[Hallicrafters] A Halli-Day Tale For The Green At Heart

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

       May Your Beer Be Green And Your Shamrocks Shake!

           A Leprechaun's View Of St. Patrick's Day


                                        By, Duane B. Fischer


     Every March 17th the Irish celebrate St. Patrick's Day
no matter where they may be living at the time. If in
Ireland, it is a religious holiday with a traditional meal of
Irish bacon and cabbage. Some time honored folk ballads and
maybe a few glasses of their favorite beverage from the local
pub.  The St. Patrick's Day we Americans have come to know is
largely thanks to Irish immigrants who landed in New York and
learned how to party!

     Everyone, whether truly of Irish lineage or just Irish
for the day, put on their green Shamrocks, eat corn beef and
cabbage, drink green beer and generally pollute the
atmosphere from one end of their anatomy or the other! The
company that distills and distributes the Irish whiskey known
as Johnny Walker, sells one third of its annual sales during
this one day. McDonald's restaurants sell a green mint
flavored Shamrock shake, the city of Chicago turns the river
running through the city green and more people devour
antacids because of the corn beef and cabbage dinner they
stuffed themselves with than any other day of the year! It's
St. Patrick's Day dude, ya gotta be green for the day!

     Now I don't mind a little fun, not even some intentional
disruption of placidity, as after all, we Leprechauns are
known historically for being red haired, fiery tempered and
mischievous party animals. But great shivering Shamrocks,
what these New York Irish transplants have done to our
beloved St.  Patrick's Day is enough to make the Irish Rovers
stop singing "Wasn't That A Party" and take up singing Opera!
Not to worry though, nary a one of them are chubby enough for
that!

     Now Patrick Maewin Succet was born a British subject
somewhere around 389 AD. They did not keep real accurate
records back then you know, as only a few men were literate.
The majority had no time to learn to read and write, as they
were busy hiding out from England's latest King with a bent
cog who spent his time inbreeding, waging war on his
neighboring countries, torturing anyone who disagreed with
him, taxing everything alive or dead and now and then
throwing a serious party.  Patrick was sold into slavery in
Ireland where he struggled to survive until one day he
managed to escape back to England. He studied religion,
became a Christian missionary and returned to Ireland.

     Along about 1847 things got really bad in Ireland. If
you were not starving to death from the famine, or being
persecuted because you were a Catholic majority in a
Protestant/British minority run country, then you gazed at
the beautifully majestic rainbow that sometimes arced across
the heavens after a rain and knew that the pot of gold at the
other end was a place called America.  Which really made it
tough for we Leprechauns to enjoy our mischievous ways as
humans were always trying to catch us in some new trap
somebody at the local pub with a belly full of beer and a
head full of air, bragged about to every fool that would
listen.

     Now you know the legend about Leprechauns, right? If you
can catch one then you can make him take you to where he has
his treasure hidden. Hence, that business about the pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow. The truth is, there was this
grassy path through some very colorful flowers that led to an
outhouse behind old Patty McCormick's pub. Hence the pot at
the end of the rainbow! As far as the gold went, just a
crock!

     Well after the great potato blight of 1845 where more
people died than in the Tower of London, the Irish got
desperate. Just to complicate things, the various Kings of
England had been granting land rights to British subjects
living in Ireland who promptly kicked the farmers off their
farms and used the land for grazing their cattle. Meanwhile,
the Catholic's and Protestant's had been fighting with each
other since about 1690 when the civil war had erupted. So
when somebody said that America would welcome the Irish and
that it was a land of hope for all, there was a mass exodus
about 1848.  Many millions left their native Ireland for the
harbors of New York and the imagined streets of gold, knowing
they would never see their beloved Emerald Isles again.

     "Now don't start sniffling and slobbering all over that
fake paper mache Shamrock pinned to your T-shirt with the
Unicorn embroidered on it, probably made in China, as a few
plagues, potato blights, famines, brutalities, murders by the
bloody British and the falling price for Sheep shit
fertilizer can't kill a Leprechaun! But those racially
bigoted high strutting New Yorker's with their egos larger
than a Dublin Sheep's belly bloated from eating artificial
grass, did their absolute best to obliterate the word "Irish"
from the dictionary! However, those Irish who survived the
ride over and through the salty seas from Hell in those
boats that made Noah's Ark look like a luxury liner, were
already more tough than a New York strip sirloin made out of
shoe leather! Surviving in Ireland had proven to be a good
training ground for the streets of New York!"

