Chapter 3
It’s approaching 3 in the afternoon when we roll into the Rath Eanaigh stop on the Dart
line into Dublin. The oldish lady that Dehlia had been focusing on at the Malahide
station is sitting across from us and is knitting furiously, barely looking up from her work
even when Dehlia chirps, “You can’t touch my blankie.” Although daughter is relatively
calm, I can tell there’s a storm brewing. She is grinding her teeth as she continues to
stare at the old gal and she’s digging her left hand into my forearm like a Puma. This gal
might get off the train with her crochet work intact, but I have a feeling it won’t be
without incident.
A collection of what appears to be privately schooled kids burst in taking up seats to the
left and right of Dehlia and I. They are wearing green skirts and shorts (separately), with
off-green shirts, lime green knee socks and light green neckties and scarves. They look
like they’ve been ripped directly from the pages of “A Stereotyper’s Guide To Ireland.”
Green may be the unofficial color of Eire but as the countryside goes ripping by through
the windows, I see none of it. I’m tired and the cadenced rattling and rumbling of the
train is conspiring against my best efforts to stay awake. I decide to pull out my trusty
‘Dumbass Guide To Irish Culture’, and read about the Celts.
Of all the peoples who had invaded, conquered, and inhabited ancient Ireland, the one
group whose influence had the most lasting effect on the Irish of today was the Celts.
They were a colorful bunch, both figuratively and literally. They proudly sported
elaborate tattoos, and sometimes painted their nude bodies bright blue before going to
war, a sight that probably scared their enemies witless, or at least confused them into
sprinting in the other direction. Gregarious, rambunctious, fiercely proud and boastful,
the Celts loved a good story, a rousing song, plenty of food and flowing drink, but
warring and pillaging were by far their favorite pastimes.
If you go back far enough into the mists of distant history you find the Celts on the plains
of western Russia. As hunters who later became stock-keepers, the Celts were among the
first to domesticate the horse, around 3000 B.C. This skill, along with their deft use of
iron as weaponry, gave them a tremendous advantage over their fellow humans who, at
the time, were limited to name-calling, stone throwing and a terse glare or two. The Celts
were a people filled with wanderlust and a love of war so they decided to invade Europe
around 500 B.C. and did so as hordes of fierce, shrieking, naked warriors thundering over
their hapless victims on horseback. It’s easy to imagine why some believe that this
horrible vision of the nude warriors on their horses inspired the myth of the centaur.
I’m just starting to get into the part about the Celts stiffening their hair with lime and
painting themselves blue before battle, when the conductor blurts “Dublin City, mind the
doors.” I’m standing and holding a dozing Dehlia. Rhetta, Carol, my wife and her sister
Erin, and the Hausman’s get up to leave and almost forget Mema, my Mother-In-Law’s
friend who is also part of the march-on-Ireland. Mema is a retired teacher, 50ish, single
and would win national awards for being accommodating, agreeable, and non-
confrontational if they gave out national awards for these sorts of things. She makes the
fatal mistake of saying to Dehlia, “Doesn’t that look like your blanket honey?” In an
unprecedented and landmark maneuver, Dehlia lunges for the near-finished blanket
without opening her eyes. I tug her away from the clearly frightened woman and she’s
smiling, though wailing, as I tug her through the doors of the train.
We stand, the nine of us, against a wall at the Dart platform in Dublin, and begin
planning our next steps. Brooke is interested in purchasing a stroller to push daughter
around in. “Just something cheap to push her around the city in, unless of course you
want to carry her the whole way” I think is how she phrases it. Playing the role of fool, I
ask why we didn’t bring the stroller from home. “Um, because you insisted we wouldn’t
need it.” I feel dumb in a way that only a dumb husband can feel.
Linda has her Dublin guidebook open and is pointing in various directions without taking
her nose out of the centerfold. Ti-Ti Carol is hungry and has to go to the bathroom—a
combination that will re-appear with shocking regularity, and Erin has put her sunglasses
on trying to hide the fact that she is, in fact, asleep. I have been awake for 27 consecutive
hours at this point—save a few restless minutes back at the Hotel. Dehlia and her 34
pounds are perched on my throbbing neck and I feel my morale start to drip in the form
of perspiration beads. And there’s still the matter of finding Brendan. Frau Hasumann
actually comes to the rescue. “Ok folks, we need to rally, follow me.” It’s clear she
doesn’t have a blessed idea about where she’s headed but we collectively admire her
spunk. Absent any other plan, we fall in line behind her.
