Happy St Patrick's Day

The Pogues joining up with the Dubliners. St. Patrick's day was always a big event growing up. My mother's side left Ireland during the Great Famine and my dad's side arrived in America at the turn of the century. My grandmother via Liverpool (or nearby) and my grandfather directly from Tipperary as a young teenager. And surprise, surprise, my grandfather walked a beat in Philly after gaining his citizenship fighting in WWI with the US Fourth Infantry.

A few years ago a cousin in Philly traveled to Ireland for vacation and managed to track down family who still lived in the little house where my grandfather was born in 1897. We're still impressed that she could locate the right people because she opened the phone book in County Tipperary and started dialing, asking if they were related to my grandfather. County Tipperary is "Ryan" central so her chances didn't sound very good. (Ryan is a popular name in Ireland but not as common as we find in America.) Somehow on her third or fourth call she spoke with someone who told her that she wasn't connected but she knew who was. Talk about a needle in a haystack.