It was in March 2005. Maureen and several of her pals at Parron-Hall Office Interiors had been awarded a Kimball Office Furniture “SPIFF” to join a large group in Dublin. i tagged along.

It was my first time in Ireland. i immediately determined i could live there. We wandered the streets with my jaw somewhere around my kneecap in awe. There was this feeling of Keats, of Joyce, of Shaw, of Samuel Beckett. We ate Irish. The dinners were great. We went to Trinity College where i came up with my plot. We went across the street to a haberdashery and more Irish shopping to lure in tourists. It worked. i bought an Irish tweed sports coat, which i still wear today. It’s me.

We walked around the corner to a pub for lunch. I felt like i was in the “Quiet Man” pub. Next door there was an old, and i mean old book store. You could feel the dust on the shelves that contained first editions of Yeats, Joyce and Wilde works. We went back…several times. The churches, the city buildings smacked at history. The group had a small section of seats for the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

i can assure you it’s an entirely different thing in Dublin compared to the silliness we conjure up in the good ole U.S. of A. There wasn’t a commercial float or ads on sides of the cars…in fact, don’t remember automobiles in that parade at all. It was high school bands. It was local bands of all sorts. It was amateur magicians, acrobats, and unicyclists. It was fun.

After the parade, we wandered into a pub just off of St. Patrick’s Close near that magnificent cathedral. It sat about fifty and the fifty were all Irish except for the eight of us and ranged from around four years old to about ninety. We had our Guinness. The bartender gleefully showed one of the several beautiful women in our group how to draw an Irish four-leaf clover on top of the foam.

On another sortie, we had gone on a tour to see a castle, the Irish Sea, and to an Abby turned restaurant, show place. We sat on picnic tables, ate traditional Irish fare, and the Irish band lulled us with Irish Melodies, and the rinnce fada, or the Irish step dance. It ended the show with “Danny Boy.” The young singer was beautiful and perfect for the song. i noted that Maureen, most of the other women, and even a few males, had tears running down their cheeks.

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Our next trip in 2015, ten years after visiting Dublin, was to join Joe and Carla, my brother and sister-in-law, in Tuosist, near Kenmare in County Kerry. i fell in love with the Beara Pennisulsa and Kenmare. The beauty, the peacefulness, the food, everything was damn near perfect. It did not possess the bustle and the big city feel of Dublin. And there was John Moriarty, the head barkeep at the Park Hotel. The man knows his whiskey, and in turn taught Joe and Carla wonderful things. i had perhaps the best whiskey i’ve ever had at the Park Hotel bar. There are several stories there, but i will hold them for a later time.

i remain entranced.

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As for that plot, i had: Sarah was choosing what college to attend at the time of our first trip. She had intimated she would like it to be in Europe. Trinity is the college of fine arts, including drama (the Irish system is much different from ours in the states where the various fields of studies are located together across the country, not in universities like ours that offer degrees in many fields). Sitting in that Sean Thornton pub in Dublin, i remarked to Maureen we could get Sarah into Trinity. To add to the bait, i noted we couldn’t afford to live in Dublin, but we could get a relatively inexpensive cottage thirty or so miles away. i continued to explain Ireland had a great train system (i was guessing), and we could spend a couple of years there giving Sarah moral support. The coup de gras ending was suggesting after two years when Sarah had her feet on the ground, we could get a place for a couple of years in Southern France.

Maureen liked the idea but she wasn’t exuberant. i passed right over that and when back in the Southwest corner, began my pitch to Sarah.

She wasn’t interested. If she was going to study abroad, she preferred England, London i think.

The next spring, Maureen and i were headed to Padre baseball game. We were waiting for the trolley when i re-launched my campaign, reiterating all the positives, and suggesting we could convince Sarah to change her mind.

i received the Maureen “look.” i said, “You really don’t want to do this do you?”

She nodded her head.

I, flummoxed, asked, “Why not?”

She simply replied, “Too many pubs.”

Story ended.

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i am not Irish. Maureen is really, really Irish. We are locked into living here until we are not. There are now only two other places i would move. One would be back home. My near life-long fantasy has been to live in a place like the cabin my parents and aunt and uncle had on Old Hickory Lake. And to the Beara Peninsula. Neither will happen.

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This morning, Barbara Leftwich Froula sent a photo of her father’s column in The Democrat. It was about his Irish heritage. As usual, JB’s column was on point, thoughtful, and funny in the right places. i and many of his students in journalism labeled him “Coach.” His column ran for years in the newspaper. For several years, his column would run on Tuesday (i think) and mine, “Notes from the Southwest Corner,” would run on Thursday. For me, that was like validation of being a good columnist.

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i may not be Irish, but one of the greatest guys i have ever met is. Mike Kelly now lives in Houston. Jim Hileman introduced me to him. The three of us became golfing buddies and pals for years. Today, Mike posted a photo of his family when he was a young man. Mike is the second from the left on the back row. Now folks, that’s Irish:

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!