Fado, Fado
Ok, Ok, I haven’t written in months. I have no excuse, but I do have a hypothesis as to why I have not written. The best I can figure is that my lack of elucidation is due to lack of libation. Yes, lack of drink has caused me to lapse into my old familiar couch potato habits. The demon of an’tolg práta has imprisoned me and made life like the soft Irish summer weather.
The soft weather itself has not helped me either. Fifty straight days of rain and gray. The most rain in an Irish summer since 1953. Now, under normal circumstances the rain is not an excuse to keep one out of the pub. In fairness, there’s something very cozy about a nice warm pub and a nice warm Guinness in front of one when it’s pissy outside, but frankly I’ve become concerned about my drinking.
Deep in my psychic construction I am an American, and worse yet, I’m a Jew. Americans drink, but we’re guilty about it. Jews are born guilty and just don’t drink, full stop. So in a country like Ireland where a town cannot even be considered a town unless it has a church and a pub, and in the days when the English crown outlawed Catholicism and burned the churches, mass was held in the pub; drink is not a guilty pleasure. In fact, drink is heralded, lauded, applauded, and is the warp and the woof of the fabric of Irish life. In Ulysses, Bloom doubted that it was possible to cross Dublin without passing a pub on every corner.
The Irish wax poetic about drink.
I drink to your health when I’m with you, I drink to your health when I’m alone, I drink to your health so often, I’m starting to worry about my own
And, that’s just it. I was beginning to worry about my health. I drink more in one month in Ireland than I drink in a year at home. So, I curtailed my frequent cross-Dublin treks to Martin Slattery’s in Rathmines. I began to excuse myself at the reasonable hour of midnight on drinking nights with work colleagues, even though I knew the night would ramble on until four in the morning, six or seven on non-work nights. I was classified M.I.A. at Harry Byrnes.
I began to act like an American again. I ran out and bought a BBQ grill, though fuck-all good that did me in this shite weather. I made dates for coffee and was roundly stood up for all but one that ended in the suggestion that we repair to the pub.
After a while I realized that it was down to me and my remote control, and that, my friends is a slippery slope. I wallowed for many weeks, until, in the depths of my boredom I decided to pick myself up by my bootstraps. I tore a fresh one-day Rambler Pass from the booklet, boarded the 31, connected to the 15B on Eden Quay and soon found myself darkening the doorway at Martin Slattery’s.
“Where ya been?”, said Eddie, “makin’ piles of money I bet” “How ya keepin’?”
Funny story about how I met Eddie: I was on the bus on my out to Slattery’s on a Friday night a few years ago. The bus was still crowded with the last remnants of rush hour. This old guy and his wife get on the bus. The old guy hobbled down the aisle leaning on his cane. Of course there was a knacker sitting in the handicapped seat who wouldn’t get up for the old man. I was planning to get off the bus at Camden Street and have a kabob at Zytoons for dinner, so I told the old man to take my seat. “No, you’re grand-like” he said. I insisted and he sat down and thanked me.
About three hours later I’m sitting at the bar at Slattery’s with my friend Richard. Richard is in his late fifties, and was twenty-five years a fisherman from Roundstone (tombstone as he calls it) Connemara. He moved to Dublin after the fishing proved unprofitable and became a carpenter.
“What cha building, Richard?” I’d ask whenever I saw him. “Putting a million Euro muse on the back of a six million Euro house, Abram.” With that he’d jump down off his barstool, grab my hand in a death lock handshake, give a hearty laugh, and stare straight in my eye like we were squaring off in the ring.
You see, Richard used to be a boxer of some note as a lad in Roundstone, and the mid-ring stare-down intended to psych out one’s opponent had crept into his barroom demeanor and punctuated every point he made in a conversation. “Pantyhose Joe, Abram”.
“What?”
“Pantyhose Joe, Pantyhose Joe, Abram”.
“What?”
“Pantyhose Joe, the greatest of all American football players, Abram”.
Out comes the hand that I reluctantly shake. Nothing a few years of physiotherapy can’t fix I figure. So anyway, I’m having a few scoops with Richard and I suddenly I feel a big, hard slap on my back. I turn around abruptly and there’s Eddie who shouts out
“Richard, this is the lad I told you about who give me the seat on the bus!” It turned out that Eddie has been drinking at Slattery’s for twenty years and goes way back with Richard. Eddie was a page-boy for thirty-five years at the Gresham Hotel, and knows everyone who is anyone in Dublin.
So on this night of being reunited with my culchee brethren, I ordered a pint of Guinness and took a big gratifying sip. I looked around the pub and soaked up the warm glow that almost made up for the summer we never had, and I realized, Here’s the craic, in all its glory, more satisfying than the Guinness, but even better with a pint or two.
Americans should take a lesson. Get out from in front of the TV. Don’t hunker down at home. Go out, have a pint, have a chat with your neighbors. Flirt with a pretty girl or boy, and above all, don’t worry about your health. The Irish don’t. Besides, why worry when you can insure your liver?
Copyright (C) 2004 – 2019 Abram Richman All Rights Reserved
The Only Other Jew In Dublin 