Don't Leave Home On St. Pat's Day Without Something Green, Like Take Out the Christmas Tree

Loeffelbein - Now there’s a good old Irish name for you!
Just kidding, of course. Nonetheless, I still conform to the wearin’ of the green on St. Patrick’s Day, along with the 33.7 million residents of the U.S. claiming Irish ancestry. Anyone who doesn’t wear it is asked by everyone he meets where his green is, anyhow, so I’ve found it’s just easier to go with the flow.
It is not just Ireland and the U.S. celebrating any more. Some 147 countries now have St. Patrick festivals, including Sri Lanka, Japan and Indonesia, according to a report from Ireland’s Guinness brewery. In Ireland, however, March 17 historically was a religious holiday, as big as Christmas.
Of course, I won’t be alone. Thousands of  pseudo-Irish across the country will celebrate the day with green everything everywhere. Some of the places people find to put it, in fact, amazes and amuses me.
One of my own early remembrances, as a just-turned teenager, was of a local department store in my home town of Wenatchee, Washington, advertising an all-green lingerie style show “for men only”. The idea, of course, was for male attendees to purchase this exotic fare for wives and sweethearts. They were ahead of their time and even  of Victoria’s Secret”.
Naturally, I yearned to attend, even though I had no one to buy such garments for, even if I could have recognized any of their uses and had had the money. Now I see it as a quirk of nature that, when I was old enough to attend such a skin-show, I had much less inclination to do so.
Today, it seems, everyone gets cute for St. Pat’s Day, especially pubs and restaurants. Whereas the archetypal joke about Irish eating is “a seven course Irish dinner consisting of  a six-pack and a boiled potato”, it is just a joke. But while living in southern California some years back, I noticed some pretty unusual dining ads.
*The Wan-Q restaurant along Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles was serving “Cant O’Nese” food, with typical Irish music such as “Lovely Houlihans”.
* Andre’s in Beverly Hills went Gaelic, featuring “Paddy de foie gras”.
* Dorando’s in Hollywood, noted for its Italian cuisine, went with “Mac O’Roney” on its menu.
* One of the Irish bars (I’ve forgotten the name) gave out small shamrock lapel pins to customers.
* A truck stop near Barstow, CA, featured “Shamrock soup”, which turned out to have a lot of peas in it.
* A malt shop near Richland, WA, was serving Kelly green water, coffee made with green water and even had corned beef and cabbage as the day’s special, with green lemon pie for dessert.
Some years later the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, playing on St. Pat’s Day,  sported green uniforms with shamrocks on their sleeves, in place of their usual predominantly red glad-rags. Publicity reported they would wear the green whenever they played again on St. Pat’s Day.
I also remember there was a dentist named Peter Sweeney in Hollywood who made it a point to announce he was using green mouthwash on St. Pat’s Day. And I read about Warren Weber, who owned car washes in Manchester and Wetherfield, CT, who advertised that his establishments would wash all green cars free from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. At closing time he dazedly tallied the day’s score - 1,600 green cars, at a $3,000 loss. He said he wasn’t going to do that anymore.
Such green enhancements were small potatoes compared to what has gone on in cities with concentration of Irish citizenry. Perhaps the largest concentration is in New York City, where they hold athe oldest and biggest St. Pat’s annual parade. It was either first held in 1762, we are told, though some claim it occurred even earlier, in 1664. It has grown to a six-hour spectacle with more than 125,000 green-clad paraders making the two and a half-mile shamrock shamble.
Some people of Irish persuasion, especially among the older generations, never miss it. One year, so the story goes, one elderly gent, originally hailing from County Cork in auld Erin, was convalescing after a long illness. But, when he heard the parade passing, he rose from his wheelchair wearing only his nightshirt and raced downstairs. On the way he wrenched a luxuriantly green potted palm in the lobby up by its roots, hoisted it to his shoulder and, so decorated, joined the throng following the green stripe painted down the avenue for the parade route.
The next largest annual celebration is probably in Chicago There they usually commemorate the day by dumping 100 pounds of vegetable dye into the Chicago River so it runs bright green. Their parade has included as many as 185 bands. Led by the Police Emerald Society Pipe Band, it has included as many as 38 bagpipe bands. once claimed as the largest congregation of pipers ever assembled.
Novelty dealers do huge curbside business purveying green tam-o-shanters, T-shirts which query “Where’s the beer?” or “Kiss me, I’m Irish”, and green-sheen flowers (of any color originally, until soaked in green dye overnight).
The day is a triple cause for celebration in Boston, where even the Irish remember it was on March 17, 1776 that General George Washington drove the British from Boston. “St. Patrick” was the password during that operation. But before that even, in 1737, Boston held the first St. Patrick’s celebration, not Ireland.
Seattle also has an annual parade, but the celebration became so popular it was stretched into an Irish Festival Week. The only thing that sticks out in my memory, making it different from other celebrations, was that it was capped with a soda bread baking competition. That’s an acquired Irish taste.
Citizens of Neill, NE, - dubbed Nebraska’s Irish Capital - paint shamrocks at street intersections to guide paraders. Sometimes they have to get out shovel brigades first to clear the snow. Then three-quarters of the town’s 4,000 population has still been known to attend.
Checking in on towns named Shamrock, we find the one in Texas draws as many as 4,000 revelers into town for its mini Mardi-Gra, with themes like “An Irish Salute to Texas”. Another in Oklahoma, population only 225 without the economy for any big blowout, usually settles for painting its biggest rock green.
Residents of Dublin, OH, got to make free international phone calls, including to their sister city in Ireland, while Cable TV’s Nick-at-Night, a few years back, re-ran four episodes of  “My Three Sons”, all tinted green.
In Vancouver, WA, the Irish flag has been raised at the Clark County Courthouse since 1936. This was a tradition started by noted pioneer resident Denny Lane and carried on by his descendents. They follow this with a traditional Irish feast and liberal toasting, music and jigging.
The only tradition I liked better was that of Frederick, MD. They don’t parade there, but instead “pub walk”, promenading from one end of Patrick and Market Streets to the other end from 3 p.m. to closing or to the end of  mass bladder control.
So it is, ideas have ranged from miniscule to magnificent, from the ridiculous to the nearly sublime. And this St. Pat’s Day we should expect nothing less.
Meanwhile to Irishmen everywhere:
May you always have
A sunbeam to warm you,
Good luck to charm you.
And a sheltering angel so nothing can harm you;
Laughter to cheer you,
Faithful friends near you,
And whatever you pray, heaven to hear you.
Happy ST. Patrick’s Day.


###