Patrick. The way it worked was you paid ten percent of the amount of bail and then the bail bondsman posted the full amount. Dad paid the $1,500 for Jimmy, and he paid for Patrick too. Then Patrick and Jimmy were supposed to stick around for the trial. Only the minute they were free on bail, they skipped out on it and headed to Tupelo to meet us.

PAGE: 164 COMMENT: I doubt whether any bail bondsman in the business for longer than an hour would post bail, ten percent down or no, for alleged felons with no local address bolstered by at least some provable community roots. I would expect that Travellers would put up the full amount anyway even if they had to take up a collection among several families. Jumping bail on a bondsman's marker is tantamount to signing all of your civil rights away to professional bounty hunters and none of the normal constitutional niceties will necessarily protect the unlucky fugitive.
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PAGE: 182 TEXT: The blue sky was fading to the color of the smoking coals from people's grills when I found Jimmy in his truck.

PAGE: 182 COMMENT: What truck? It would be tagged as evidence in an Arizona impound lot, as property allegedly used in the commission of a crime. The rest of that sentence could use a little work too; I hope you don't mind.
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GENERAL COMMENTS

* Fifth-wheel trailers. By assigning Dad and his family a fifth-wheel you're doing him and his wife and his daughter a big favor as far as personal comfort is concerned but I'm not so sure you've left him much room in the truck bed to hold his gear, given there is a rather large fifth-wheel or gooseneck hitch mount taking up its center. The most important tool for the roofing/paving business is the motor, compressor and air tank combo and he would not necessarily have all the room for that and the rest of his equipment and supplies. That's the most important reason why I remember working Travellers as tending to haul travel trailers with hitches mounted to the truck's undercarriage, instead.

Travellers often buy travel trailers with the intent of using them awhile, for instance, as dormitories for their children or for a bachelor or young couple to use, and then polishing them up and reselling them privately, generally for a net profit. The profit is deserved because Travellers are usually sharp purchasers, superb salespeople and they keep those trailers scrupulously clean; for instance, the units for resale are rarely, if ever, cooked in at all. For some pretty obvious reasons, the oligopoly that runs the Rec-Vee business at both the marketing and manufacturing ends has managed to make it illegal in many states for independents to sell trailers part-time, especially if they're Travellers. For us to resell trailers --except through their established dealers-- is also immoral, probably fattening, and will be labeled a "scam," which brings us to the **'s above.

**Con-men and scam-artists. Sure there some grifters among us, a few outright thieves and violent criminals as well. I'm not dismissing that fact lightly; all I ask is that it be placed in some perspective compared to other ethnic groups and the mainstream populace. You can review the last few times an Irish Traveller has gotten into trouble; the TV people dredge up the same old, discredited (and they know it) film clips full of malicious gossip and innuendo, details about the same old handful of decade(s)-old crimes would have been re-broadcast and newspapers as always would have declared that "the alleged perpetrator has a record as long as your arm." Within a week, when the dust clears and the fingerprints come back, it almost always happens that long-playing "record" was a compilation of outstanding warrants and criminal convictions for everyone in the USA with the same name, Country Person and Traveller alike, some also from look-a-likes and fanciful "aka's" as well. The few genuine warrants that usually might remain are most often canceled when the charges are withdrawn by the original complainants. Why? Because they were small claims or at most civil tort cases that were only raised to the level of criminal charges because the police presumed the errant craftsman was a Traveller. "You say this guy [sealed your driveway] [fixed and sealed your roof] [last week] [last month] [last year] and now [with this monsoon, you got problems] [somebody local came round and said he woulda done the job a lot cheaper]. I can't help you unless you're willing to swear the guy lied to you, maybe. Tell me, did he sound a little Irish to you?" Once the Traveller has been served with the warrant and made aware of the complaint, his lawyer can almost always get the charges dropped in return for only a refund of moneys paid and a respectful, if non-committal, apology to the complainant for the misunderstanding,

When the media and law enforcement talk so loosely of "cons and scams," overwhelmingly they are referring to this type of case and rarely, if ever, to the cleverly layered duplicities of any sort of criminal mastermind.

Then there are the stories about Traveller women and children shoplifting. I've already addressed that at my web site at:
http://www.travellersrest.org. I'll recap below:

"Shoplifting":

Do Travellers shoplift? Some do, I am sure; the law of averages almost demands it. Still, experts tell us that most of the retail dollar value of shoplifted merchandise is stolen by store employees; often, I suppose, the same ones who would sincerely swear to their convictions that all Traveller women are thieves. I know of only one family among my relatives (fourth cousins or so) where that's known to be true, and worse, and they seem to have been inspired, even mentored, in the "five-fingered discount" trade by a Country Woman who married into the family. The grandparents of that brood were respectable people, still well-spoken of by the older generation. The next two generations: everything went to hell for them apparently.

Cash and Carry:

I can't provide statistics; there aren't any. I can't comment on individual cases; there's nothing to be proven there, one way or the other. What I can do is what I usually try when confronted with urban, suburban and rural myths: poke a few holes, then spin them around to see if they can be pulled apart by the centrifugal force of their own contradictions.

Myth: Virtually all male Travellers are highly successful scam artists and their womenfolk regularly shoplift merchandise to "return" for cash "refunds." How likely is it that both of these postulates are true? If Traveller families are so successful at scamming the elderly for billions of dollars a year in home repair frauds, as is generally parroted ad nauseam by law enforcement "specialists" and some news media, why would they jeopardize their freedom of movement by shoplifting goods in this era of surveillance cameras, photo-id's and computerized public and corporate databases? If the Kohl incident proved nothing else, it demonstrated vividly to the world that Travellers are surveiled in many retail chain stores from the moment they arrive in the parking lot, all through their shopping, until the moment they leave the property. And sometimes, perhaps, far beyond, as was attempted there.

