I leave the house on St. Patrick's Day with dirty hair.
That's not really what this tale is about, but that's what
starts it all. I get up on St. Patrick's
Day, slightly bummed because I didn't buy corned beef and cabbage to make a
boiled dinner (I already have the potatoes and carrots), and I have no beer in
the house to drink in honorarium of everyone else who is drinking beer on this
fine holiday. I have a lot of homework
for a grad class, and I have been working on it steadily for about seven hours. As a matter of fact, I never even change out
of my pajamas (sweatpants and lacrosse t-shirt …. Sexy mama).
Apparently, St. Paddy's Day is going to pass me by without
even a wink.
My friend, who is Irish and married to an Italian (as I am
relatively Irish and married a Sicilian/Scot), wants me to join her for a
beer. Now, before I just brush her off
as another disenfranchised Irish girl sitting home on St. Patrick's Day, let me
also remind you that she is the same friend who goes on the best adventures of
all time with me. She is the friend who
randomly walks all over Boston and stops in the North End for pizza with
me. She is the friend who accompanies me
back to the car to get my headset when an air craft carrier shoots off
its Howitzers in a 21-gun salute the day before the Boston Fourth of July
celebration and scares the living shit out of me. She is the friend who goes to Hampton Beach
with me the day shark sightings shut the beach down. She is the friend who walks along the Public
Gardens when a hawk just happens to be sitting on the fence rail right next to
her head. She is the friend who visits
the giant Corpse Flower with me and my daughter when the smelly thing blooms at
the Franklin Park Zoo. She is the one
who goes to see our friend's neo-punk band play in a bar in Somerville in the
dead of winter when parking means smacking into a curb or walking in the cold
wind, so we opt for the curb.
In short, she is the friend who seems to be with me whenever
strange, magical, and completely unexpected things happen.
She and I are texting back and forth on St. Patrick's Day,
late in the afternoon, and she wants to go for a beer. I assure her that I cannot go; I have too
much homework, I am still in my pajamas, and my hair is filthy. There is no Erin Go Bragh in my house today,
just Erin Go Braghless. She gives up
just as I text her that I actually could use a break, my hair isn't really that dirty (well, it is, but I pull it
back into a ponytail), and I can dress and put on make-up in less than ten
minutes. We finally decide on Jon Ryan's
Pub in Tewksbury, halfway between our houses and loaded with easy parking. I text her to meet me there in twenty-five
minutes.
I must be extremely excited to get out of the house or
massively efficient because I am parked and waiting for her in less than
twenty.
We go in to the pub, sit in the bar at a table, order a
couple of beers and some appetizers, and proceed to enjoy the fact that the
Pub, Jon Ryan's, a nice Irish-sounding place, is actually playing through its
sound system the first Irish music we've heard all day. Sure, it's Muzak Irish music, but still. It sure beats the hell out of the usual pub
music fare.
We are sipping away, chatting about work, when all of a
sudden there are two Irish songs playing at the same time. Then we look around. Lucky us … The pub has a bagpiper and his
band in full regalia in the lobby, playing for the small crowd of evening
partiers.
Wow, we're thinking, this is amazing. We didn't even pay a cover for this. Fan-freakin'-tastic.
After they play a few songs, the group sits at the bar and
we all overhear that they are members of Vermont's Catamount Pipe Band on their
way home from the parade in Southie. (For the uninitiated, that's South Boston,
home of the country's most controversial St. Patrick's Day Parade.) They entered "Irish Pubs" into
their GPS, and it brought them to us.
Amazing.
No, truly, since there is an Irish restaurant a few miles up
the highway that is literally right off the exit ramp. This place, Jon Ryan's Pub, is about 3 miles
off the exit. Also, their GPS searched under an alternate
name. They were looking for the old
Picadilly Pub, but they found us, instead.
It really is amazing, too, because apparently we all have a
bit of the luck of the Irish with us for the evening.
The guys from CPB stay and have drinks and food (on all of
us who get to enjoy their impromptu performance). They want to buy t-shirts from the pub, but the
closest table and I have just bought the last ones. Truly, mine has to be taken off the wall and
handed to me by the bartender. The
members of the Catamount Pipe Band smartly decide to hand over the keys to the
twenty-year-old in their troupe, the one who hasn't had a Guinness or two. The kilted performers chat us all up one
final time, then march out while the bagpiper is playing and we are all
clapping along.
We give them a rousing standing ovation as they exit.
It is, in the true dictionary definition of the word,
AMAZING. Absolutely and without a doubt
in anyone's mind, it is the most amazing St. Patrick's Day. EVER.
I don't care that my hair is filthy. I don't even remember what was so damn
important that an Irish girl like me (okay, I'm Anglo-Saxon and Celt, but I'm
probably more Irish than anything else because the Irish is rampant on both my
father's and mother's sides) would even consider staying home rather than
celebrating St. Patrick's Day with my best Irish friend.
Our roots (and I don't mean hair roots) smiled on us on St.
Patrick's Day, and we are the better for it.
Not only that, but it makes for a damn fine tale. And there's no Blarney in that.
