Reflections on My Irish Passport on St. Patrick's Day

3/17/2015

The young lady in the change booth at Heathrow inspected my maroon Éire passport.

“So, you are a plastic Paddy?” she said.

This was my first time using my passport, two decades ago, and I was feeling quite proud.

The shiny new passport had already gotten me through the European Union lane, quicker than the regular Arrivals lane, but now the change agent put me in my place. My newness, my American-ness, came through. Plastic, indeed.

I think about her every St. Patrick’s Day when I rummage around for some vaguely green sweater or tie but decline to join any parade that might be taking place.

My second passport, beside my beloved American passport, is courtesy of my grandmother, born in County Waterford in 1875. We lived under the same roof until she died when I was twelve (actually, it was her house, thrifty woman that she was) but I don’t recall her ever talking about the Ireland she left as a teen-ager. (I wrote about her three years ago.)

Being Irish, via a maroon passport, is a state of mind, and I claim to be Irish, deep down inside. I say it is the moody, emotional side, the side that cares. I love to hear the trace of an Irish accent, particularly in women, newscasters on the BBC or Euro News, or the lovely staff at Foley’s on W. 33rd St., and a few friends (they know who they are.)

Last Sunday, Christine Lavin was filling in for John Platt on WFUV-FM, and was host to Maxine Linehan in the studio, singing “Danny Boy” live. (This is not a song most artists rush to perform, just as jazz musicians charge extra for “When the Saints Go Marching In” at Preservation Hall.) But Linehan sang “Danny Boy” and damned if I didn’t get tears in my eyes.

Being Irish is part genetic – and part choice. I had a three-week binge on “Ulysses” back at Hofstra, and now I re-read it every five years or so. I am touched by Seamus Heaney and Frank McCourt and the plays of Brian Friel and Sean O’Casey.

My wife, with her own spouse passport, talks about a visit to Galway or Cork. Our one visit to Ireland (Canadians and Australians and Americans buying all kinds of green souvenirs), I remember the way old men chattered with each other, and one old lady who stopped us on a street corner in Ballsbridge and apologized for the heat wave. (It was 75 Fahrenheit, in July.) I file away some terrible things that have happened on the island. Life is complicated. But there are few days when I don’t remember the maroon passport in my desk, and my grandmother’s gift.

* * *

(Maxine Linehan, below. Go for it, it's St. Patrick's Day.)

5 Comments

Alan Rubin link

3/18/2015 05:49:27 am

George

Everyone should have a bit of Irish in them.

I fell in love with folk music at age eight when I was introduced to the songs of the British Isles. Initially, it was Irish and English ballads, but my interests expanded over the years to music of the world.

Sandi and I used to frequent the Village folk scene of the late fifties and early sixties, both before we met and after we were married. Gerde’s Folk City was our favorite. Jean Redpath, Scottish, and the Clancy Brothers, Irish, made their NYC debuts there.

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makim brought a joy and vitality to Irish music not previously experienced in the US.

My friend and I were taking graduate metallurgical engineering courses in 1960 at NYU’s Bronx campus two nights a week. We would go to the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street in the west village once a week after class.

The White House was not the yuppie place that it is today. It was a seedy longshoreman bar until Dylan Thomas discovered it in the late forties or early fifties. It is rumored that he drank himself to death there.

As he read his poetry, an artsy and literary crowd gradually replaced the longshoremen.

The big front room was standing only, but the real fun was in the back, which was crowded with tables. The hamburgers were excellent, which kept you sober for a while.

People shared tables with strangers, which was always interesting.

One evening, the two younger Clancy brothers, their wives and other friends sat on the floor in the middle of the back room and sang Irish folk songs.

We were sharing a table with three people, one being an English doctor. During a brief pause between verses of an Irish protest song, the doctor, in a beautiful voice, sang a pro-British verse. Instead of the expected trouble, we were all invited to join them. We close the place at 3:00 AM, a bit more Irish then when we entered.

Frank McCourt’s brother Malachy was a regular customer in my store. He was a frequent reader at Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts. He also owned an Irish bar on 79th just off Amsterdam Avenue.

Malachy would often come in just to talk and tell stories. Frank may have had a successful book, but listening to Malachy's stories with his thick Irish accent was “priceless” before MC/VISA came up with the term. Another infusion of Irish DNA into my system.

I can image your emotions when you admire your grandmother’s gift.

George Vecsey

3/18/2015 07:27:07 am

Alan, you are truly a renaissance kind of guy.
Symphony Space is where I took our son David when he was 10 or 11, to hear Colleen Dewhurst read Molly Bloom's soliloquy from Ulysses on Bloomsday. The second part of the double feature was the Yankee game in the Bronx. Dewhurst and Joyce were better.
You were in a great crossroads of history on Upper West Side.
best, GV

Alan Rubin link

3/18/2015 09:13:38 am

George--I'm not sure that I qualify for a renaissance label, but at my age you have to called something.

It was great living and working a few blocks from Symphony Space as we could pop in and out of their day and evening long events, such as Bloomsday and the Saturday Wall to Wall events.

Dewhurst was also a frequent Selected Shorts reader.

I also used to go to movies at the Thalia on dates.

Almost anything is better than a game at Yankee Stadium.

George Vecsey

3/18/2015 01:20:39 pm

Alan, I agree with that these days, now that YS is a theme park, could be plopped down anywhere. The old place, even the revision, had some character, as dark and gloomy as it was.
Dewhurst was a force. I once interviewed her in her dressing room between matinee and evening show of "Virginia Woolf." She had started Saturday morning by watching her son play Little League BB, Then drove to Manhattan to play Martha.
She's on my list of smashing women with Irish names.
GV

John McDermott

3/22/2015 12:23:12 am

I treasure my Irish passport, and my dual nationality. I've always felt, since childhood, that while I had been born in Philadelphia there was something always calling elsewhere, and not just Ireland but many places, and that while I was born an American, a descendant of the Irish diaspora, I never felt myself to be only an American. The real irony in this, as you know George, is that my Irish and EU citizenship will allow me to live in Italy, the country where I now feel most at home.

Reflections on My Irish Passport on St. Patrick's Day

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