I am planning on walking to The Front Page this afternoon. It is only prudent. I am, above all things, a man of calculation. I tend not to go out on New Year’s Eve in my personal vehicle, for the obvious reason. The amateurs are out, too, and it is the best personal defense from the potential for meeting inebriated drivers and police check points.

St. Patrick’s Day is the other occasion for which I hang up the keys and rely on Shank’s Mare to travel.

I already did the first part of my ritual. I bought a corned beef and a nice head of cabbage the last time I was at the Commissary and did my Texas trick: I rinsed the beef and patted it down dry, added that bizarre packet of seasonings to some adobo and pepper rub, pouched it in foil and cooked it on low heat (190 degrees) in the oven for about twenty hours. Then I let it rest until cool and cut it in neat strips across the grain, dropping a couple into a sauce pot with the cabbage cut in quarters and the odd carrot, pearl onions and cubed new potatoes and set that mess on “low” on the stovetop and went to the bar.

A lot of people use St. Paddy’s as an excuse to get stumbling drunk during daylight, not that such an excuse is really necessary, but I come by it all honestly. The last full-blooded Irishman in the family was Grandfather Mike Foley, the hard-fisted tough guy and railroad engineer from Galway Bay, via the Ohio River Valley. The family had a thing about waterways, and perhaps that accounts for the Viking-blonde color of his hair, or the blazing blue of his eyes, cool as the North Sea.

I never met him. He lived hard, from his days as a high school football star (“The Irish Mafia” was his backfield at Bellaire High) and Mom came down the stairs at their row house in the little river city to find him slumped at the dining table, a bottle of whiskey on the table before him. That is probably why Big Mama eschewed anything more potent than a wine spritzer the rest of her life, that and the struggle for Grandmother to take care of her three girls alone as the War came.

Grandmother was a lovely and strong woman. She got a job keeping the books at the Lumber yard, and they made do. She also insisted that her daughters have no truck with The Church, and were raised Protestant.

So that might have defused the importance of the Holiday in our home as I grew up, Mom being only half Irish, and her children just a quarter. But I carry Mike’s ruddy coloring and eyes, and when I looked in the mirror as a younger man, I could see a hint of him in me.

I talked to Great Aunt Barbara one time, years ago, before she passed. She was Mike’s sister, and she spoke of him in the present tense, as if he had just left to go down to the corner for a pint.

Which became the special holiday to celebrate our own diversity and contribution to the sprawling American Story. With the Ulster Troubles in our teens, we rebelliously endorsed the romance of the Rebels, and heritage of the Republican cause. We didn’t know what we were celebrating, since the Easter Rising had long been hi-jacked by other agendas.

There were some memorable ones, down through the years. I remember my first alcohol-fueled one at college, at the Village Bell, when the pledges from the frat house got so embarrassingly intoxicated, and that embarrassing incident that required a mop and bucket ensued. Events like that should not be permitted, and I am appalled that I participated in the ritual for the next five years without interruption. As I recall, the days usually started with the first lager sometime before the noon hour, and there was an informal competition to see who the first would be who was excreting the green dye in the pitchers of cold draft beer.

In adulthood, a certain tranquility eased in around the holiday. The Pentagon, the long straight boulevards of the former runways at Bolling AFB or the ominously civilized compound at Langley did not lend themselves to raucous merriment, and in retirement, the business world seemed to frown on being pie-eyed in the cubical after lunch. At the Dubliner, the fine and iconic authentic Irish bar near Union Station had real young Irish boy-os behind the bar. The word was that the IRA had a connection to the place, and the young men were in the States just to cool off for a wee bit.

I wouldn’t have believed it, until I noticed that the hotel that embraced the bar was called “The Phoenix Park,” and once was said to have had rocket propelled grenades stored in the basement. As any schoolchild can tell you was the place in Dublin where the Irish National Invincibles stabbed Lord Cavendish, the Queen’s Chief Secretary and Permanent Undersecretary for Ireland Thomas Burke back on the 6th of May, 1882.

If you happen to see anyone partying hard after we celebrate our Mexican heritage on Cinco de Mayo, you might have an idea what they might actually commemorating.

But now, on this magnificent example of a Spring day here in Arlington, I think it is worth starting just a bit early this afternoon. It just seems right. What are the alternatives? Finish the last two hundred pages of a magnificently-written assignment for the Book Group. Complete the onerous 2015 taxes? Read company email?

The hell with it. I better get walking. There may be snakes along the way that need driving out, as Saint Paddy once did to the serpents in the auld sod.

The game’s afoot!

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com