     "Hey Camel breath! You think this tale of suffering is
funny?  Wipe that stupid alcoholic grin off your face before
I dump some hot ashes from this hand carved Cherry wood pipe
down your boxers and we can all watch you dance an Irish jig!
I've got ten bucks that says if one of you cram a cork in his
mouth and another in his rectum that he explodes in less than
thirty minutes! Any takers?"

     "They actually posted signs in the windows of the shops
that said, "Irish need Not Apply!" That land of golden
opportunity was fast being transformed into a cemetery with
walking corpses. New York has the questionable honor of being
the first city in America to have a slum! Although the
politicians of the time had to find a better name than that,
so they called it Shanty Town. Well as fate would have it,
the Americans were busy fighting a war or two and were short
on police, firemen, soldiers and good old Yankee ingenuity.
Somebody realized that the Irish immigrants were already
trained as soldiers, so when they staggered off the boats
starving, sea sick, suffering from scurvy and dreadfully
confused, the men were drafted into the military. Some became
police officers, others firemen and still others enterprising
business men." I looked around the room to see if everyone
was still awake. A few had passed out on the floor and doused
themselves with green beer, no loss! A couple of others were
still sitting upright on their bar stools with a frozen smile
and glassy eyes, but if somebody burped loud they would
tumble like a house of cards! "The next round is on me!", I
shouted. "But no beer bartender, either they drink Irish
whiskey and sing a chorus with me of "When Irish Eyes Are
Smiling" or they can buy their own coffee from the vending
machine!"

     Well one song led to another, which led right into
another, and despite the effect of the alcohol on ones
ability to stay in key, the harmony was uplifting, the words
inspiring and the lines at the urinals long!

     Some guy with a black cloth patch over one eye and a
scar from his left ear to his chin that looked like a cheap
zipper, looked up from his plate of corn beef and cabbage and
studied the crowd. Then he brandished his fork with several
bent tines in the air, rolled up on one butt cheek and did
his impression of a New York harbor tug boat fog horn!
Several sitting nearby sucked in a deep breath for the
chorus of the "Unicorn Song", gasp several times, turned more
white than an over bleached sheet and flopped unconscious on
the polished hardwood Washington Cherry floor! "Let's hear
three beers, I mean cheers, for old St. Patrick!", he shouted
in a raspy sandpaper tenor, "Remember his famous dance that
he drove the snakes out of Ireland with, the Shamrock Shake!"
A mountain of a man stood up from where he had been bent over
the pool table studying the shot possibilities. He laid down
the cue stick with the beautiful gleaming inlaid Ivory hand
grip set off by brilliant sterling silver edges, picked up
the black eight ball and slowly walked over to where the guy
with the raspy voice was crawling around under the table
feeling for his contact lens.

     He grabbed him by the back of his shirt, picked him up
like he was a paper doll, stood him on his feet and stared
down into the guy's bloodshot eyes. "If you do your tug boat
horn impression again, I am going to permanently close your
smoke stack by cramming this eight ball up your exhaust pipe!
 I lost fifty bucks on the last game because that disgusting
rotten egg fart of yours made me nauseous and I had to rush
outside and hurl up the Porterhouse steak dinner I paid
twenty bucks for!  Do I make myself clear or should I pretend
that between your ears is a plugged sewer pipe and run my
pool cue through a few times to unclog it?" He was holding
him up with his toes just touching the floor. The guy with
the black patch over one eye looked down at the floor, looked
up at the guy who was holding him, got a silly grin on his
face, the scar that looked like a zipper turned as red as a
beet  and he went as limp as overcooked spaghetti. the big
dude let go of his shirt and he sagged to the floor like a
curtain with an accordion pleat!

