This post originally appeared on my Substack page, The Bung & Gargle.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody!
And to my Irish immigrant ancestors who came to Chicago just in time to deal with the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, I salute you. You came over with only the tattered clothes on your back, leaving economic misery, high child mortality and memories of Black ‘47. You put up with virulent bigotry and exploitation in America, and within 2 generations, you owned a couple of two-flats. But that wasn’t too bad at the time, for immigrants. It was actually pretty good.
My Chicago-Irish bona fides: One of my great-grandmothers was a servant girl for Potter Palmer, the wealthy hotelier. Family legend has it that she served people fleeing the Great Fire hot coffee in the Palmers’ china cups.Subscribed
My great-grandfather was a cop on the beat. His son worked in shipping at the stockyards, riding a horse to meet the trains as they brought cattle in boxcars from the farms of the Midwest. He later made money on weekends selling insurance to other Irishmen, a well-worn path to the middle class at the time.
By that time, they weren’t Irish, they were Irish-Americans, that strange hybrid that evolves over time with every ethnic group. They had no more connection with Ireland than with Mt. Everest, though they’d offer to punch you out if you brought it up. An identity formed in the push-pull of “what the old folks say,” where you went to church, what career you pursued, which high school/college you attended, and which nearby ethnic group gave you the most trouble.
(I grew up in Dearborn, Mich., surrounded by Polish- and Italian-American families, and not a few French, who maintained strong ties to Canada. I had no idea that this ethnic mix would be a concern for my parents in the 1960s, but back in the Chicago ‘hoods they came from, it definitely was. And let’s not even get into race. There was enough animosity among white ethnics without examining, y’know, ALL of American history. Dearborn was always a segregated city.)
I don’t consider myself an Irish-American. There was always too much baggage. I’m not Catholic anymore, despite 12 years of parochial school. I married a woman of Dutch ancestry (she’s 100%, so I did feel quite Irish-American when I met her grandparents! Like, Dennis Leary Irish). The teams for both my grade school and high school were named Shamrocks.
Had I grown up here in Chicago, down in the Irish-American enclave of Beverly, I might feel a stronger connection with the heritage. I’d also feel the suffocating effects of hanging out still with the guys I went to grade school with, secretly drinking at kids’ baseball games, hearing stories of juvenile embarrassment for the 100th time, wondering what any other kind of life would be like. Uncles getting plowed at weddings and fist-fighting with their own kids. Aunts making you feel guilty that you didn’t make more of yourself. Cousins with long memories and sharp tongues. Who knows, I might still be Catholic.
And now we head into the Irish-American holiday of St. Patrick’s Day, a time for day-long drinking and shamrock deely-bobbers. Green-beer-a-palooza. Amateur Hour. Don’t get me wrong, I think America needs more excuses for drinking (and after the last election, we’re getting more and more).
The drinking starts early in Chicago, as people line the State Street Bridge to watch the river get dyed green. Many people don’t believe it’s a thing we do here, but it is. It was started in 1961 by the plumbers union, who used to use the dye to find leaks in the river. It has grown into a bigger and bigger event over the years, but still handled by the union.
A downtown parade follows, but since they’ve moved most parades from crowded State Street to the edge of Grant Park, it’s cold and windy and not as much fun. There are also 3 other parades in town, on the northwest side, near Midway Airport, and down on the southwest side. The southwest side parade, in the aforementioned Beverly neighborhood, is the biggest and showiest of them. Maybe this year I’ll make it down there, though it’s almost an hour’s drive and among people who started drinking early to watch the river get dyed green.
If I go, it will be strictly a sociological expedition, with minimal drinking. Sorry to sound like a sourpuss. I don’t own much greenwear or a Notre Dame sweatshirt. I’ll be eager to see how many traits associated with Irish-Americans are on display there.
The commitment to social justice, support for the underdog, joy in song and literature?
Or drinking, fighting, cursing and racism? At least I’ll have no cousins there to watch out for. They all had the gumption to move out.
These sound stereotypical, but strains of truth lurk behind most stereotypes. There are worse ones to be found in the world. No one ever says Irish-Americans are bad drivers, for example. Look at all the experience we get driving police cars and fire trucks.
Embodying some of these stereotypes wouldn’t be a bad thing, either, at least the ennobling ones. But it’s difficult to pick and choose.Subscribed
Singing? For our entire lives, my mother has told my brothers and me that we can’t sing. “What are you trying to sing now?” was often heard around the house. Years ago, a supervisor humiliated her during her student teaching, telling her, “Never sing in front of a classroom of children again.” This still comes up in conversation 70 years later. That kind of grudge-holding is pretty Irish, I’ll give Mom credit. (In the meantime, my brother has sung on Broadway, and I have managed a song or two onstage in Chicago, and no one was lynched. Looked at one way, it’s sheer stubbornness, but at another, it’s perseverance.)
Storytelling? My family is not particularly rich with the gift of gab. My English-Irish-American father like peace and quiet around the house. “If you’re talking, you ain’t thinking,” was one of his mottos. He also once, in all seriousness, asked us all, “What do you think the dinner table is, a time to describe everything that happened during the day?”
Support for the underdog? As far as the loud advocacy of social justice, Dorothy Day doesn’t have to worry about competition. We lean left and help feed the hungry at church, but we don’t make a big show of it. That would be embarrassing.
For all these reasons, the arrival of St. Patrick’s Day always gives me mixed emotions. Watching underage college kids try little dances and drink themselves into oblivion isn’t “celebrating Irish culture” or the “many contributions the Irish have made to America.” It’s just a pagan springtime fertility rite in the trappings of a complicated ethnic identity, wrapped in Lucky Charms. I’m proud of that culture, but leery of it at the same time. But like most hyphenated American environments (thank God) it will soon be watered down so much that nothing will be left except theme bars and grocery store specials. Then maybe we can get on with the business of being decent Americans to one another.
Really, I wish we celebrated St. Joseph’s Day (for Italian-Americans) and Casimir Pulaski Day (for Polish-Americans) with equal gusto, so the whole of March could be one long party, full of food and drink and Catholic guilt.
Because, let’s be honest, the stereotype holds:
Irish-Americans can’t cook for shit.
