March 17, 2017 – My favorite St. Patrick’s Day Memory

          When we first married we lived in Overland Park, Kansas, which was a short drive to the famous shopping district on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Kansas.  Back 1979, St. Patrick’s Day was on a Saturday and my husband’s colleagues at work said the biggest and best St. Patrick’s Day celebration was at Houlihan’s on the Plaza and that year they were opening at the crack of dawn or some outrageous early hour.  We had never been to Houilhan’s before and it sounded like fun.

          We got up in the dark, dressed, and headed out for breakfast at Houlihan’s.  Hard pressed to find anything green to wear, I ended up in an oatmeal cable sweater and forest green pants.  I was young then and always wore four inch heels with my pants then. [You’ll appreciate this detail later.]

         

 We arrived in the breaking dawn and could hardly get in the door for the wall to wall bodies already partying.  It was a noisy, rowdy bunch, with the drinks and song already swelling up. At the door my husband bought a pair of festive foam straw boater hats with green Houilhan’s logo bands on them.  [Over the years I have packed and unpacked them on many occasions and we are suddenly down to only one now. I still have that one kept in a safe cupboard for memory sake.]

We found my husband’s colleagues and had a hearty breakfast laced with Irish Coffees. [This is where I acquired the taste for real Irish coffee.]

After breakfast and partying and after having “enough” Irish coffee we lurched out into the stunning sunshine at Noon on a Saturday.  The contrast from the darkened interior to the exterior was drastic and just about blinded us.  The cold March wind was now blowing and we held onto our boaters as we made our way to our parked car.

          On the way home to our apartment I mentioned I would love another Irish Coffee so my husband stopped at the liquor store closest to our apartment.  Still in the St. Patrick’s Day spirit I had my boater hat on and stepped out of the car. 

The flat-land gusting Kansas wind took my boater off and it when sailing across the barren parking lot.  I ran after it.  It landed and I made a dive for it.  I missed it as the gusty wind captured it again and again as it tumbled it further along stopping flat, then being caught again by the wind.  In my four-inch heels I dashed this way and that many times and was unable to snatch it up between its landing and being picked up again by the gusty wind.  By now I was at the furthest end of the parking lot near the highway when the wind quieted down long enough for me to run to it and snatch it off the tarmac.  When I turned to walk the long way back to the car, my husband was leaning against the car having watching the entire ordeal and had a big smile was on his face.

How I didn’t break my ankle was beyond me.  I was frozen cold, and gasping for breath when I got back to the car and even went into the liquor store with my hands firmly on that boater.

Later that afternoon cuddled in front of a blazing fire in the grate we had Irish Coffee continuing our celebration. 

Yesterday I mentioned blarney and someone questioned me on it.  So, below I bring you an excerpt from Fulton J. Sheen’s book – Life is Worth Living which our Catholic priest, Father Burke, recommended as reading during Lent.  If you have never read it, I suggest you put it on your reading list.

Father Sheen has a chapter entitled “The Psychology of the Irish” and starts off with listing the three psychological traits of the Irish as:

1.   Love of a fight

2.   Humor

3.   Blarney

Below is part of what he writes about Blarney:

“Blarney:  There is a difference between blarney and boloney.  Blarney is the varnished truth; boloney is the unvarnished lie.  Blarney is flattery laid on so thin you love it; boloney is flattery laid on so thick you hate it.

To tell a woman who is forty, “You look like sixteen,” is boloney.  The blarney way of saying it is “Tell me how old you are; I should like to know at what age women are most beautiful.”

I once saw an Irishman get up in the subway and give his seat to a lady.  She said, “You are a jewel.”

He said, “Lady, I am a jeweler; I set jewels.”  That is blarney.”

I will leave you with a St. Patrick’s Day quote:

May you live as long as you want

 and never want as long as you live.