First Posted: 3/17/2015
Certainly, for some, Tuesday was just another day, a day in which there was some labor, perhaps a little green beer later in the day and a day to accessorize a bit by adding a bit of green to the old sartorial presentation.
Minus that green beer thing, that was pretty much my day, unless, of course, you count the reverie into which I occasionally slipped when I went back in time a bit to my favorite St. Patrick’s Day ever.
While I’ve certainly had some good ones, a couple of which were in my more reckless wonderful college days at Mother Miami in Southeastern Ohio when my pals and I would go downtown and celebrate the youth we all thought was our birthright in perpetuity, not one St. Patrick’s Day was ever better than the one I experienced in the land of its birth in 2010.
While I was captivated by so much of what I saw on the Emerald Isle, not the least of which were the Cliffs of Moher and those wonderful gastro-pubs in Dublin’s Temple Bar District, my St. Patrick’s Day in Killarney, a town with a reputation as the tidiest city in Ireland, and its 15,000 or so residents on the northeastern shore of Lough Leane in County Kerry was the best.
As far as any misconception you may have about St. Patrick’s Day not being a very big deal in Ireland, well, I’ll debunk that notion. I’d heard the same thing before leaving for the trip, but the reality of it is the day is certainly not an afterthought. It’s a national holiday, with schools and most businesses closed. Those businesses that are open are those that count the day as one of the year’s most profitable, such as the shops and, of course, the pubs.
I remember the day featured the briskness I expected in mid-March, as in the mid-40s (although in Ireland, the land of Celsius readings, the mid-teens). But, it also was a day that featured as blue an Irish sky as one could ever imagine and a brilliant sun to accentuate that color.
Following a morning coach tour through the southwestern part of the country known as the Ring of Kerry, we returned to Killarney, where we had a two-day layover by early afternoon, when some good holiday fun was really just beginning.
The parade began at 2 p.m., and my Lady Jane and I secured an excellent viewing location to see the procession. I remember counting the number of faux St. Patricks who walked past or rode atop floats waving, six of them in all. Fifty floats and a trio of regiments of bagpipers were interspersed with literally dozens of troupes of gaily-attired Irish children who were thrilled to be showing off their Celtic dancing on a day when they would ordinarily been trying to conquer fractions.
After the parade, as grand a procession as I’d ever seen, we headed off far from the celebratory tumult downtown to St. Mary Cathedral, a solemn and immense stone structure for a little prayerful solitude, which the natives have been doing since the mid-19th century.
Of course, for me, a little partying is also a must on this day, so it was back out to rejoin the downtown throng to drink in the atmosphere and, of course, some pints of that dark, rich Guinness with the caramel-colored frothy head capable of supporting a bottle cap all the way to the last swallow.
My favorite pub was the Crock ‘O Gold because I thought the music was the best. I was able to see up close what time means in Ireland, a country where so many put an “ish” on the ends of when activities commence. While the sign out front said the music would start at 5, the musicians arrived like hobos, as in one at a time, over the course of about 45 minutes.
However, when they were all in place just before 6, the musicians’ blend of guitar, mandolin, bass, spoons and washboard and the real star, the accordion, what a sound was put forth, a type of music the accordionist and spokesman called Celtic (with a hard c) Cajun!
My, what a St. Patrick’s Day to remember — to be in Killarney on a brilliantly sunny Irish day where there was always a friendly face, a different shade of red hair, a parade, a prayer, some Guinness and a little Celtic Cajun.
