Annie Kate Limerick: It's amazing

These newfangled contraptions, I can never figure them out. Twenty years ago, Andrew bought a horseless carriage for us and after he died, Martin bought a Ford Model T, a real and live automobile. My husband never taught me how to drive the Olds and my son never taught me how to drive the Ford. That's men's business, they both said. Now they're both gone and it's my business. Mine and Siobhan, but she doesn't want to drive an automobile. Ever since my son died in the flu epidemic, all she's bothered with has been her kitchen and her two of my twenty-eight grandchildren. Patrick and Agnes are growing up real fine, but it's smothered and led by their Uncle Collin they are. I wish that man would stay out of our business! Isn't he busy enough with his parish?

So now I'm learning to drive this automobile. We've had it ten years and it's a bloody shame, Martin never taught his red-haired mother how to drive it. But I've got to do it on my own now. That -- and vote in the presidential election. First time I've got to make a decision like that. Always left those things to men, things like driving and voting. But now the men are gone, the politicians gave us women the right to vote. Pretty soon there'll be a telephone in the house, that's what they're saying'll come next. That I'm not ready for. Sure is enough, calling on neighbors Sunday afternoons. Don't need for my knitting, my reading, or my cooking to be interrupted by a telephone ringing. Better to receive a telegram in the mail from Western Union, someone needs to send me a message.

Voting. Hmmph. All a bunch of crooks is what I say -- we've got the Democrats, they've been in power now for eight years. And we've got the Republicans, they'd like to be in power again. Well, I'm for the Irish and they tend to be Democrats -- but my husband, he was a Republican and my son, he was a Democrat. So now I can't choose, do I vote for Cox or do I vote for Harding? Can't say I care to vote for either one. Perhaps I'll vote for Edith Wilson ... now she'd be a good president.