By David Tarrant
The Dallas Morning News
(KRT)
DALLAS - There's an old Irish joke about the tourist who asks for directions to Dublin and is told by the local Irishman, "Ah … lad, you don't really want to start from here."
That's how I feel about St. Patrick's Day. If you really want to understand the Irish or what it means to be Irish-American, you don't really want to start there.
All four of my grandparents came to this country early last century from Kerry, Tipperary, Roscommon and Cork, all counties in southern Ireland. They carried not much else with them besides the names of O'Brien, McCarthy, Moran and Tarrant. They didn't think too long or hard about heritage - they were too busy working, raising children and keeping heart and soul together through two world wars and the Great Depression.
Now, some 90 years after they arrived in this country, I've found myself trying to sort out what it means to be an Irish-American. I was sure I knew what it wasn't.
St. Patrick's Day, or what some have dubbed the "Irish Mardi Gras," has become a day of caricature - people painting their faces green and drinking green-colored beer. There's no real Irish sentiment at work here - you can see the same thing going on just about any Friday night at the frat halls and singles bars. These people would dye their hair orange and drink purple beer if it offered the same convenient excuse to get drunk and howl at the moon.
And along with the green beer (or green milkshakes if you're not imbibing), there's the overindulgence of kitschy Irish mythology. B'gosh and begorrah, when Irish eyes are smilin', there'll be green shamrocks on everything from napkins to plastic hats to advertising signs in stores and bars. If I see another "Kiss me, I'm Irish" button, I'm going up to the wearer and saying, "No thanks, I'm driving."
Is this all that's left of Irish culture? Green beer and a button? I was born Irish-American, and all I got was this stupid T-shirt?
It was beginning to seem that way to me - at least until I talked to a couple of other Irish-Americans.
They reminded me of the essence of Irish culture. You'll find it in pubs, as well as in the other mainstays of Irish life - work, home and church. And we're not talking about alcohol.
It is the culture of storytelling.
The Irish love to tell stories as much as they love to hear them and read them. Any event is appropriate for a story - from baptism to the wake. It's a culture that has helped produce great Irish writers and poets such as James Joyce, William Butler Yeats and Roddy Doyle, as well as a current crop of Irish-American writers, such as Alice McDermott and Frank McCourt.
By telling stories, by writing and reading and singing and hearing them, we learn not just who we are but who we were and how we got here. We learn to laugh ourselves, at our quirks and conditions and disorders and habits. We're all bozos on the bus, including Murphy, the driver.
One story I heard recently came from my brother, Joe. When I shared with him my feelings about St. Patrick's Day rowdies, he noted that, in fact, face- and body-painting does have an honorable Celtic pedigree.
He went on to relate the story of the fearsome Queen Boudicca and other Celtic warriors, who often dyed or painted themselves blue to appear more terrifying in battle. Ancient Roman sources also report that Celtic men (and women) often went stark naked into battle wearing only the tattoos that covered their bodies.
"You can only wonder how the pseudo-Irish rowdies in America's bars would fare against the likes of Queen Boudicca," Joe says.
I don't recall ever painting my face green, but I'm hardly beyond reproach when it comes to overindulgence. In fact, I have my own story of St. Patrick's Day madness.
It was about five years ago, and I had quit drinking on Jan. 1 (to get in shape, I told a friend) and decided to stay dry until March 17. No self-respecting man of Irish heritage would avoid drinking on St. Patrick's Day - so I thought.
When the day arrived, I decided to get off work a few hours early and meet a friend at an Irish pub. I showed up a little early - at noon. By 8 p.m. I was in another bar, arguing loudly with another customer and getting the heave-ho from the owner. Luckily, a friend drove me home.
Binge drinking of that sort seems to be unfairly associated with being Irish. In fact, this kind of drinking is inherently alienating - a direct contrast to Irish pub culture, with its sense of a warm, welcoming and shared space. The competition in Irish pubs is not to see who can act like the biggest jackass. It's telling the most outrageous yarns and jokes. The atmosphere encourages conversation, the telling of stories and the enjoyment of danceable, foot-tapping Irish music.
It's from stories that we also learn to stand up for ourselves - and for others, who face the oppression and prejudice that we once experienced.
That's why, wherever there is famine, you will see Irish charities, Irish missionaries, and even Irish musicians. Bob Geldof, then of the Boomtown Rats, launched Live Aid and brought attention to starvation in Ethiopia, as did U2's Bono. The latter remains involved in problems of disease and starvation in Africa. After all, the defining moment in Irish history is the Great Famine of 150 years ago, in which 1 million people died and millions of others emigrated to the United States and other countries.
The storytelling culture starts at an early age.
I was about 5 or 6 years old when my father started making every one of his six children stand up at the dinner table and tell a story. My brothers and sisters would groan and roll their eyes when it was my turn, and I told yet another version of the Three Little Pigs. But that's how it starts, with a story and an audience.
A few days ago, I talked to my mother about my misgivings toward St. Patrick's Day. I asked her how she felt about the day.
She shared some of my feelings. But she also told me a few stories that I never knew.
St. Patrick's Day is the anniversary of her first date with my father. They had met earlier at a dance in Worcester, Mass., and my father didn't believe it when she told him there were buffalo in the park near her family's flat.
So they went on a stroll and checked out the buffalo. "They were scraggly and skinny - kind of pitiful, actually," my Mom says. But she won the bet.
She invited my father in for tea. My grandmother, Anna O'Brien, produced a beautiful cake, which she had bought at the store in a rare show of extravagance for a woman constantly struggling to make ends meet.
"Kathleen made this, you know," my grandmother announced in her lilting brogue, prompting immediate and strong denials by my mother and a chuckle from the man who would be my father.
My mother told another story about how she used to celebrate St. Patrick's Day as a child.
"I remember we had a big, oak clock that sat on the counter in our kitchen, and there was a little drawer at the bottom of the clock. Every St. Patrick's Day, my father would gather the four children in the kitchen, and he'd open up the drawer and take out four little Shamrock pins he kept there. He'd pin a Shamrock on each of us. I remember him putting the pin on, saying, `Kathleen, Happy St. Patrick's Day.' And I remember our relatives in Ireland would send us a pot of live shamrocks. They would arrive a little frazzled, but they'd perk up with a little water."
On a roll now, my mother also remembered another aspect of Irish culture that I never knew about.
When she was growing up, and a new immigrant family arrived, the neighbors would invite the newcomers over to one of the homes and have a welcoming party. The party was called a "racket," because the neighbors would play their fiddles and sing songs and generally make a lot of noise.
"It was a way of welcoming the new families and making them feel at home."
It was sharing the story of their lives.
So what does it mean to be Irish on this St. Patrick's Day? I think what it means is to share the Irish spirit, not the spirits. It means to pass along the culture, not pass out on the floor.
So when I see the rowdies out on St. Patrick's Day, I'll think of good ol' Queen Boudicca and all those howling, painted Celtic warriors.
And when I see a shamrock, I'll think of my grandfather, Thomas O'Brien, whom I never met because he died in a factory accident in 1944.
I'll see him in my imagination, pinning a shamrock on my mother and saying to her:
"Kathleen, Happy St. Patrick's Day."
© 2003, The Dallas Morning News.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
