Travels With Mike

Hat Trick on St. Patrick's

by Mike Rank | March 27, 2002 This is my Guiness drinking shirt. Buy books about Irish people and stuff! Having recently moved to the East Coast, I figured St Patricks would be a good opportunity to venture from the neighborhood and explore the world. I love holidays that have digressed into an excuse to gorge yourself with thumbed food. Thanksgiving is an excellent example; a day when we gather together to give thanks that two cultures came together so many years ago to spawn a four day holiday and conveniently located Indian Gaming Casino's in any state. I tried to help ring in St Patricks Day last year with a trip to Tijuana, but it was terribly difficult to find Irish Tequila . I tried to counteract it by spending Cinco De Mayo in a pub, but a Guinness/Kaluha Margarita leaves much to be desired. While New York boasts the largest St Patricks parade in the country, Boston was the natural choice. Did you know that St Patrick was actually born an Englishman who was kidnapped as a child to be a slave, which is what they did back in those days? That's one of many fun and interesting facts I learned one evening from a cabbie who's B.A.C. appeared to be higher than the four of us crammed into the back. In New York, you're hard pressed to find a cabbie who speaks English, much less one who is able to expel historical data which appears to possibly have some shred of historical backing. Our chap was delightful and merely snickered when, after driving for what appeared to be an endless amount of time through desolate neighborhoods, I asked if he planned to take us somewhere to kill us. Oh, how he laughed and giggled to himself. The morning of the parade we found ourselves to be a bit dodgey after a night on the town, experiencing Boston's finest pubs and the sort. We headed to Southie a tad bit before the parade was slated to start, travelling in a mini-van cab who's back end groaned and threatened to fall off with every pothole or bump in the road. He let us off near a barricaded bridge to the South End, where a couple of cops sat in their car feasting on Duncan Donuts. Walking over the bridge, we were met with a frightening collage of rap music and bagpipes which melted together to form the audio equivalent of being shot in the eye with hot sauce. Visually, it was a majestic spattering of men in skirts carrying various musical instruments or weaponry, floats adorned in every conceivable shade of green, and marching bands featuring musicians of every age, many so young they could hardly walk on their own and others so old they could hardly do likewise. Rather than spoil the events to come, we quickly assimilated to the gathered masses which had taken the shape of a singular, thriving organism rather than a collective gathering of individuals. It took us a while to forge through the crowd, pressing against the drunken throngs who gleefully congregated and swore at one another. It was unanimously decided that base camp would be made on a corner behind a rowdy family of authentic Irishmen and women. While their boisterous accents were more than enough to convince us to set up shop in their vicinity, my initial gut-feeling was confirmed when I realized all of the men in this crowd were wearing thick-striped green and white polo shirts which were bizarrely complemented with their plaid kilts. Again I stress, you cannot go wrong with men who flagrantly flaunt their feminine side with colorful and otherwise unacceptable individuality. Be it drag queens or die hard European Islanders, they're great company. These men, obviously father and sons, took the opportunity to insult and make seemingly slanderous gestures towards one another in thick, slurring accents which I could barely interpret but assumed that they were swearing, which makes it all that much funnier. Once the parade actually began, I was thoroughly disappointed at the accelerated pace of the entertainment. A barrage of police and fire vehicles came roaring down the street with lights flashing and sirens blaring, the attending officers taking casual notice of the crowds. Their accelerated pace led me to believe that they were unaware a parade was taking place and were on their way to an actual emergency. In the Interim period, the crowd entertained themselves by cheering random individuals who had the misfortune of wandering onto the street. A rookie police officer who wasn't sure where he was assigned turned several shades of crimson while the crowd screamed and clapped for him as he meandered down the street. Our collective exuberance increased for the drunken woman who stumbled down the street in a shred of a green, sequined dress, her cleavage pouring out in supple waves she doubled over herself to greet the hooting throngs. Her skinhead boyfriend expressed his extreme disgust at the crowd with a series of grimaces and sneers. Once the actual parade began, I lost interest. The first few bagpipe marching bands were exciting, but the constant saturation quickly caused my ears to bleed. A number of cars came by with people waving from the backseat, none of whom I recognized. A bus full of senior citizens who had served in a war or something. They peered from the windows with a look of severe confusion and fear, reinforcing my theory that they were tricked onto the bus by being told that they were going to the Indian Casino. I had been at the Indian Casino a few nights earlier and was surrounded by throngs of their peers, all hunched over the machines in anticipation of winning back their social security money for the month. I spent several hours playing craps, where the entire table was bitching that the nurse hadn't brought them any drinks for over an hour. I weaseled my in between a group of drunken teenagers and an old man yelling "Ten on the Yo! Gimme ten on the Yo, Muthafucka!" I stayed long enough to lose two hundred bucks, only to win it all back on a solitary bet on the middle column on the roulette table. Always bet on the middle. Or Black. After an hour and a half of the parade, we were done. You've seen one clan of bagpipe tooting, skirt wearing dudes walking down the street, you've seen them all. It's hard to get too excited about a group of kids performing authentic Irish jigs on the back of a flatbed trailer pulled behind a big rig. However, I will say that I was rather impressed with their ability to make that wooden platform quiver. During my days as a machinist, I spent many a late night loading similar trailers with pieces of machinery or tooling pushing anywhere from a ton to ten tons in weight. These Irish punk kids with their riverdancing punk ass moves made that trailer bed buckle and moan in a way that a two and a half ton piece of satellite tooling equipment couldn't even touch. It was frightening. Once it was time to leave, we were faced with the daunting task of making our ways through the drunken tumor which had overcome the sidewalk and street. I gave more than my fair share of elbows to pikey's who tried to cut their way in front of me on the way to their caravan's. There was a huge bottleneck as a result of a two foot high aluminum railing which had to be scaled in order to make your way off of the parade route. I pushed my way in front of several older women to make my way through the scrambled mess of a crowd. In order to preserve my karma, I positioned myself on the opposite side of the fence once I passed through and helped the women cross over the fence. Is it any wonder chicks dig me? Sources say "No". While I would have loved to have stayed, drink and fight with men twice my size who would undoubtedly pummel me, I was glad to leave. Someday I will find the time to move into Boston and become one of the natives. Until then, I'm content being a casual observer, happy with my part as a witness to the drunken debauchery called "tradition" in this fair city of mine.