Luck of the Irish

My sister and I agree. St Patrick’s Day is for amateurs. We are Irish 24/7. My pal, Hal Swift, sent me this. For those who don’t know, the Truckee River flows (sometimes) through Reno.


The Colorful Truckee River
by Hal Swift

The Truckee River in Downtown Reno
is famous for how it flows.
And Saint Patrick's Day it's always dyed green,
as any Nevadan knows.

But a group of men met in secret one year
and formulated a plan.
They charged themselves with just one task,
to change how the river ran.

Boyle and Brady, Buckley and Burke,
Costello, and Casey and Carroll.
The toughest cowpokes this side of Saint Jo,
like Foley, Fitzgerald, and Farrell.

Protestant cowpokes, the boys set out,
and they all knew exactly why.
They rode upriver a mile-and-a-half,
with a hundred barrels of orange dye.

They didn't know that Catholic cowpokes
had rode up two miles or so.
They had 'em a hundred barrels of green,
and dumped it into the flow.

Hamilton, Hogan, Kelly and Lynch,
O'Connell, O'Donnell, and Shea.
All set up a shout, as the green poured out,
and quickly was carried away.

Downriver, the Protestants heard the shout,
and hastened the work they'd begun,
to get their orange in the Truckee first.
And quickly, the deed was done.

They mounted up and rode back to town,
to see the results of their prank.
The Protestants stood on the river's north side,
and the Catholics took the south bank.

Someone hollered from off to the west,
"Get ready, boys, here she comes!"
Then, along the river, the shouting stopped,
from a shock of the kind that numbs.

It had only taken a matter of minutes
for that dye to reach downtown.
But the green and the orange had mixed together
and the river had turned dark brown.

If you think that ended it, guess again
the fight goes on each year.
But the green and the orange you find these days,
is only in the cowpokes' beer.

And the reason the boys're drinkin' such stuff
is enough to make a grown man quiver.
The EPA threatened 'em all with jail
for pollutin' the dadblamed river.

But hope springs eternal in a cowpoke's heart,
and some Saint Patrick's dawn
you'll find the Truckee's dyed orange or green,
and the one who did it is gone.

A light hearted Holiday. Those of us who care to remember know that over a million Irish died in the potato famines. There was no lack of food. The land owners, often absentee, continued to ship grain and meat to Great Britain while the peasants, who relied on potatoes for the majority of their calories, were starved and driven off the land. Unbridled capitalism at it’s worst. Catholic, Protestant, or Ulster Scots, if peasants, suffered equally.

That is why us Irish descendants don’t trust the son of a bitch 1%. We know history often repeats itself.

That was then, this is now. Enjoy the day! And for my spud fucker brethren, watch out for the amateurs.