     Then a smell like ten thousand cars with defective
catalytic converters releasing Hydrogen Sulfide into the
atmosphere began to rise from the floor and slowly loft
upwards toward the ceiling where the large air circulating
fans spread the stench that made the sewers of New York
famous! Some fainted. Some fled. Some hurled. Some smiled and
dared anyone to light a match! One did! Those famous Irish
fire fighters did not fear flames and quickly had the fire
under control and the ever opportunistic street venders were
selling broiled bratwurst, green beer and mil surplus Desert
Storm gas masks to spectators!

     I moved down the street to a quiet little pub, ordered
some corn beef and cabbage, a pitcher of cold beer and
listened to the young Irish tenor hitting some notes that
made the fillings in my teeth hurt. I looked around. It
seemed like everyone in the place was wearing a Shamrock of
one kind or another. About all they had in common was the
color green! It was hard enough being a Leprechaun ,
especially when the real St. Patrick's Day was nothing like
what it had become. Consider the Shamrock.

     The Shamrock represents the trinity of God; Father, Son
     and Holy Spirit. The Shamrock was a sacred plant to them
because its shape was that of the Triad.  Which they liked a
whole lot better on their flag than the face of England's
King with a wart on the end of his hooked nose and a Queen
with more hair on her legs than a on her head! They also
considered three as a lucky number, a tradition that has been
passed down through the ages to this very day.

     The Shamrock when ground up by the local Alchemist was
also considered as a remedy for snake bites or Scorpion
stings. Which is really strange, since there are neither of
these creatures in Ireland!

     The national emblem of Ireland is the Shamrock.
Surprised? You probably have watched too many runs of the
1959 Walt Disney movie entitled "Darby O'gill And The Little
People." Which elevated the Leprechaun, that's me, to a level
never intended. "So like what is this impish, mischievous,
high spirited pint sized party animal really like?", you ask
with baited breath that begs for a shot of Listerine and
eyelids wide with wonder.

     According to Irish legend, the Leprechaun is an old man
about two feet tall. He fixes the shoes of the other Fairies.
He is grumpy and quite irritable.  If you can catch a
Leprechaun, you can make him tell you where he hid his gold.
He could often be located by following the sound of his
little shoe makers hammer pounding on shoes.  The Disney
movie portrayed him quite differently.  As a result, he rose
from a rather obscure minor character to one of great
prominence.

     Personally, i think that the late Walt Disney should
have been given a national holiday in the United States,
perhaps the entire world, for the incredible contributions he
made to the children. Can you even begin to imagine life
without Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and a whole host of
others?  He showed all of us how to use our imagination to
make anything possible, including transforming the ugliness
of a bleak and stark reality into the incredible beauty and
joy of a wondrous world where hunger, poverty and pain do not
exist. Where hope rules and hate can not survive. Not to
mention uplifting me from that blasted image those miserable,
wicked and outright nastier than a female snake with PMS
Celtic Druid priests hung on me!

     Now the Shamrock has only three leaves. So like is it a
three leaf Clover or a Shamrock? Hmmm. The four leaf Clover,
which is rare, represents the qualities of hope, faith, love
and luck. The latter one of these being the one most often
associated with finding a four leaf Clover. Which may be why
there are so many of those sterling silver ones dangling from
charm bracelets and 18K gold neck chains in Las Vegas!

When a Shamrock is found with the fourth leaf, it is said to
represent God's grace. Which, when push me over the cliff or
shove me into a permanent pit of molten Brimstone, are the
choices, forget luck, I am going for eternal grace!

     Well it's St. Patrick's Day 2005. The sun is just waking
up and sleepily peeking over the horizon. The man in the Moon
is waxing and yawning off into sleep. The twinkling stars
have turned their night lights off and are busy restocking
the supply of star dust.  So let me say to each of you,
"Happy Saint Patrick's Day and the top of the mornin' to
you!" If you do not know the proper response, learn it!  "And
the rest of the day to you too!"


Original: Thursday March 17, 2005. 2464 words.


Duane Fischer, W8DBF - WPE8CXO
E-Mail: dfischer at usol.com
Hallicrafters web site: www.w9wze.net
HHRP web site: hhrp.w9wze.net