Modern Technology

Modern Technology

By Mary Fahey
 

I sold my house earlier this year.

My realtor warned me “Be careful to make sure your account number is correct on the wire transfer to your bank because hackers can reroute the proceeds check to their bank account.”

I immediately called the escrow company. “I will pick up my check at the close of escrow. Don’t wire it.”

When escrow closed, I picked up the check and took it to my bank.

“We can’t accept this check,” the clerk said. “It’s made out to your trust and your account here is not in your trust.”

I returned to the escrow company and requested a check made out to me not the trust.

“We can’t do that,” the officer said. “Your house was in the trust so we need to make the check out to the trust.”

I returned to the bank and asked them to put my checking account into the trust so I can deposit the check.

“Okay, bring in your original trust and we can do that.”

My trust paperwork lives in the safety deposit box at a different bank.  By the time I retrieve it, night has fallen and the banks closed. The following day I arrive at my bank and proceed with the transfer of my account into the trust and subsequent deposit of the proceeds check.

“How soon can I withdraw some of this money,” I ask.

“Oh, you have to wait ten days before you can withdraw funds.”

Are you kidding…it’s MY money!

When the ten days came, I went on line to transfer the money to an investment account I had opened at a different bank. I couldn’t do it. So I went to the bank and asked how I can transfer funds. Here’s the explanation I received: There is no way to transfer money on line to an outside bank, only to a different account at the same bank. I can wire money to another bank at a cost of eight dollars. An outside bank can request a money transfer at no cost.

So I took the round robin way to transfer funds to my investment.

A few days later, I received a notice in the mail that my Mortgage Co. enclosed a check to refund an overpayment. The check amounted to thirty one cents (0.31). The cost of the paper to print it on plus the envelope and stamp to mail it had greater value than the thirty one cents. Not to mention the personnel to process it. I guess the computer needed to balance the books.

A week later, I received a letter from a legal office that said I’ve been awarded money from a class action settlement against my Mortgage Co. They enclosed a check for $129.85. I added the check for thirty one cents to make a grand total of $130.16. Whoopee!

A Partial Tree - part 2

As little as I know of my mother’s ancestry, I know even less of my father’s parents. Dad's mother Catherine Fahey died of cancer at the age of 60 having borne 17 children. I think she just wore out. My grandfather Andrew Fahey worked as a constable in my dad’s home town of Bay Bulls.

After leaving Tor Bay, my sister and I drove to Bay Bulls and inquired at the local bar if anyone knew of the Fahey’s who lived there many years ago. The bar manager, Anthony O’Brien said as a boy he knew Constable Fahey.

 “He was a huge man...6 foot six, with a size 14 shoe. He could pick you up by the scruff of your neck,” he said.

Before leaving Newfoundland, we stopped at the Drayton Hotel, owned by my Aunt Genevieve. We learned Marconi sent his first wire to Ireland from her hotel. Aunt Gen had been deceased for four years but when we inquired at the desk the clerk said, “Ask that fellow over there in the bar. He’s an old timer.” The grizzled bewhiskered “Old Timer” told us Aunt Genevieve’s daughter Mary had married a man named Laws. We looked in the telephone book and found our cousin Mary and her husband Jim Laws. Mary completed the story of my father’s parents.

*                      *                      *

Grandfather Fahey, an interesting character, joined the Queens Constabulary as a young man and remained in that capacity until his retirement 43 years later. Considerably taller than most men in the province of Newfoundland, he stood six feet two inches, (not 6'6" as Anthony O’Brien said), As strong as a bull, he inspired fear in all who saw him. They gave him the respect his office demanded.

He never carried a weapon and kept the peace merely by his size or occasionally kicking a troublemaker in the back side. As constable, he also functioned as customs agent, game warden, court prosecutor as well as policeman. Being employed by the state, he could not own property so he put the family residence in his wife Catherine’s name, who willed it back to him after her death of cancer at age sixty.

 

Catherine (Fardy) Fahey

 After Grandfather Fahey retired in 1924, he became a farmer on a 20-acre piece of land in Kilbride. When his horse broke loose, he chased it in his Model T Ford, tied the horse to the car and brought it back to the barn. When grandmother died in 1922, grandfather looked around for another wife and found a widow named Lucy Renough. Their short lived marriage ended one night at the supper table when Lucy slumped into her dinner plate and died of a heart attack. After the death of his second wife, grandfather hired a live-in housekeeper. Being a very proper man, a retired constable no less, grandfather said it didn’t look respectable to have a woman living under the same roof without benefit of marriage so my seventy-year old grandfather married his twenty-eight year old housekeeper, Katie.

He professed it to be a marriage of convenience, but I wonder about that. After all, he had fathered 17 children with my grandmother. At any rate, that doomed marriage came to an abrupt end when he caught his young wife with a young man in his Model T in the barn. He ran them both off his property. He never divorced Katie but remained separated from her for the rest of his life. He died in 1937 at age 80. What a guy!