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Saint Patrick’s Day – Condition Green
Dr. John Culver, historian, philosopher, and the finest teacher I ever knew, once remarked that being Irish is not a nationality, but a condition. If you add to that remark Chesterton’s lines, “All their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad,” you will come as close to a description of the Irish people as you are likely to get. Generalizations are dangerous. You may have heard of the fighting Irish or the soft hearted Irish or even the ignorant Irish (God save the mark); but trot out from the dictionary any adjective that you wish, and I’ll find you an Irishman whom it fits.
Nevertheless, there are some people who possess a combination of traits of the frequently mentioned but seldom encountered “typical Irishman.” Such a one was Pat Blessington. He and I went through grade school together. He was a tall raw-boned boy, a rough fighter but not quarrelsome, friendly for the most part, and well-liked. His mother was dead, and this may have accounted for a certain lonely air about him that made him seem older than the rest of us. He and I were not close friends, for I lived on the mountain and he lived down in the town, so that we seldom saw each other outside of school hours.
I remember clearly how I discovered that under his rough exterior Pat had a soft heart. I was in the third grade at the time, and I was walking to school after lunch. Like all small boys, my walking was interspersed with kicking a stone, leaping up for low branches, or jumping over low obstacles. On my route there was a house on a corner with a low fence, a single strand of wire about eighteen inches above the ground. The fence was a regular hurdle for me, but on the day in question I misjudged the height, and my foot caught on the wire as I went over it.
The first part of me to return to earth was my two upper front teeth, which struck the edge of the flagstone sidewalk. I got up, a bit stunned, and blew out the remnants of my teeth as I bellowed with pain and self-pity. Pat had come along behind me, and he brushed me off and tried to calm me. He borrowed a nickel from someone, not an easy feat in our day, and bought an ice cream cone for me. Whether the coldness eased the throbbing pain or the kindness comforted me I do not know, but I felt better, and I have never forgotten the incident.
Pat’s father was a contractor, and from time to time Pat would bring a note asking that he be excused for the afternoon. On one such day he returned to the school yard just as lunch hour was ending. He was driving a team of heavy truck horses hitched to a four-wheeled dump wagon. He was on his way to Rahway, about 16 miles distant, for a load of gravel. We were in the sixth grade then, and we all envied Pat his adventurous life.
Although he grew to be about 6 feet 3 inches tall, Pat was the smallest of the three Blessington boys. His older brother, Joe, was 6 feet 6 in eighth grade, and eventually he reached 7 feet. Tom, the youngest, was not so tall, but he was a huge fellow, and weighed 300 pounds while still in his twenties. They were all good basketball players, and because of their height were much in demand on various teams.
After grade school I went to high school in Newark, and I saw Pat infrequently. On one of our chance meetings the talk got around to basketball, and I asked him if he still played. He told me that he had given it up. One night in a game he was guarding a young fellow who was very fast, and a high scorer. One end of the gymnasium was a brick wall, and the backboard was flush with the wall. The speedy lad would dribble down the court, leap up the side of the wall and loop the ball into the net.
“I figured out what he was doing,” said Pat, “so the next time I ran alongside of him, leaped higher up the wall, and came down on top of him. They carried him off with a broken leg, and we won the game. When we got back to the locker room I sat down and cried, I felt so sorry about him, and I haven’t had much use for basketball since.”
After prohibition was repealed, Mike Blessington opened a tavern which became a popular meeting place. I had moved to Cleveland the year before, and I came home for New Year’s Eve. My brother and I were going to a party, and we stopped at Blessington’s on the way. Pat was there in a police uniform, and he asked us for a ride to police headquarters. On the way he had us stop for a few minutes while he went into a house. He returned in a short while with tears in his eyes. An old woman who had known his mother wanted to see him in his uniform, and he had taken time out from his first night on duty to please the old woman.
Pat was only on the police force for a few years. He was badly smashed up when his car went out of control while he was chasing a speeding motorist, and he was retired. I have not seen him since, for I rarely go back to my home town, and I do not know if he is still alive. But whenever I think of Chesterton’s lines I think of Pat Blessington, a fierce and merry fighter with a deep sentimental streak. Perhaps this is what Doctor Culver had in mind when he spoke of Irishness being a condition. If this is so, and I think that it is, perhaps it would be appropriate to call it Condition Green.
Program Note
This is the day when Irishmen
All gather round on pleasure bent.
They pluck the strings of sentiment
And sing the haunting songs again.
When they have quaffed the cup that cheers
The tales they spin are pure delight.
They turn to song and end the night
By salting laughter down with tears.
Hemidemisemiquavers is written & printed by John Gillick
Lakewood, Ohio. 44107, for friends and members of NAPA.