Patrick's Corner

A bred-in-the-bone storyteller, the author makes this memoir a dramatic, moving and irrespressibly witty delight. A WW II baby, he was the youngest of widowed Kate Patrick's six sons. They lived in a tiny flat in a Cleveland, Ohio, tenement on Kate's pay as a char and the pennies the brothers earned on ``Patrick's corner,'' shining shoes and running errands. As the author shows, the family had little money but otherwise had all they needed: one another. Although he griped about inheriting the last of the hand-me-downs and about the older boys' bossiness, he knew he could count on their vigilant support in important ways. The Patrick brothers helped their youngest bear the afflictions of draconian nuns at his Catholic school (one, they swore, was a former heavyweight boxing champion) and in time taught him the art of courting. There are lively descriptions of ecumenical relations, celebrating the seder with Jewish neighbors and the ordination of a friend who succeeded his father as a Protestant minister, an Irish Orangeman. Today, the Patrick brothers number a judge, a college professor, a businessman, two fire chiefs and the author, who teaches writing at Fayetteville Technical Community College in North Carolina, and with his wife Pat has cared for 20 foster children. (Mar.)