Two men were sitting in an Irish bar discussing the shenanigans they were going to get into on St. Patrick’s day. I was shooting pool at a table near where they were seated, and between the cracking sound of pool balls colliding, I could hear their conversation, most of which revolved around where they were going to drink, and what the beverages would be.
When I lived in St. Louis Missouri, I discovered a bar that had the two things that featured my main social drivers: Pool tables and Rolling Rock beer. I was reading a book as I walked home from work and when I glanced into the windows of the newly opened bar, and I was shocked that I had not seen the tables before. I walked into Jack Patrick’s Bar and Grill and asked the bartender if they had Rolling Rock. When he answered that he did, I told him to set up a cot in the back room, for me. “You have Rolling Rock and pool tables, so I’m never going to leave.”
I became a frequent flyer in that Irish bar, and well known to all the bartenders, who placed a green bottle on the counter for me as soon as I came in. I got to know the owners, who agreed to sponsor a team in a local pool league. Jim and Nancy had named the bar after their grandson and were more than generous to me. Whenever they got Rolling Rock-themed merchandise, they gave it to me. I have green shirts, signs, and metal buckets with the Latrobe Pennsylvania brewery’s logo on them. I purchased green hooded sweatshirts with the Jack Patrick’s logo emblazoned on it, and even one sweatshirt that is orange. (I got a brief and brutal assessment of that second choice, which I will not repeat here.) In the HBO TV series “Mare Of Easttown,” Kate Winslet plays a small-town Pennsylvania police detective, and when she walks into a bar and asks for a Rolling Rock and a shot of Jameson, I almost swooned. At the Golden Ace, an Irish bar in Indianapolis, a McGinley would place a Rolling Rock and a shot of Jameson Irish whiskey on the bar as soon as I came in. (See “The Magical Time,” The Weekly View, September 26th, 2016.)
Jack Patrick’s exposed me to what St. Patrick’s day can really be. It was there that I saw a man in a kilt stand atop the bar and play uillean pipes. I learned of another Irishman, Tommy Duff in Clearwater Florida, who befriended one of my best friends and owned what he called his “Irish Aviation Bar.” But I taught another friend how to drink pints of Guinness beer at a pub in St. Louis during a St. Patrick’s weekend, a skill she found helpful when she went to live in Kirribilli, Australia with her husband.
I seldom have a Rolling Rock and a shot of Jameson anymore, but I still go to Irish pubs to celebrate the special day. I have raised a pint in Manley’s Irish Mutt, McGinley’s Golden Ace, and will be in Si Greene’s Pub on Friday, March 17th, where I overheard the two men who were debating how much Irish was in them, and how much more Irish they planned to consume on St. Patty’s day. Based on the entertainment line-up, I won’t be shooting any pool, more’s the pity. But I will be lifting a pint in celebration.
Contrary to what Kermit the Frog sings, on St. Patrick’s day, it is very easy to be green.
cjon3acd@att.net