We’re headed toward the Temple Bar section of Dublin. In the 18 th century, the area was
known for many insalubrious characters that lived in and around the Fownes Street; an
area also known for its many brothels. Along with the riff and raff, skilled craftsmen,
artisans and printers lived and worked around Temple Bar until post-war industrialization
led to a decline in the area’s fortunes. In the 1970’s, the CIE (National Transit Authority)
bought up parcels of land in this area to build a major bus depot. While waiting to
acquire the land and buildings needed, the CIE rented out, on the cheap, some of the old
retail and warehouse property to young artists. Soon thereafter, record stores, bookshops,
coffee houses and clothing stores began to spring up. The area developed an ‘alternative’
identity and more cynical Dubliners began to refer to it as the “officially designated arts
zone.”
While the new investment and planning may have added a slight air of contrivance, it was
a welcome sight to us. Rows of shops and restaurants, live street music and performers,
the smell of stout and Dehlia’s revived willingness to walk on her own are working in
concert to boost my spirits. We stand for a while, as a group, watching and videoing a
street comedian ridicule different members of a large crowd until he turns his flame on
me making fun of my shoes, shorts, and jacket tied together nicely with a ribbon of
obscenities. I’m thinking about liming-up my hair, painting myself blue and rushing him
with a scrap of iron but being that it’s only day one of our vacation (and that he weighs a
metric ton) I decide to follow the rest of the group toward The Duke’s Pub; home of The
Jameson’s Literary Pub Crawl and our pre-determined Brendan meeting place.
It’s 7:30pm when we meet Brendan inside The Duke. At its base, the Duke’s wooden
façade is painted in black with gold trim and lettering and a humble wooden
sign—presumably with a depiction of the Duke of Grafton above it. The building is over
200 years old, serving its time as a pub for the past 163, consecutive. There’s a sign out
front advertising both the starting point for the Crawl and ‘Mighty Craic Nightly’.
Brendan not only has found his parent’s wedding certificate, but also has purchased 8
tickets for the Pub Crawl, to go along with 4 pints of Guinness and 4 pints of Smithwicks
for us-“A little variety.” He says. The Duke is bursting with people and the Pub Crawl,
which is set to start in a few minutes, is completely sold out.
While swilling our first pint at the Duke, two amateur actor-historians introduce the aim
of the Crawl; the group would meander between some of Dublin’s oldest pubs and stop at
other local points of historical interest like Trinity College and The Dublin Tourism
Center. There would be a reading and an anecdotal performance outside each
stop—focusing on Ireland’s literary heroes. The performances would be followed by 20
minutes inside each pub; about enough time to order a Stout, wait for it to settle and, if
you’re particularly quick, scull it down before being whisked to the next stop. The
evening would conclude back at The Duke where you’d be presented with the option of
either sliding across the street for one more pint at Davy Byrnes, or passing out quietly in
an authentically dark Irish alley.
The entire group is finally firing on all cylinders when we order a second round of stouts
at our first stop—O’Neill’s. This place has existed as a licensed drinking establishment
since 1755 and before that (well before that), the land on which it stands was used as a
‘Thingmoot’—a Celtic ‘punishment mound’ which was the staging area for public
executions and the odd beheading (the distinction between the two, to this day, remains a
mystery to me). Even before that, history holds that the ground was used as a fulacht
fiadh, or ancient cooking place. Stones were heated in a nearby fire, and then plunged
into shallow water to cook deer and vegetables. Experiments suggest that seventy gallons
could be boiled this way in eighteen minutes, and that water could be kept hot for three
hours, which explains why Irish vegetables have never been served al dente.
It is at O’Neill’s that Dehlia mails it in for the night and passes out, horizontally, in my
wife’s arms. The eight of us are sitting down draining pints and passing daughter around
like a loaf of hot bread, when Brooke falls on the grenade and takes a cab back to the
Hotel with Dehlia. Ti-Ti Carol has ordered 3 consecutive Bud Light’s and, in total, has
finished about 1/8 th of a glass. Erin asks why the hell she continues to order if she isn’t
going to finish them. “Well, I thought I was thirsty Erin. You go ahead and worry ‘bout
yourself.” Lack of sleep in Ti-Ti’s world, combined with the eating of greasy foods and a
modicum of aerobic exercise, is generally a recipe for swift doom. I haven’t known
Brooke’s Aunt Carol as well as most on the trip (I’m only slightly ahead of Dehlia in this
department), but I know her well enough to spot the first signs of a meltdown and, if I’m
not mistaken, one is just off on the horizon as we dip into pub 3, The Old Stand.
