Bonus Special St. Patrick’s Day Installment and
Preview.
It ain’t easy being Irish. You start life with a
dirty jacket, as it were. Take a moment to
consider what the Irish contribution to our modern
life has been.
Potatoes. Jameson’s.
Guinness. Bailey’s. That pretty much covers it.
Oh yeah, and the ever-foolish Irish Jig. If I were
to be seen actually doing an Irish Jig I would
hope that a friend, Irish or not, would end my
life in short order. Disregarding the Irish Jig as
too silly for contemplation, it should not be a
huge shock that three of the four are booze.
The Irish
immigrants were an unsavory lot (straight from the
history books) and the reputation for drinking and
fighting has been well earned for the most part.
The Oklahoma Land Grab? Mostly Irish people
grabbed the land and most of them cheated in one
way or another. In 1889 they traveled far and
laboriously to get something for nothing and the
fact that it was free wasn’t enough. My fair
ancestors also had to rig the races and if that
wasn’t enough, ambush the rightful winners and
often kill them for their deed tickets. Real
heroes. Especially considering that the land
actually belonged to the Cherokee people.
Then there were
the “Gangs of New York” and the bloody
violence that era represents in history. Killing
for what again? Oh yeah, to pretend to own
something that they never could and had no right
to. Like city streets. A little known factoid is
that the street gangs in Anthony Burgess’ “A
Clockwork Orange” were in no small part
patterned after the themed gangs in New York in
the 1860’s. New York’s Finest are direct
descendants. Go figure.
OK, so I like
potatoes, unless I’m being hit on the head with
a raw one. Which I have been at one of the St.
Patrick’s Day parades in New Orleans in 1992.
Actually it was potatoes and raw heads of cabbage
and they were deftly thrown by the delightful
Irish folks on one of the “floats”, which was
actually a double decker bus populated by David
Duke’s supporters. One of my group of friends
approached his convertible in the middle of the
parade and verbally accosted the sorry excuse for
a politician about the lunacy of having an
ex-Grand Wizard of the KKK in the House of
Representatives (he’s also run for President
more than once, believe it or not) and his
followers proceeded to pelt the remainder of our
party, myself included, with the projectiles at
hand. Which were, as is the tradition of the
parade, the makings of Irish Stew.
I doubt that I
will ever see a potato the same. Cooked ones are
OK. Raw ones appear to be weapons in my
subconscious and I get hives looking at them. Then
again, I get hives from looking at David Duke too.
Then again, again, when I think of what might have
happened had this rabid lower life form in the
guise of a human politician actually been able to
rise to any significant level of influence I get
huge, blotchy, itchy hives that no amount of
Benadryl will cure.
So the typical
Irish stereotype is a cantankerous drunkard. Am I
Irish? Yup. Am I cantankerous? It could be said.
Am I a drunkard? At different periods of my life I
suppose I was. I am also Cherokee. Oy. So then,
what? My ancestors stole land from my ancestors?
That’s the way it looks. Then again, they also
bred with them (which is why there are so many
Irish-Cherokee mixed people emanating from
Oklahoma, myself included). So one side of me is
snickering at the other side for having first
duped myself and then stolen the only thing I had
and the other side wants to put an arrow through
my head and scalp me. Is it any wonder I’m just
a teensy bit psychotic?
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