Saint Patty-grass OR The Tale of The Emerald Blue

So we are getting ready for the patented Lost Rambler reverse Pub Crawl on Saint Patrick's Day*, where we go to the patrons round-robin style while they stay and get nice and "toasty", which is a good thing to do when the weather is spitting snow, something which happens with some regularity here. It's a grueling schedule, although we mercifully will not also have to eat gruel, which is some awful grey glop like, ummmmmmmmm...I dunno, farina or something.

Those breakfast mushes, whether they be gruel or grits, I never really understood. Library paste, yes. But not them.

Anyway, we will march merrily with kilts asaunter to nine bars in 12 hours, five of us brave boys and girl and we will no doubt imbibe a few non-citrus flavored carbonated adult beverages and get a mite toasty ourselves.

All this talk of toastiness puts me in mind of a Saint Patrick's Day parade we were playing in one year, and we were on the back of this flatbed truck. It had no rails or anything, I suspect we had been topping off the old tanks with anti-freeze, if you catch my drift, and so every time it lurched forward, on account of we weren't the onliest ones to be getting ourselves shined up, we would shoot forward a couple steps, or have to back up quick.

We'd do that and kinda hope we were facing in the right direction or we'd shoot off that truck like, well, kinda like the dragoons that were marching right behind us. We'd be getting ready to rip into "ST. Anne's Reel" and ka-POW! they'd leave off a volley that would scare the bejeebers out of us, nearly stained our drawers, I tell you what.

Then there'd be like this big cloud of toxic smoke that would drift over us, so we were kinda like sooty angels part of the parade: people could hear us but they couldn't see all of us or sometimes any of us.

This went on through the town of Stroudsburg, but just as we got to the top of the interboro bridge, an engineering marvel placed there after the '55 flood and perched away up high so it didn't get washed away again, some Shriner in one of those little clown cars runned somebody over and the parade stopped with us sitting up there getting blowed over by a twenty mile an hour upstream breeze.

Man oh man that was cold. The pedestrian turned out to be okay, just a lil bruised up, those clown cars not being the biggest things in the world. But it took awhile for the ambulance to get there, because they were all already in the parade, I guess, and the whole time we were perched up there a hundred feet over the stream, and the dragoons behind us got bored and weren't marching, so they really laid a barrage out.

Of course they were still upwind enough for all that smoke to find us, and when we came off that bridge we were about froze, anti-freeze or not, and we looked like we just stormed the beach on D-day, all smudged up like that.

I was so cold I had to walk backwards to take a piss, and that's some cold, I can tell you.

So we gave up that parade stuff and we'll stick to the indoor venues, eat lots of corned beef and cabbage until we poot and pucker our way into Irish Rambler heaven. And the best part?

The next day is Saturday!
ha!
So---a very happy and blessed Saint Patrick's Day to all!


*A number of people complained that my last post did not contain any of the insoucinet footnotes with which they had become accustomed, and so I felt compelled to add one here, as my readers are worth every acccomidation. Both of them.**


**This is like a "hidden track" on a CD. Here are some FAQ for you.

Q: Why does a Sicilian guy wear a kilt and play Irish music?
Mr. Irish Rambler Answer Guy (IRAG): Because Saint Patrick was actually a Roman citizen that was kidnapped and raised in the forest by seven dwarfs...no, wait. Umm.. raised by...wolfs? no--that was those two boys, Rommel Uz and his brother Raim, founded Rome. Oh, no wait! It was monks that raised St. Patrick up and made him the man he was, with the snake-non-handling and all that. So naturally Saint Patrick is like a star in Italy and Sicily and all. Everybody knows that.

Q: What do you wear under that kilt?
IRAG: If you have to ask, you don't deserve to know. Unless you're a really cute chick. Then the answer is, "I'll show ya mine if you'll show me yours."
That answer really frosts the cupcakes of those guys that make fun of kilts, I can tell you that. Then they want to get them some and we say, "No way!" and laugh.

Q: Cute chicks dig kilts?
IRAG: Is that a proper question?


Q: Sorry.
IRAG: Don't mention it.

Q:Do cute chicks dig kilts?
IRAG: What girl can resist a nice jumper like that? Don't be silly. OF course they dig it.

Q:Thank you.
IRAG: What is, "Are you welcome, Alex?"