Saint Patrick's Day Is Like Christmas Now

A Story

by JOHN SESSIONS

“That’s no Irish song,” Sid protested.

“What do you mean? I suppose you know more about Irish songs than I do,” the Irishman answered. “It’s an Irish song, and I’m going to sing it.”

“What do you say, Johnny,” Sid asked me. “Is that an Irish song?”

“ It is the way Irish sings it,” I said. “Any song is Irish the way he sings them.”

“It’s an Irish song, and I’m going to sing it. In that green derby I wore last year. Remember it? And my uncle’s got a clay pipe.”

“That’s all right, but that isn’t any Irish song.”

“If we’re going to have the dance, this committee better get going on it,” I warned them.

“Oh, we’ll have the dance, right enough,” Irish said. “Boy, I’ve waited a long time for this. Every year. Last year. The year before. Every year I go down to the local. Let’s have a Saint Patrick’s Day dance, I tell them. Lot’s put some life in the local. Throw a big Saint Patrick’s Day dance, and give the money to sick and needy members.”

“ And every year,” Sid broke in, “John MacGregor says nix.”

“He better keep out of it this time,” Irish warned, “or there’s going to be a new president of the local next year.”

“Keep out of it?” Sid said. “What do you mean keep out of it? If it was up to him, there wouldn’t be any Saint Patrick’s Day dance this year either.— You heard what he said about it, Johnny.”

“Yea, I was there,” I answered. ” ‘We can’t have it,’ he said. ‘You go to having a dance, and you’ll have beer. And as sure as you go to having beer, the guys’ll get drunk. And as sure as the guys go to getting drunk, they’ll get into trouble. And that’ll look bad for the local.’ That’s what he said.”

“He’s no good,” Sid said.

“You saw how the membership went for the dance,” Irish reminded us. “You’ll see. We’ll have a dance all right. There’s a lot of Irishmen in this local. MacGregor wants to watch out.”

“O.K., men, let’s get back to business,” I said, trying to keep the committee on the subject. “What about tickets?”

“I think we should sell tickets for a buck and a half and give them free refreshments and free beer,” Irish suggested.

“That’s too much money,” Sid protested. “A buck and a half could keep lots of people away. Make it fifty cents and you’ll sell a lot of tickets to guys that won’t come but’ll buy tickets just because it’s for the servicemen’s fund.”

“Make it a buck and a half. Give free beer and sandwiches. And free entertainment. There’s a good hoe-down fiddler in 69 department. Your wife can sing. And I’ll put my green hat on and sing. You know. I can’t sing good, but it’ll be funny. They’ll get a good laugh out of the Irishman in a green hat singing,

“I tell you that’s no Irish song,” Sid said.

“ Why not leave it up to the stewards to decide how much to sell tickets for?" I suggested. “They’re the ones that have to sell them.”

“Thai’s a good idea,” Irish agreed. “I still think a buck and a half is better, though.”

“A buck and half isn’t fair,” Sid said. “Some guys that were born in a saloon like you, Irish, would drink all the beer, and my wife, she’d pay the same as you, and she doesn’t drink two beers all night.”

“That’s socialism,” Irish said. “We’re all in favor of socialism, aren’t we?”

“All right,” I interrupted. “Let’s leave it up to the stewards.”

“O.K.,” Irish said. “I don’t care so much about the tickets, so long as we put a little life into the local.

I told MacGregor, the way he runs things, he might as well hang crepe over his door.”

“You take it up with the stewards, Johnny,” Sid proposed. “They got a meeting tomorrow. You ask them what they want to sell tickets for. And tell them if they make it fifty cents, we’ll sell a lot of tickets to guys that won’t come to the dance but’ll buy tickets because it’s the servicemen’s fund.”

“How come Irene’s not here, by the way?” I asked. “She’s in charge of the servicemen’s fund.”

“She got her hair caught, in a drill yesterday,” Sid explained. “Couldn’t come in to work today.”

“Why do girls wear their hair like that when they’re running a drill?” Irish asked.

“Did you hear about Ford local running a contest on that?” Sid asked.

“What do you mean, a contest?”

“They offered a war bond to the girl that could design the best-looking safety hat. They got hundreds of entries. And do you know who won?”

“Who did?”

“A maintenance man!”

“A maintenance man designed a lady’s hat?”

“Yea. It was perfectly safe. You couldn’t get your hair caught in a drill, and it looked just like this Veronica Lake.”

“You’re crazy. How could that be?”

“Easy. He told the girls to shave their heads and wear a Veronica Lake wig!”

We all had a good laugh about it.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s stick to the dance. Irene said she knew about an orchestra.”

“Sure, it’s the same one Chrysler local had for their dance. They were good for popular stuff and the old-time music both. Let’s try to get them.”

“I like the old-time music best,” Irish said. “I’ll never forget when I was a kid in Scranton. Saturday night all the miners would draw their pay for the week, and we’d all get together in old man Riley’s barn. We’d dance and sing. Boy, we used to have some good times then.”

“That’s the way it was in Liverpool,” Sid said. “The English used to sing. They don’t sing over here the way we used to sing in Liverpool. Our unions had singing societies, and there was always a big contest every year. — You ought to have heard them sing, Johnny.”

“Let’s get back to the orchestra, though,” I said.

“Did you ever hear my wife sing?” Sid asked. “She can sing anything.”

“ Everybody’s agreed then?” I asked. “ We get the orchestra the Chrysler guys had?”

“How about you going down to find out about it tomorrow, Sid?" Irish said. “You can take the day off and get lost time from the local.”

“All right. I’ll find out about it. Maybe Irene can come along. She ought to be in on this stuff. She can wear a hat, and it won’t look too bad.”

