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I recently heard that there were about three billion websites now operating around the world, but instead of saying like a sensible person "That’s enough" I’ve decided that means there’s always room for one more, and here it is. I took its title from a sports column we used to have in New York which lives in the memory of all its old readers. It featured characters like Al Weill, the fight manager with the wonderful built (sic), Professor Ilitch of the Prosperity Institute with his Secret Play for beating the horses, available to the public for a reasonable price, Phainting Phil Scott, the English heavyweight, and other such individuals often found in the vicinity of Madison Square Garden or Belmont Racetrack.
Not to mislead, I don’t intend to write sports or introduce unusual characters found on my travels, but instead to deal in a general way with issues that bother me, and now and then to retail a joke or a story or a verse that will be a appreciated by a cultivated audience such as I hope to attract. How will I know they’re cultivated? Because I attracted them.
The benchmarks that will find me on a search engine are Catholic, ex-cop, law and order guy, tackles issues with originality and humor too. That’s me. The judges are you.
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I’ve been doing this blog for several years now but I’ve never gone seasonal and started rattling on about this or that holiday and its great significance for our time. Holidays have tended to go over my head and escaped my notice. This year however, St. Patrick’s Day has caught my attention as a result of my coming across a relevant publication dating from 1918.
This gem was reprinted in 1998 and attached as an appendix to that year’s edition of the official directory of New York City. The Directory’s known as the Green Book these days and runs to 631 pages or so as contrasted to its 1918 predecessor which only had 152 pages. Big government is here to stay.
The old book’s connection to St. Pat’s day becomes obvious as soon as you open it up. Almost the first name you encounter therein is that of Alfred E. Smith, President of the Board of Aldermen of New York, which is now known as the City Council.
The year after the book was printed Al Smith went from the city to Albany as the first Irish-Italian-American governor of New York state. He was re-elected three times and in 1928 became the first Catholic nominated for President of the United States. He lost to the Republican, Herbert Hoover, but started a trend that eventually became the strongest force in presidential politics. He carried the cities of the North, all of which were growing fast and becoming more and more important as one election followed another. He also escaped responsibility for the 1929 market crash which started the Great Depression and almost brought Hoover to his grave.
Al Smith in his day was the not just a politician but also the recognized representative of the Irish-Americans and Catholics of America. The two categories overlapped of course, but they weren’t identical twins for the simple reason that the Irish weren’t the only Catholics around. They were the most important group though because of their tight grip on New York City, America’s real capitol until the New Deal centered government power in Washington to a degree never known before.
“Tight grip” is an understatement for the kind of permeation that the Irish achieved in New York government. The Board of Aldermen was unreal; the names following Smith’s were Moran, Kenney, Gaynor, Dowling, Connolly, Donnelly, Stapleton, McCourt, it just goes on and on. To make sure everyone was included, there were sixty-seven aldermanic districts, almost as many as there were for U.S. Senators. The City Council today gets along with fifty-one seats although the population has increased from 5,600,000 to 8,300,000. Even so they’re probably more accessible than their predecessors, since they all have telephones and the 1918 members didn’t, or at least didn’t list them.
It seems likely that this Irish appetite for public service, i.e., jobs, could have had its origin in the homeland where English and Anglo-Irish had all the good positions while the natives were expected to occupy themselves with the cultivation of the potato. They did so much of this that when they arrived in America they absolutely refused to do any more farming but installed themselves in big cities where there was none going on. They never saw a cow or a plow and never wanted to see one.
All this history and a lot more may help to explain how St. Pat’s Day got to be what it is in New York. The saint had been good to the Irish in America and he was not forgotten. In Ireland they had always tried to laugh at their troubles and here they still kidded themselves. Here’s a musical example from those days, with a little added.
Oh the Irish Were Egyptians Long Ago
It must have been the Irish that built the Pyramids
‘Coz no one else would carry up…the bricks
It must have been a Doyle that swam the river Nile
‘Coz no one but an Irishman would fight a crocodile!
And every Houlihan once led a caravan
They say the same for every Mac and O’
When Moses came to Egypt and saw those Irish faces
He took the name of Callahan and changed it to O’Asis
Now all the Houlihans and all the Gilligans
Must have been Egyptians long-a-go-o-o-oh!
The noted King Rameses
Was one of the Dublin Deacies
A famous clan from Tipperary town
And when they got to Cairo
They felt a great desire-o
To unload their camel train and settle down.
Everyone had a hut
Plus a real Egyptian tomb
Which they made a treasure room
For their favorite gossoon
A little Irish lad they called King Tut.
Oh the Irish were mind-blowers and also were Pharoahs
In the land of Egypt long ago! |
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