Robin Hood
I looked at the charred rafters. It was a home that had burned a few years back and a man had died in the fire. Today was the first time I felt the spirit of the man had found rest and the house was finally at peace. It was early evening, late January and the sun was low. The sky was still bright blue at half past four. The trees now dark and splendid had a vitality within them as they waited patiently for their first buds to swell and unfold in February.
I coughed harshly......the remnants of a bad cold that has stuck with me for a week. I coughed again and remembered we had a late breakfast. The front door knocker sounded.
"Are you expecting anyone?"
"No"
Mary opened the door and there was the friendly patter of talk by someone trying to identify himself in a jocund, lighthearted and conspiratorial way. When he mentioned Coxsackie I knew they were on common ground and into the kitchen walked Finbar Coleman. It had been thirty seven years.
In 1986 we travelled to New York for the Summer. We stayed in Earlton in an old wooden house beside a slow moving creek where we swam long into the warm evenings beneath the leafy trees that grew on its banks. Squeals and shouts and dares-to-jump reverberated throughout the dell til sunset.
Alice Gatt, Mary's aunt put me in touch with a man originally from near Kinsale in Cork. Finbar Coleman had sold up the family farm and moved to Coxsackie with his family in search of adventure and the dream of a better life and prosperity in the land of opportunity. He built a very fine, large wooden house on top of a hill in the countryside on the west side of town. My work for the Summer was to coat the wooden house with a protective stain before the exterior cladding was added. The weather was hot and dry but because of the elevated location I always had a strong breeze to keep me cool. Each morning I was invited in for coffee with Finbar's wife Nollag and his mother, Nanna. Our conversations were pleasant and her home baking was scrumptious. The weeks passed quickly though and soon it was time to return home. Mary came to collect me at quitting time on my final day of work. We were saying goodbye to Finbar when he presented me with a very generous cash bonus. It was such a very kind gesture. And Mary was given a gold neck chain in a gift box. This was so typical of the man, generous, warm hearted, caring and genuinely kind. He was managing a few laundromat and car wash businesses for a businessman called Jon Flach.
Life was good, his children were doing well at school and he was studying for his real estate license. He was living the American dream !!
And here he was now, after all the time that had passed, standing before me in the kitchen of our house.
It was startling !
"I can't stay," in his warm, melodic Cork accent.
"There's people outside in the car there waiting for me"
"I have always asked Alice how you guys were getting along"
"I did"
"I always did"
"I will be eighty next year"
"I only retired last year!"
"My son John took over my concrete business"
"My niece is married to an Emyvale lad, the son of Kathleen and Sean O' Brien. You know them...."
"And the lads too, Danny....& your other brother,.....what's his name Billy"
"And Chrissy ? She went into the police force I think"
"And your other sister, aye Kathy. How is she ? She has a beautiful voice"
"And how is Nollag?" I enquired.
A pause,
"Oh Nollag died four years ago. She was seventy one"
"And Nanna lived to be ninty nine"
"And I have another niece married to another Emyvale lad, Edwin Corrigan"
"Do you know him? You do"
"They met in Cork !!"
Such a coincidence !!
The conversation ebbed and flowed.
I took him out to the studio and Finbar as always, who marveled at the gifts bestowed on other people, was warm in his appreciation.
I gave him a wood-burnt picture of flowers.
We exchanged numbers.
"Next time you're over come and stay with me!! I have a big house and only myself in it"
"I will"
And I will.
And then he was gone.
My cough returned. My throat was dry and my voice was weak again. I took my antibiotic and steroid medicine and we marveled at our morning guest.
We couldn't settle. We traveled towards Monaghan town, past the estate walls of Castle Leslie that are being buttressed to prevent further damage, past the house with the charred rafters and on to the old Armagh road.
Mary's mind drifted to memories of her childhood in Coxsackie, her friends, Sheri and Tina and their little singing group called Wandering Joy. Which also included her younger sister Kathy, the one with the beautiful voice.
A memory surfaced. Back in 1975 I traveled by bus to Galway University to enroll as a first year student. I would be studying there for a Science degree. I sat in beside an elderly man in a plaid jacket and brightly coloured pants. He wore a hat and appeared to me to be the type of gentleman that would doff his hat to a lady to convey respect or perhaps wore it to add the perception of height to his small stature. We got into conversation but I quickly retreated back from him. His breath carried the fusty odour of cigar smoke and strong whiskey. He knew Coxsackie he said. His pale blue watery eyes smiled when I told him my girlfriend had lived there.
"Coxsackie Correctional Facility is in that area" he added,
"In Greene County."
He looked watchfully out the window at the Garda car hurrying in the opposite lane.
"That's a maximum security prison that houses the worst, the most dangerous criminals in the state," he continued.
"Inmates there have the least freedom of any institution because they are violent........and dangerous.... murderers, armed-bank robbers, sex offenders. All felons incarcerated there are bad men, the worst of the worst!"
He nodded.
He tipped his head forward, his hat covered his eyes and he slept.
Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
Coxsackie Correctional Facility, Greene County
On we went, past the remnants of an ancient Round Tower and past Bessmount House.
"Did your family live in Coxsackie ?" I turned and asked Mary.
"No about ten minutes drive from it. We went to that school district and we went to church there. Alice lives there still. In Apple Blossom Lane"
I remembered Alice and Tony's house. A happy place with lots of keepsakes, remembrances and tokens from Ireland.
"Do you remember the bank heists in Coxsackie in the early 1990's" I say.
"Of course !!"
"I wonder if the Pinocchio Bank Robber was incarcerated in Coxsackie Prison."
Police sketch of "Long-nosed bandit"
The notorious Pinocchio Bandit also known as Big Nose had perpetrated a string of bank robberies in upstate New York. He had hit fifteen banks in all, including Schenectady, Troy and Colonie in the previous two years.
"Don't know. Maybe"
After a heist in East Greenbush in late 1996, a sharp-eyed State Trooper Scott V. Schriner, spotted a man fitting the robber's description sitting in a car in Schodack. He questioned the suspect who told him he was headed to a local high school for his child’s sports event.
Schriner and another agent also went to the high school. The man was near his car when they arrived.
"We approached him and started talking with him--and he confessed to having just robbed the Hudson City Savings Institution," Schriner said.
"We asked if we could look in his vehicle"
"Sure"
They did and found the $7,200 from the bank stuffed under the driver’s seat.
The suspect was arraigned before East Greenbush Town Justice Charles Assini and remanded to Rensselaer County Jail without bail.
An affidavit filed on December 11th in the United States District Court stated that the defendant admitted stealing $81,230 from 14 other banks throughout the state since April 1995.
He had displayed what appeared to be a gun to the teller on at least two occasions during the robbery. He never spoke but wielded a note demanding "All large bills now."
The man known to police as the "Pinocchio Bandit" was eventually sentenced to 85 months in prison for robbing the 15 upstate banks.
It turned out the gun he used was a pellet gun.
And it turned out also he was Irish, from Cork and had the same first names as one of our sons, Daniel Finbar.
Daniel Finbar Coleman, 51 years, of West Coxsackie was also ordered also to pay $81,230.50 in restitution to the banks he robbed.......
One of the nicest men I have ever met.
I hope he likes the pyrography picture of the flowers.
I hope he displays it somewhere in his house.
I intend to check when I visit him, next Summer in Coxsackie.
The road meanders on, into Monaghan and we make plans to go for coffee in Coffee Break With Barbara...... right beside The Courthouse in the centre of town.
Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
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