Toppa the Mornin' to ya Gentle Readers,
You do know why it's called a Paddy Wagon, right?
Years before TWC's vagrant yoot, when he was but a wee lad, we had family friends that were turkey ranchers. The Patriarch spoke with a heavy Irish brogue that may as well have been a foreign language as it was entirely unintelligible to me. Old Man Porter once told me that, after the Big War, a prosperous Irish family owned two bicycles. That pearl was entirely lost on me at the time. He'd come to America and become fabulously wealthy, at least by Irish standards of living.
I loved his 1959 Cadillac with the bullet taillights, the 1959 El Camino with the 348, and the turkey egg that invariably found its way home with me after every visit. For the uninitiated, turkey eggs are pretty much chicken eggs on a Barry Bonds diet. Nothing exotic, they're just big. Fry them over-medium with a little butter, salt and pepper and serve with bacon, toast, and cold milk.
American St Patrick’s Day celebrations date back at least three hundred years. Like so many other things that makes this America, we have embraced this Irish festivity in a style that is uniquely ours. Shamrocks, leprechauns, green beer, green hair, a green river, and a lot of racket, which is old-country Irish slang for an old fashioned welcome-to-the-neighborhood party.
But in Ireland today it’s a softer and more subdued festival that often begins with a morning church service. Despite Ireland’s hard drinking reputation, as recently as thirty years ago most pubs were closed on St Paddy's Day in honor of this religious holiday. Even today the pubs are open mainly to serve the tourist trade arriving to celebrate a real Irish St Patrick’s Day.
The Wine O’Commonsewer
Photo Credit (unless otherwise noted): ©TWC, all rights reserved
