The story occurred in the l920's. It involved an uncle that died before I was born, but whose antics were legend in the Ahern family chronicles. I am told that the following is a true story.

He was one of seven children in a family in which the parents (my great grandparents) both died young. My uncles Jack and Alexander were the oldest and became the father figures for the five younger children. When the younger kids had a problem they went to either Jack or Alexander. Somehow they had a way of setting things right for the younger kids.

Jack was a tough Irish American kid from Brooklyn, New York, and was pretty handy with his fists. In high school he used to routinely get into fights with a kid named Franky Yale. The name probably means nothing to people outside New York. Franky Yale later became a crime boss during the l920's, and groomed a young protege for the Chicago mob, Al Capone...but that is another story.

Anyway Jack's sister married an Englishman. Bad decision in an Irish family during the l920's because it was the height of Irish Rebellion and anti-English sentiment was running high in the Irish American community.

One day his sister came to Jack and told him that her husband had struck her. Jack was waiting for the Englishman when he came home from work. The husband wore a bowler hat in the finest English tradition. He and his wife lived on the fourth or fifth story of the apartment building. As the husband came through the door he greeted Jack. Jack reached over and took his hat, and through it out the window. The husband ran to the window to see where his hat was. Jack walked up behind him, grabbed him by the ankles, and dangled him out the window. He told the husband that if he ever struck his sister again  that he would be back, and the next time he would drop him. Jack pulled the husband back in the window, put his coat on, and left wishing everyone a merry Christmas and to all a good night. Thereafter his sister never had a problem with spousal abuse.