Just think about it for a minute:

Shows like "Dateline" would have you believe that Travellers. who they aver get away with scammed billions each year. pause repeatedly in their presumably incessant cycle of swindle and flight to dispatch their wives and children to "lift" a few hundred dollars worth of goods and then cash them in under intense scrutiny. What's wrong with this picture? If the first postulate is true, then the second one is ridiculous. Now take a tiny leap of imagination: if the second postulate now seems far-fetched, then maybe the first one wasn't all that reasonable either. But that's a different topic.

Q. & A.:

Why does shoplifting increase when the Travellers hit town?

Does it? Shoplifting expense can only be figured after a full physical inventory. What regional or national chain store does one every week or so (more like once a year in truth), which would offer the kind of precision required to justify the inference embedded in the question? Besides, Travellers frequently arrive with good weather which also, coincidentally, brings about a quite natural increase in walk-in trade, in general. And, as you might expect, that leads to more sneak-out trade. By the way, I don't want to shock you in this age of creative accounting, but it definitely pays to underestimate one's inventory by "maximizing" shoplifting expense; it can save enormously on sales, inventory and income taxes, I believe. And, of course, some of the less honest employees like to update their wardrobes periodically and our arrival serves as a reminder.

Why don't Travellers patronize smaller local stores exclusively and forget about the chains?

That's an easy one; like everyone else Travellers buy goods with the expectation that we will be returning some of them to the vendor at one time or another. This is no problem if we're talking about a day or two later. On the other hand, in a week we may be a county or a state away, too far away to return goods to exactly the same store at which we bought them. Only a retail chain of at least regional scope fits that requirement. Needless to say, the stores to which the elsewhere products are returned do not welcome this kind of bounce-back.

SUMMARY

In consulting with some other Travellers [HAH!] about See You Down The Road, I have described it in no uncertain terms:

The book is, unfortunately, well written and has already won some sort of prize, even before it's printed in its final form. And that's bad news because RH is a major publisher and the only research material available to this young woman who wrote it apparently was Scam, Dateline and 20/20. The major themes of this short "coming of age" novel are that all Irish Travellers are dishonest in all of their dealings, all our young girls are married off even if against their will, virtually all IT men are unfaithful to their wives, and those of us who choose to lead "settled" lives are invariably shunned by our immediate and extended family. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly, some of that may be true about some of us some of the time but I'd argue that on the whole, we stack up pretty well compared to most ethnic groups who are no longer subjected to the same kind of "profiling" and media exploitation that relentlessly pursues the Travelling People.

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...And waited...and waited....
I should have known better, cousins. The Travellers ignored my critique; the editor and author ignored my critique, and its follow-up. I can at least hope, though I have no such assurance, that Catholic Charities received their $500. So much for the proactive mind-set. Hereafter, book editors will join reporters in the upper tiers of my spam filter. BTW, if I'm limited to using their text for purposes of "review"; well then let it be a public review, since this is a public forum, of sorts.

[December, 2005: I have received belated Traveller feedback on some of the above. Fifth-wheel trailers are in use to a limited degree these days and "Northern Irish Travellers in the USA wouldn't be caught dead" using old-fashioned compressor/air tank sprayers.]

At 12:28 PM 12/29/2003 -0500, you wrote:
Dear Mr. Waters,
Thank you very much for your email below and my apologies for not replying
immediately when your first email arrived--I did indeed receive it and I
thank you again for the time and energy you put into reviewing the
manuscript. I shared your comments with the author and we did include some
of your suggestions and they will appear in the finished book.

I'm sorry you felt the way you did about the book, but nonetheless the author
and I are grateful for your comments and honest feedback. As you requested,
the payment is going to Catholic Charities USA and we are awaiting paperwork
from them.

And since I assume this will be going on your web site, I've been asked by
our legal department to remind you that any excerpts from SEE YOU DOWN THE
ROAD that you may reproduce on the site are fully protected by US copyright
law.

Many thanks again; apologies for the delayed responses, and all best wishes
for a happy and healthy new year.
____ ______

My response:
Thank you, Ms. _______, for your reply and may your holidays also be happy and healthy as well.

Your legal department can currently find the excerpts that I have extracted from the referenced manuscript, on my web site at:
http://www.travellersrest.org/WhatsNew.htm.
Eventually that page will be archived with a slightly different web address but may still be easily located using the site's links or "search" function.

While your lawyers are considering "Fair Use" of copyrighted material for their "OUT" basket, they might also wish to bone up on "Libel" and "[Class] Action" for impending use with their "IN" basket.

Thank you for the donation to Catholic Charities.

Richard J. Waters

Possibly. Probably not, except for the charitable contribution, I suppose. That's all right; after five years, I am pretty much resigned to the fact that Travellers' Rest, despite a lot of encouragement from hundreds of Travellers and thousands of Country People, is just "one small voice crying in the wilderness." Paradoxically, this takes a lot of pressure off me and guess who winds up with it?

You do. We have neither lobbyists nor political action committees, nor purchased politicians, not even a lovely spokes-model to ask the general public to hold fast to the basic American tenet, Presumption of Innocence, when the hue and cry of "Traveller" is next raised in the land.