Raining on a Parade

Yesterday was the Southside Irish parade. I didn’t go. This would have been newsworthy in my little world if it had happened ten years ago. Now, that I am settled and in my late thirties it is no longer such a big deal.

As a matter of fact, to show just how out of the loop I have become, I forgot it was even parade day. I didn’t realize it until I went to get a paper in the morning and I ran into a bunch of twenty-something girls all decked out in green on their way to the parade.

St. Patrick’s Day used to be something I looked forward to all year. It started in High School when I would ditch and head downtown for the parade in the loop. Coincidentally, I would park myself on the corner of Monroe and Dearborn (The exact corner I now work on) and would watch the floats and high school marching bands move on by. One of my favorite memories was of seeing some high school band blaring out Twisted Sister’s Were Not Gonna Take It.

I went to that parade for a number of years until I found the Southside Irish parade. That parade was just an excuse to get hammered and ogle young women. Both of which I was very much into in my twenties. So, every year my crew and I would head down to Western Avenue and eat some corn beef and cabbage and pound as many green beers as we could. I saw many sights and sounds in my years on Western.

I also had some great St. Patrick day memories outside of the parade. The year Wally and I went up to P.J. Flaherty’s and met up with some friends and wound up closing the place. The problem was that I had a final at DePaul I was due to take the next morning. I called my instructor who, I somehow talked into letting me take a make-up exam.

The next year I also was at Flaherty’s as Rob, Dell and I went there for one beer and again wound up closing the place after running into some friends. I somehow made it in to IRI the next day and for that I deserve a medal. I think I got one hour of sleep the night before. Then, we had the year where we got the one-eye.

Dell, who to be fair had driven my ass pretty much everywhere in 1986 and parts of 87 was without a car. His Impala had ceased to run and therefore, whenever we went out, he did not have to be the designated driver. Well on this particular St. Patrick’s Day, he had borrowed his Mom’s Tempo and Rob, Wally, Tony and I were prepared to tie one on. The problem was that it was a Sunday night.

All the bars on Western were closed for some reason. We wound up having a couple of beers at Oak Forest bowl and then had Dell drive us from there to Kenny’s in La Grange, where we had a couple more. It was kind of a downer. There was also the time we spent it at Joe Bailey’s where it was Dell, Rob, I and the Deacon. That was a memorable night for other reasons. (I won’t go into specifics as I wasted a whole other posting on the events of that night.)

At some point as people got older and our lives became more complicated St. Patrick’s Day became less important. Suddenly seeing a bunch of drunken twenty something Irish Sox fans getting drunk wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. Maybe I just got old.

Either way, this year St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Saturday and I am not even sure I will have a beer. I have to go to a St. Joseph’s Day feast in the afternoon and depending on how long that takes, I may or may not go out for a cold one. It is just funny how different I view the day now then when I used too.