According to the bartender holding court as I try and order a Bud Light and 8, 1/2 pints of
Guinness (it’s worth noting here that if your height exceeds that of an average 6 year old
it is preposterously difficult for a man to order a ‘half pint’ of anything.), The Old Stand
started out life as a grocery store owned by John Cox. In 1885, and upon the realization
that there was more money to be made in the selling of drink than in the selling of
potatoes, Old John stopped selling groceries. The place oozes of literati, claiming that
Brendan Behan (when he wasn’t drinking at nearby McCaids), spent a fair amount of
time lying peacefully in the gutter out in front and that Oscar Wilde still owes over a
$1,000 (absent any adjustment for inflation) on a tab from the 18 th century.
After two more pints at a place I can’t remember, we congregate back in front of The
Duke for a final quiz on the evening’s events. The tour leaders fire off questions about
things discussed during the Crawl and those answering the loudest win t-shirts, bottles of
whisky-flavored barbecue sauce, Trinity College headbands, and other such niceties.
Rhetta barked out the only correct answer to the question of “Which Beatle had a
penchant for Indian food in Dublin.” and subsequently scored a green (you were
expecting, maybe, blue?) Jameson’s Literary Pub Crawl T-shirt. I could see Carol’s eyes
light up in anticipation then drop as Rhetta handed the t-shirt to me. The storm that had
settled upon Dehlia earlier in the day, was now hanging low over Ti-Ti. “You neva listen
to me Rhetta, I’m the one that said John Lennon Rhetta. I wanna go home.” My Mother-
in-law, fresh off of her victory, was in no mood for her sister’s antics. “Go ahead Carol,
go home then, we’re going to Davy Byrnes.” “Go ahead yourself Rhetta, I’m not going
to Davy Jones, you can go to Davy Jones, but I’m not.” Professed Ti-Ti. A Monkee’s
fan, somewhere, beamed.
The low light of the evening for me was our post-Crawl trip to Davy Byrne’s—home of
Leopold Bloom’s Gorgonzola Cheese sandwich in Joyce’s Ulysses. Joyce was a regular
at the pub and developed a special relationship with the friendly but abstemious Davy
Byrne. Joyce’s Dubliners has mention of Davy Byrnes, but the Joycean character with
which the premises is most associated is Mr. Bloom. I was expecting big things
here—especially since I swallowed the Cliff Notes to Ulysses prior to visiting. The place
looked plastic. Funky lighting, faux Irish bop that was more Sinead O’Connor than
Stephen Cooney and blue linen tablecloths topped with leather-bound wine lists gave the
place a feeling of insincerity. For kicks I give the menu a once-over. No stew, no soda
bread, no cabbage—not even a cheese sandwich to be found—these staples being
replaced with filet of Chicken with tomato-tequila coulis and marinated Feta balls with
Tarragon. For the record, the Cliff Notes said nothing about Feta-balls.
We finished our drinks and left quickly. I half hoped to salvage the experience by
stepping over a gutter-rummy but the velvet-ropes kept out the urchins, and I went away
feeling a little cheated. Walking back toward the train, the crew is in good Guinness-
soaked spirits and we barely notice the gaining North Atlantic breeze.
At the train station a group of hurling fans, dressed in Clare-blue hats, blue shirts and
blue face-paint, are singing and carrying on, readying themselves for the forthcoming
All-Ireland hurling finals against Kilkenny. They are slightly less intimidating than their
nude, horsebacked, ancient brothers and seem more ready for late-night eats than
oppressing a tiny hamlet, but the comparisons are certainly there. My personal nostalgia
quest has me rooting for the barbarians after the Davy Byrne letdown. They are singing
some inspired Gaelic fight song that I’m guessing, translated, goes something like ‘Stomp
the foreheads of those Killkenny boys,’ or ‘Smack ‘em in the kidneys mates.’ They head
off, impatiently and without episode, into the night looking for some war to wage, or
possibly an all-night salmon and cabbage hut. I had hoped to see the wielding of iron or
at the very least some indiscriminate pillaging, but at this late hour, they have probably
already had their fill of carnage. At least, that’s what I want to believe.