Paddy’s Day Not A Good Day For Snakes!

By Mike Houlihan

March 17, 2024

St. Patrick’s Day scares me a helluva lot more than Halloween. Especially this year, my 75 th St.Patrick’s Day. My wife, the lovely Mary, and I live in Senior Housing. It’s economical and functional with an indoor parking garage that comes in mighty handy for Chicago winters.

We’ve lived here for almost four years and it’s been pretty good; once we got rid of the “Nurse Ratched” building manager. Don’t ask.

But I had quite a scare the other night. Man I was spooked. I live on the top, fifth floor of our building and both elevators conked out. We weren’t counting on doing a lot of “stair work” but we had no choice. And there was a very good chance that we all risked a “grabber” climbing those stairs.

So yeah, I’m scared….I could croak…but even worse. I could miss St. Patrick’s Day fer feck’s sake! And of course THAT is unacceptable.

Oh I’ve survived many Paddy’s Day adventures over the years along my crooked path. In 1967 I was a senior at Mt. Carmel HS and we had Paddy’s Day off. So myself and my old pal Jack Whalen swiped some cassocks from the Christ the King sacristy and jerry-rigged a couple of priest disguises to visit Mother McAuley HS to thank the girls for their mission collections and hopefully hear some confessions of the naughtier girls!

When I was twenty I showed up for work for my janitor gig at the Sanitary District on Paddy’s Day wearing green pants. My boss Jackie Sullivan gave me the rest of the day off to go to the parade downtown, where I proceeded to get quite a load on before hopping the Rock Island home to 95 th Street. My dad woke me up later that afternoon to inform me that Joe Canavan was at our front door asking for me. I met Joe on the front porch where he promptly punched me in the head, “And that’s for what you said to my sister at the parade!”

I like to think that in the last 50 odd years I’ve celebrated this holy day with more reverence and good judgement than I have exhibited in the past. But that’s wishful thinking.

Early in my career I was cast as Captain Brennan in Sean O’Casey’s PLOUGH AND THE STARS. The play takes place during the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland and the story of those patriots inspired me as they fought and died during the siege of the GPO. I visited Ireland for the first time in 2009 with my family, saw the Irish Proclamation on display on O’Connell Street in Dublin and stood with my sons in Kilmainham Gaol, where many Irish patriots were executed.

At the Church of the Assumption in the little town of Mt. Collins, in County Limerick, Ireland, we found the church where my grandfather, Denis Cusack, was baptized in 1861. As I plunged my hands into the water of that same baptismal font, the spirit of my ancestors took possession of my soul and I had my first of many Epiphanies in Ireland. Enlightenment had arrived after a lifetime of chasing dreams and my vision instantly became focused on the celebration of Irish and Irish American culture. Blessed with this new outlook, I was granted Irish citizenship, founded Hibernian Media, and set to work celebrating the culture of the Irish Diaspora. Unfortunately Ireland today is not the same, they’ve embraced abortion and other progressive idolatry.

Modernism has usurped Catholicism. You won’t see it on the mainstream news but Ireland is currently under invasion by illegal aliens, mostly men of military age, flooding this tiny country with their own brand of villainy. The Irish politicians are slaves to the woke philosophy of Soros while Taoiseach (Leo the Limp) Varadkar twiddles his effeminate thumbs and calls critics “far-right” zealots.
Sound familiar?

So forget about the leprechauns and the booze and the partying, what the Irish need now is our prayers. Embrace the words in our 1916 Proclamation.

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN:
In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.. We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people… we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations… We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonor it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland but go to mass next week and remind him there are still a few serpents slithering around the Emerald Isle disguised as politicians.

Up the Ra!

Late breaking news! The Irish people just voted NO to a pair of “woke” referendums that proposed to revise the definition of “family” in the Irish Constitution. Hallelujah, pack your bags Leo the Limp and the rest of your phony cohorts. There is still hope for this nation, once again, to embrace our Proclamation. Glory O, Glory O to the Bold Fenian Men…and Women!

AND my elevators are fixed too! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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Known around town as “Houli,” he is former features columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times, Irish American News and currently Chicago correspondent for The Irish Echo. He began his career in 1973 as an apprentice with The American Shakespeare Festival, appearing in the classics there and in regional productions across the nation as well as Off-Broadway, on Broadway, on TV and in major motion pictures. He is a playwright and author of anthologies “Hooliganism Stories” and “More Hooliganism Stories” and the gonzo Mayoral campaign journal “Nothin’s on The Square”. Founder of the Annual Irish American Movie Hooley film festival each Fall at The Wilmette Theatre. He was honored as 2020/2021 “Irishman of the Year” by the Emerald Society, the Irish American Police Association. His Hibernian Radio Hour podcast can be found at hibernianradio.org and streaming worldwide on Sat. nights from 7-8PM on Global Irish Radio, GIR.ie.