Rant #3,657: The Unicorn

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I am not Irish, nor do I imbibe, so it is just another Monday for me.

But ...

I guess we are all "Irish" today.

If you celebrate the day, have a good one.

Personally, I have some really good--and some really bad--memories of the holiday, and I spoke about them in Rant #2,854, March 17, 2022.

"In school, in P.S. 30, Rochdale Village, Queens, we drew leprechauns and pots of gold, and we looked for four-leaf clovers in the grass and gave each other cards to celebrate the day.

On TV, the leprechaun in the “Lucky Charms” commercials stood out as we ate that cereal on the holiday ... I mean, that was HIS day, wasn't it?

But as I got older, I saw the bad side of the holiday become  a bit clearer.

 My father, a New York City medallion cab driver of 50 years' standing, always told me that this was the absolute worst day of work for him during the year.

 He picked up lots of drunk people who often spit up in or on the cab, you could not get through the streets because of the parade, and it was just a mess to drive the streets of Manhattan and the other boroughs on this day.

If that wasn’t bad enough, then I saw the whole thing unfold myself.

 When I worked in Manhattan when I was younger, I literally saw every stereotype you could see about this holiday unfold before my eyes.

 First, going into Manhattan from Long Island was a bit scary, as people were openly drinking from the moment they got on the Long Island Railroad train to get to work in the morning through all times of the evening.

And if one didn’t have a drink on their person, they could easily get one from just about any conductor, who were also drinking their pants off while on duty … and let’s not forget the drinking and smoking cars at the time, which happily furnished anyone who wanted a drink with one.

And when I got off the railroad at Penn Station, I would then walk to work, and along with all the usual winos and drunks and other dregs you would normally see laying on the street at that time, you would also see others with open cans of beer, tanking up before even getting to their workplace.

And then the parade … sorry to say that such a joyous celebration of New York’s Irish community was laden with lots of problems, too much drinking, and too much of too much, if you get what I mean.

I know I have told this story many times but I am going to tell it again.

I worked right off Fifth Avenue at the time, at a building and at an address that no longer exists, 14 West 40th Street, in the shadow of the New York Public Library.

I had gone to lunch, and barely escaped back to my building, as the parade was dispersing, and I was offered every substance known to man as I went to lunch and came back to the building from lunch.

I just got into the building, and as the door closed behind me, a young girl who was probably my age—early 20s—pushed open the door, fell to the ground in our hallway, and proceeded to throw up her guts as she lay on the floor.

I have never seen a sadder thing in my life, and finally, and fortuitously for me, the elevator finally came, and took me to where I had to go.

I am sure I must have told someone in my office about this, and I am sure the building maintenance people were also alerted, because when I left work a few hours later, the hallway was pretty much cleaned up, although there was still a stench of vomit in the hallway.

And that was the very day my father came home from work and told us that someone literally flung themselves at the front of his cab while he was navigating the streets, drunk as a skunk and not knowing what they were doing.

Yes, those things happened literally 40 years ago, and I know that there was a point in time that New York City recognized how out of hand things were getting on this day, and clamped down on the rowdiness that this day regularly produced.

Things are much better now, people are more responsible, you just know that this year’s parade and celebration will be the best ever."

Yes, things have changed, and St. Patrick's Day has returned and rebounded to be one of the funnest days if the year.

But honestly, the day does not begin for me until I hear the song "The Unicorn" by The Irish Rovers.

It was a hit record back in 1968--#7 on the Hot 100--and the song has become directly linked to the holiday over the past nearly 60 years.

The tune was actually first released six years earlier, and was written by a nice Jewish boy, Shel Silverstein, who was about as Irish as I am.

It is more a folk song than anything else, but once the Irish Rovers had a hit with it, it became forever linked with St. Patrick's Day.

So to make it easy, just click on the link, and here it is!

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all!

https://youtu.be/qfhZ4rw6R4g?si=ykaRFEp3k6eMdbtN