Snakes would be more welcome than another St. Patrick’s disaster

St. Patrick’s Day resembles a wedding each year at our home.

If a wedding and reception entail a church, priest, flowers, music, limousine, bridal party (the list goes on and on), our annual St. Patrick’s Day party includes at least 35 pounds of corned beef, borrowed pots from neighbors, four starter cases of beer, bottles of Jameson for the Catholics and Bushmills for the Protestants, movies and coloring pages for children, decorations, chairs, tables (the list goes on and on).

We throw the doors open to our home every March 17, a Friday this year, tell our friends to bring a dessert or dish to pass, and hope we can get a piano player or singer to drown out the Clancy Brothers CDs.

But like a wedding, if three out of a million things go wrong, you can’t dwell on them. Savor the 99.9997 percent of things that go off without a hitch.

We’ve had our share of mishaps during our annual hooley for 30-plus years. There was the boy who wore his white New York Giants coat outdoors to shoot baskets on our neighbor’s muddy driveway. The coat was so tarnished that the parents reasoned it couldn’t be his. They convinced us to ask who might have left a similar coat. We wrote down everyone who brought along children that we could recall. Sorry, we responded, it’s your boy’s coat.

We laughed off the many calamity spills in the living room. Several times an entire glass of red wine emptied on the cream-colored carpet and guests quickly tried to dab it up with a green napkin. Think of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night with purple heavens. Think Mary resembling Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Those spills hastened our plan to replace the rug. In the dining room, where the desserts reside, enough chocolate brownies had been ground into the rug to convince us to install hardwood flooring.

We avoided the worst of the pandemic by canceling the party for the last three years, but in summer 2021 we tried for St. Patrick’s Day in July, on the 17^th of course. We positioned tents in the backyard, but Mother Nature dumped two inches of rain, forcing everyone inside. It rained so hard that my neighbor’s shoe sucked into the wet turf on the walk back to her house.

But the mother of all mishaps occurred about a dozen years ago. Shut out at the largest beef wholesaler, I called around to neighborhood butchers and found one who guaranteed me 28 pounds of corned beef. I walked into the shop and spotted another 7 pounds in the display case. The teen-age clerk added it to our haul, and Liam tucked the box in the backseat. Another item checked off my list.

That Wednesday, on St. Patrick’s Day, I had promised to come home immediately after school dismissed, but by midafternoon my friend Ed Driscoll rang my cell phone.

“You gotta meet me at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. I’ve got two lawn  chairs, six Guinness, and we’re going to toast Kevin O’Reilly.’’

His voice carried a certain pathos that I couldn’t ignore. Kevin had been a good friend who single-handedly raised three teen-agers after his marriage ended. Just months after the youngest moved out, he contracted esophageal cancer and died within a year. His passing always tugged at my heartstrings. So I agreed to meet Ed. I would have one Guinness, then hustle home for final prep for the bash.

I sprinted through my beer, reluctantly accepted a second, and choked on a swig when my mobile rang.

Mary’s voice sounded teary. “Something’s wrong with the corned beef. When I opened the pot, it was all brown!’’

This impromptu wake ended immediately. The 17-mile trip home seemed like 170.

Upon arrival, Mary showed me the packaging she fished from the trash. It read “Beef Brisket.’’ That teen-age clerk might not have worked in a fish market, but chowderhead fit.

My friend Tom Lynd has never let me forget it.

“On this particular St Patrick’s Day, I could feel something was amiss,’’ he recalled. “Instead of the sweet smell of corned beef, friends and family were greeted with the smell of roast beef. Initially, folks just kind of looked at each other not knowing how to respond. What type of madness was this?’’

“Bravely, I asked the host ‘Jim, what feckin’ happened?’  A panicked look overtook him as he said, ‘Mary gave me one job to do and that was to order and pick up the corned beef!’ ”

He wasn’t accepting anything about Liam or a teen-age clerk.

“So that was the year where English roast beef was the primary meal at the Holleran St. Patrick’s Day party,’’ Lynd lamented. “Yes, it was tender and delicious, but it still really doesn’t explain how a man can have ‘one job to do’ and muck it up so terribly!’’ 

I think Mrs. Wonderful has concocted a plan to end our losing streak. Mary suggested we move this year’s gig to the town lodge down the street. It’s loaded with tables and chairs, kitchenette, bathrooms, a fireplace, and plenty of room for food, drink and blarney.

Great idea. I already purchased the corned beef … and it’s the real deal.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Slainte.