Jersey Irish Blog

roaring fire in the hearth

We have fallen victim to Irish driving instructions in the past so I should have known better.

I didn’t properly read the email about the road to the house in Loughrea before we landed and maybe was subconsciously up for a bit of adventure on the first day away on vacation.

Packing for the big trip to Ireland from New Jersey was easy for me in the late 1970s. My mother did it.

In my defense, I was only 7 years old then.

Tripping through the World Wide Web late one recent night I went looking for digs in Galway City for Honey Badger and myself for the first weekend of May.

The dear flights and the dreaded rented car were booked and paid for in full. The trip’s bookends were in place.

And Maggie Thatcher got dirt.

The sight was shocking but nothing that can’t be sorted out in time. No need for a wake for the Jersey Shore.

It’s a terrible day: Thanks be to God.

Michael Doyle’s grandfather would say those words coming home soaked to the bone after plowing his fields in a cold rain with the help of the neighbors and their horses in north County Longford many years ago.

Danny McDonough made us laugh.

Even if you hadn’t seen him in a while, his name would come up in chat and some brilliantly amusing tale about Danny would follow. Then he had us laughing all over again without even being there.

Whether Bruce shows or not hardly matters. St Patrick is “The Boss” for the next two months across the Garden State.

It’ll look good framed on the wall here in New Jersey.

Happy St. Patrick’s Season!

It will almost feel like we are back on track.

It just isn’t going to be the same and that’s normal.

Paddy, sitting there with legs crossed and looking almost peaceful, always saves me a seat where old ghosts meet while we keep digging up below.

It should be a quiet week, thankfully, until Galway meets Kilkenny in the hurling final next Sunday morning. I have to go watch. I told Rattigan I’d be there supporting Galway since he was out for Mayo.

So it begins again.

A week after that, when Galway plays Kilkenny again in the hurling, I’ll be there sitting with Rattigan and all the lads shouting at the televisions.