The Yellow River

My brother likes to say that once a year the River Shannon runs yellow down the alley of Western Avenue. Yes today was the annual South Side Irish parade and I slept right through it. (Not that I had any intention of going). Once a year people pack into this so called Irish neighborhood filling the streets for miles around with cars from all over the area and the nearby suburbs. This is the day when people come to the city get hammered in the cold "spring" air while watching green floats drive down the street. Occasionally they will go back into the bars to get a new drink or try their luck at finding an open bathroom. The city usually takes preemptive measure of dropping portable toilets all along the parade route, but the die hard beer drinkers wont wait in line when they can just go around the corner and water the walls and the alleys practically run yellow with the overflow.

I don't live far from the parade route. It could have been a quick early morning walk up to take in the view. But we forget that while mom and dad and baby are at the parade this is the day when the teens of Beverly are given free reign of the neighborhood. They walk in packs in search of unguarded alcohol or the house where the parents say, "Well we know they are going to drink anyway so we would rather they do it here where we can watch them." This goes on all day. The parade is done and cleaned up by the early afternoon but then the teens are always on the prowl.

Later the bar patrons decide to make a break for it, and the streets truly become a danger zone. With a cry of "Happy St. Patty's Day" the drunks wander the neighborhood until they remember where they parked and then its zero to sixty in a stomp of the foot down the back streets home so the cops wont pull em over. I wish I had the DUI statistics for the day I bet they are pretty high. People who spend most of the year having a beer or two here or there go to town two or three times a year (St patty's day, New years eve and for some reason the wednesday before thanksgiving) its amateur drunk night on the town. You won't catch me out there like some kind of crash test dummy.

Now I'm Irish and I used to make a point of going to a party every year, but I liked any excuse to have a party. I bought a case of beer the night we got my cat fixed. (Every toast my cat's lost testicles!) The Shy and I polished off a bottle of Irish whiskey because it was Tuesday and we had a bottle of Irish Whiskey. If I were the type of person who keeps a calendar I would have had every birthday, holiday, anniversary and national tragedy as a day to drink to party or to mourn.

Now that I've taken a step or two away from the party scene I can see something that bothers me. People would say "Everybody is Irish on St. Patty's Day" and I think that isn't right. I'm Irish (well and German and English and French and some other stuff my maternal grandfather wouldn't admit too)every day of the year. Every one is drunk on St. Patty's Day. That would be more accurate. I don't have a problem with that. I'm all for outrageous foolish behavior for the sake of being outrageously foolish, lets just not say that it is being Irish.

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