“Hey, are you guys about ready to go home?” It was Fisty, the hunchbacked janitor.

“You want to lock up, Fisty?” I asked.

“If you guys are through, I do,” he replied. “If you want to go on meeting though, go ahead. That’s what the local hall is for. The place is dead since MacGregor’s running things. You guys liven the place up.”

“I told MacGregor the other day he might as well hang crepe over the door,” Irish said.

“ We’re ready to go. You can lock up,” I told him. “Oh, I brought you some towels.”

Fisiy took the towels and locked them away in a cabinet where he kept his cleaning stuff. “Thanks, Johnny. I keep these towels hid in the cabinet. If MacGregor found out about you guys stealing company towels for me to clean the hall with, he’d raise hell about it.”

“We’re going to meet here again tomorrow, and I’ll put a couple more under my shirt for you.”

We grabbed our lunch boxes and ran for a streetcar we could hear coming down the street.

2

WHAT do you mean, they’re going to hold the dance the day after Saint Patrick’s Day?” Irish demanded.

“Don’t blame me, Irish,” Sid replied. “I know how you wanted a Saint Patrick’s Day dance. But when Irene heard about the orchestra she went straight to MacGregor, and MacGregor went straight to the executive board and they changed the date.”

“How can you hold a Saint Patrick’s Day dance the day after Saint Patrick’s Day?” Irish wanted to know. “Who ever heard of an Irishman getting all dressed up in a green hat to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day the day after!”

“What do you mean they’re going to hold it the day after?” I asked Sid. “How come?”

“It’s on account of the orchestra,” Sid explained.

“It’s anti-union,” Irish said. “They’re going to scab on the musicians’ union. That’s what it’s all about.”

“No, that’s not it,” Sid objected. “It’s because of the servicemen’s fund they want to do it. Irene was there, and she thought it would be better the day after. Maybe it will be better some ways. Now you can sing that song of yours, and it won’t look so bad because it’s not an Irish song.”

“It’s an Irish song all right, but I’m not singing it. I feel like not even coming, if that’s the way they’re going to run things. I knew MacGregor would try to spoil everything.”

“Sure you’ll sing the song, Irish,” Sid said. “Let’s put the thing over as best we can, and well get MacGregor later. Election time we’ll take cure of him.”

“We’ll get him all right. There’s a lot of Irishmen in that plant. They won’t like this. How do you think Donnally’ll feel about this? And O’Neil? There’s a lot of Irishmen in that plant. People can’t mess up Saint Patrick’s Day. They can fool around with Thanksgiving if they want to. But when you go to monkeying around with Saint Patrick’s Day, you want to watch out.”

“Hold up, you guys,” I said. “What goes on?”

“Well,” Sid explained, “Irene came along with me to find out about the orchestra, and she figured since the dance was for the servicemen’s fund, we want to make as much as we can. Well, when she found out about the musicians’ union, she went straight to MacGregor about it and got the date changed.”

“Women,” Irish muttered. “What do women know about it?”

“You mean she wants a non-union orchestra.'” I asked. “She ought to know we can’t do anything like that.”

“No,” Sid said. “That’s not the idea. The thing is, the musicians’ union says Saint Patrick’s Day is a holiday, and they won’t play unless we pay them double time.”

“A holiday? Saint Patrick’s Day?” I exclaimed.

“Isn’t that the pay-off!” Irish said. “This orchestra gets double time working Saint Patrick’s Day. And I got to work for straight time. That shows the kind of union we got.”

“So Irene goes to MacGregor,” Sid continued. “She says as long as it’s for the servicemen’s fund and as long as we can make sixty dollars more the day after, we should wait another day for the dance.”

“And MacGregor, the damned Scotchman, is just that tight and just that much against the Irish that quick as a Hash he gets the executive board together and puts the dance off.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. “Imagine those guys getting double time for Saint Patrick’s Day. and we got to work for straight time.”

“Tell you what let’s do,”I suggested, “Let’s go thrash this out with MacGregor.”

MacGregor was sitting in his office. “How’s the dance coming?” he said cheerfully.

“You know damned well how it’s coming,” Irish told him.

“Now, Irish,”MacGregor said pleasantly, “don’t get the idea that I oppose a Saint Patrick’s Day dance. It’s just that Irene thought it would be nicer to hold the dance the day after, since we would get so much more for the servicemen’s fund.”

“MacGregor, you been trying to upset this Saint Patrick’s Day dance right from the start,” Irish said.

They argued back and forth awhile, and all at once Sid broke in.

“Look, you guys, if we can’t hold a Saini Patrick’s Day dance, how about, holding it the night before? That would be better than afterwards.”

“Saint Patrick’s Eve!” Irish said triumphantly. “That’s it, Sid. Saint Patrick’s Eve. You can pay the orchestra straight time, MacGregor, and we’ll stay up the whole damned night to welcome in Saint Patrick’s Day. There’s Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, and isn’t Saint Patrick’s Day as important as Christmas and New Year’s? I’ll be the first damned Irishman to welcome in Saint Patrick’s Day. I’ll dress up in my old green hat, and right at twelve o’clock I’ll sing an old Irish song I know.”

“Now, let’s not rush this,” MacGregor said,

“I had a dream, dear ...”

“You’re licked, MacGregor,”Sid said, “and you better admit it.”

“You had one too-oo . .

Fisty came by as we walked out of the office, and we gave him a pile of company towels, right in front of MacGregor.

“Mine was the best dream . ,

Irish was singing with gusto. Saint Patrick’s Day had come into its own. It was like Christmas now.

“Because it was of you-ou-ou.”