Thoughts and memories for another St. Patrick's Day

Ok, that's over. Another St. Patrick's Day in the books. Your green clothes in the laundry or the dry cleaning, which is ready to put it back into your closet, this “kiss me, I am Irish” buttons that were thrown in a drawer, her memories of this edition of these celebrations of the local holidays, which were kept somewhere.

If you have participated in the Hoopla of the weekend, good for you. Perhaps some of them have a hangover this morning who did not follow the advice of George Shinnick Sr., who opened the venerable Shinnick's Pub in Bridgeport in 1938 and had this timeless tavern wisdom: “Whoever drinks and drinks, always drinks with grace / is always welcome / who drinks more than his share.

I have nothing against drinking and still remember, a little foggy, how they may be, youthful memories of St. Pat Pat's Parade Day on Elfman's Delicatessen in State Street and then, then north, stopped at a bar we meet, and that would only be one of us. Such an excessive drinking behavior remains one of the reasons why people divide this holiday against the excesses and argue that Booze and its associated misconduct tries the unjust, drunk Irish stereotype.

My mother was Irish to her core, a Cavanagh, and she took me to my first parade to St. Patrick's Day, which was also the first to stop in State Street in 1956.

I don't remember, although I can logically assume that Mayor Richard J. Daley cited this first parade. But I always remembered something that my mother told me that day. When we saw the parade, there were hundreds of smiling faces all around us and I asked my mother, who didn't smile: “Why are you not happy?”

“The Irish didn't always have a happy time,” she said.

I would learn really enough from stories from her and her mother. I would find out that March 17th is the day on which St. Patrick died 461, and he is attributed to bring Christianity to Ireland, and when he frees the island of the snakes apoucry.

I didn't drink a drink on Monday, but was tried. I live in a neighborhood with taverns – a name Dublin, for the capital of Ireland – many of them fine and lively places. And so I thought that I was thinking about going to one of them when I was approached by a young man who bumped into a plastic-one-gallon water jug ​​and asked: “This is my Borg. It was 10 a.m.

I will not give you the details of our entire conversation, which took place in the one-block route of the Street Division between the streets and Dearborn.

“Ok, what is a Borg?” I asked.

He explained that a Borg stands for Blackout Rage Gallon and is a relatively new “invention”, a preparation that consists of a fifth of vodka, water and a kind of aroma (its orange kool-aid). It has nothing to do with St. Patrick. It has nothing to do with Ireland.

I thanked him as polite as possible and went home to hear a song.

It is a nice song entitled “In The City of Chicago”. Sung by Christy Moore, embodies what it means to be Irish in this city.

In the city of Chicago

When the evening shadows fall

There are people who dream

From the hills of Donegal.

1847 was the year in which it all started

Deadly hunger pain drove a million out of the country

They didn't travel because of fame

Your motif was not greedy

A survival trip across the stormy sea.

To the city of Chicago

When the evening shadows fall

There are people who dream

From the hills of Donegal.

Some of them knew luck

Some of them knew fame

The hardness knew more of them

And died on the level

They spread throughout the nation

They drove with the railway cars

Brought her songs and music to relieve her lonely hearts.

To the city of Chicago

When the evening shadows fall

There are people who dream

From the hills of Donegal.

And that was that, another St. Patrick's Day over and did.

rkogan@chicagotribune.com