Green day

It’s March 17, and that means people across the country will pack pubs, bars and restaurants tonight to sing drinking songs, guzzle colored beer and fake an Irish accent.

The extent of my celebration of the holiday? The green golf shirt I’m wearing.

I don’t boycott St. Patrick’s Day or have anything against it. I simply don’t have a lot of personal experience with the celebration.

For one, the rural Alabama county I grew up in was and is still dry.

When I was home from college one summer, I worked second shift in a convenience store in the neighboring town. At about 11:30 one night, a man obviously on a mission came in and walked directly to the coolers in the back. He went from one glass door to another, looking and looking again, puzzled and almost frantic.

I started to smile. I knew what was running through his mind.

Finally, he turned toward me at the front of the store and shouted, “Where’s the beer?”

“Sir,” I replied, “you’re in a dry county.”

“You’re kiddin’ me,” he said in disbelief.

When it struck him I wasn’t, he walked out of the store a defeated man.

But it isn’t only the government that forbids alcohol consumption in my neck of the Alabama backwoods. As far as the local churches are concerned — even the Baptists, to mostly whom only hitting the sauce too heavily is a sin — the only spirit that should fill someone is the Holy Ghost.

No one else in my family drinks. No one in the church I was raised in drinks. And, at least when I was there, no one at school drank unless they wanted to get attention or seem rebellious, which meant driving to the governmental seat of the neighboring county, buying Mad Dog 20/20 or a few six packs and getting lit at “the big rock” along the eastern bank of the Tennessee River.

That’s probably why I didn’t even bother trying a beer until almost two years ago. I never had the desire and figured I was sparing myself one more thing in life to monitor.

In 2002, however, I decided I needed to develop a taste for the devil’s elixir, in one of a number of embarrassing schemes to win back an ex. (He is 100-percent Irish Canadian, which I think means his blood is at least 50 proof.)

I had gotten the idea in my head that having the capacity to down an Alpine or Alexander Keith's would somehow further prove my undying devotion. I was wrong. It and all my other crazy strategies were only rebuffed.

Despite the failed venture, I’m still trying to appreciate the taste for beer, only to have an option besides water for when I’m on vacation and in certain social settings. I’m not yet there, though, and still need tortilla chips or peanuts as a chaser to a bottle.

As you could guess, then, I wouldn’t be a candidate for a pub crawl tonight any more than I would be on any other night.

But booze isn’t the only thing lacking from my life experience to adequately appreciate March 17.

So largely have been Catholics. In my home county’s 778 square miles, only one church has mass rather than worship service. I suspect this number will increase but not because of Irish immigration. The Latino population is surging.

If the Irish or even the Italians are represented in the collective heritage of the residents of northeastern Alabama, it’s only a small percentage. Descendants of primarily the English, Scottish and Welsh apparently settled the foothills of the Appalachians.

But as fair as my skin is and as much of a red tint my brown hair has, I have to believe a little Irish blood runs through my veins. I suspect, where the rural South is concerned, most customs and traditions directly connected to the Old World just weren't passed down from generation to generation.

That's why I like to think, rather than today, this Saturday night is more fitting for me to honor America's Irish settlers.

My friends Byron and Steve and I will travel to Variety Playhouse in Little Five Points to hear a branch of a branch of the type of music identified throughout the world as uniquely Irish when we hear Nickel Creek perform live. The group's sound is a pop version of arguably the earliest form of music to spring from the rural South, bluegrass — which no doubt can call Irish music its primary ancestor.

As for tonight, I wish you good times as you tie one on in a toast to the Emerald Isle. And remember you can call me if you need someone to drive your Guinness-soaked gills back home.

Comments

[Steve]

Now, now -- no need to be cranky just because the story fails to mention the only drunken Irishman in my life. I'll get around to making reference to you in a piece when I talk about steroids in baseball.    :)

[Big K]

Good Grief...Get off the Cross, Mel Gibson needs the wood. Have another cold one and quite crying in your beer. This Buds for you.