A Funny Irish Parade

Sure wasn't it a day to raise a flag, a pint, and at noon, while eating a bowl of Irish stew, to wonder if Beoga mightn't headline this year's Shamrock Irish Music Festival .

Three days before the official start of spring 2013, the occasion was "La Feile Padraig" parade.That phrase of the Irish language translates to Saint Patrick's Day.

So it was. It was a funny sort of parade. It was definitely a day when the road didna "rise up with you," but rose up to smack ya right in the nose.

Now, let me be tellin' ya about it and I hope that ya enjoy this silly little story of mine.

Some 20 members of the Shamrock Irish Canadian Society gathered at the intersection of Highway 6 and .. Highway 6. Everyone knows where that be. If y'd just follow a nose, y'll find it.

They stood under the sun of a cloudless sky, buffeted by a 17 mph wind that clanged the halyard hardware of the flagpole in the bonnie wee park of Tralee.

Six miles away, hundreds of sailboarders in wetsuits zipped across the waters of the Lake Katiemora inlet at, where else but, Katiemora Park.

Back downtown now, local attorney Dan O'Conner reads from the two scraps of paper that, don't you know, he held as if the truth of their history might fly away with the next good gust.

The likes of John McIntire, David Cronenwett, Denny McGarry and Don Delaney looked and listened as O'Conner related a pared down background of Ireland's fight, in the early 1920s, for independence from Great Britain.

The hallowed/cursed names of Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith rode the updraft of wind that once shook the barley.

Continued

The temperature toyed toward 60 degrees. Uniformed bagpiper, Danny Dibble, played. Society president, Michael Donovan - sure doesn't he live on Ireland Street - ran the Irish flag up the pole. Donovan secured the halyard to a cleat, and the three broad vertical stripes of green, white and orange snapped back and forth.

Donovan descended his ladder, vowing to someday find, "our own home flagpole." He led the sparse band of brothers and sisters in what he called "the shortest parade in Shamrock," across Highway 6 and north to 30th Avenue.

They strode into Cal's Sports Bar. For this day, the sports bar became an Irish pub. Guinness was on tap, ready for pints. Frothy heads reeled and jigged to an out-of-tune upright piano playing the likes of "Loch Lomond" a song, by the by, that's Scottish not Irish.

By then someone'd asked if the Shamrock Irish Music Festival might possibly book Beoga, an Irish quintet whose U.S. tour will resume Sept.10th and run through the end of the month. The 2013 outdoor festival at Green park on the shore of Green Lake will run Sept.18-20th. Beoga's third recording, "The Incident," was recently receiving rave reviews in this little out-of-the-way town. (Only about three years after it's release, wouldn't ya know.) Worra, worra.

Continued

Elsewhere televisions played the fare of the day, such Irish-themed movies as "The Quiet Man" in which John Wayne and lovely, vivacious, red-haired colleen, Maureen O'Hara clinch in a malestrom headier than the wind in Shamrock; and "Young Cassidy," starring Rod Taylor as an Irish playwright "Young Cassidy," based on an autobiography of Sean O'Casey.

Throughout the rest of Shamrock, green beer flowed. In Chicago, the river again ran green. In Conklin, Fenian's Irish Pub once again stopped the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in its tracks a midpoint.

So went St. Paddy's virtual La Feile Padraig in the wee town of Shamrock in 2013.

It be a grand day!

The End

Disclaimer: If any of the locations or characters in this story seem familiar, it is purely coincidental.

la feile padraig - I love the Irish language, don't you? When I hear it spoken, I envision mist rolling over the sea, climbing the cliffs and silently settling on the lush green hills.

Mind, they won't be lettin' Bonzo in the pub, so make sure wifie dearest takes him home with her.

This is a 60 second stop-motion video taken from the landmark Wrigley Building in Chicago. It shows the very famous greening of the Chicago river to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

Republic Pictures presents "THE QUIET MAN" (1952) - (125 min/Color)

Starring: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen & Mildred Natwick

Director: John Ford

Sean Thornton, a retired American boxer, has returned from America to reclaim his homestead and escape his past. Sean's eye is caught by Mary Kate Danaher, a beautiful but poor maiden, and younger sister of ill-tempered "Red" Will Danaher. The riotous relationship that forms between Sean and Mary Kate, punctuated by Will's pugnacious attempts to keep them apart, form the main plot, with Sean's past as the dark undercurrent.

Thank you!

~Intro photo by: ronchy_princess in Photobucket

~Irish Bunnies by: prestonjjrtr in Photobucket

~Irish Puppy by: ShEtLaNd in Photobucket

~100% Irish by: ImaBeagleMom in Photobucket