0317blog
Luck O the Irish
I’ve never thought of myself as lucky or unlucky, more of an agnostiluckster but that won’t stop me from wishing you all the luck of the Irish and a Happy St. Patrick’s Day although I never got why the Irish consider themselves lucky what with the potato famine, oppression by England, the slums of Belfast, Bloody Sunday, Maze Prison.
I wouldn’t call myself an atheistickluckster because I don’t want to rule out the potential for luck possibly happening to me one day.
The closest I have come to being a believer in luck was when I would return home from Memorial School and chow down on two big bowls of Lucky Charms, the cereal that has absolutely no nutritional value and is filled with globs of sugar in the shape of shamrocks with an impish Leprechaun urging all children to get their mothers to keep buying those Lucky Charms. I also sometimes carried a rabbit’s foot in my pocket although I felt badly for the rabbit who was trying to hop but instead hobbled along on three feet because of me. And I hunted for four leaf clovers but never found even one of the lucky shamrocks and never, not even once, did I fall for that nonsense about a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. How do you even get to the end of the rainbow before it disappears?
Later in life, I always forgot to wear something green to work while my colleagues always had those garish emerald ties or sweaters which never did much for me anyway.
Ah, St. Patrick’s Day, when we’re all Irish, even us Irish Jews, a day when we drink to good luck, good friends, good mornings, good potatoes, good shoes, good screwdrivers, really any excuse to drink up and tip more than a few of the Guiness on a day that makes Bill Wilson shiver in his alcohol-free grave. That said, let’s all “wet the shamrock” with the stout or as the Irish say it,”Cá mbeidh tú ag fliúchadh na seamróige?” which means, “Where will you be wetting the shamrock?”
Lou Gherig famously gave a farewell at a jammed Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, curiously just two months before Hitler invaded Poland and kickstarted World War II, surely not a lucky time, at least not for Jews. The speech before thousands of adoring fans came just after Gehrig had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), later affectionately named Lou Gherig’s Disease, after the Iron Horse. “The luckiest man on the face of the earth” is how this great athlete who was stricken in his prime by a disease that would slowly eat away at him before there was nothing left of the once-great Gherig. If that’s lucky, you can keep it.
Charles “Lucky” Luciano was not lucky in the pure sense of the word and certainly those that the Mafia chieftain bludgeoned, garroted, stabbed or shot to death were not lucky. They say that Luciano got his nickname after he survived a severe beating and throat slashing in 1929 by three mobsters who were sore that Luciano declined to work for another mob boss. A lucky beating and throat slashing for sure.
Charles “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh got his nickname after he had to parachute to safety four times, although I believe it had more to do with the quality of his parachute, the lack of strong winds and lightning and a touch of skill on Lindbergh’s part. And I would not say it was lucky that your plane crashed four times, even if you didn’t get killed.
I never looked at the apparently haphazard twists and turns of life in terms of luck but rather that everything happens because of something that happened before, from the smallest momentary event to the most cataclysmic universe-changing happening. I wasn’t hit by a truck yesterday because I didn’t walk out on the street at the moment the truck was passing because I decided I’d take a longer shower because I had worked in the garden and gotten extra dirty. It’s all connected or maybe I’m just lucky.
For those among you who believe in luck, there are some who call Frane Selak the luckiest man in the world although I would call the Croatian man the unluckiest man in the world. In 1962 he was aboard a train that flipped off the tracks and fell into a freezing river. Selak was rescued and lived to have many more unlucky moments. A year later in 1963, during his first and last plane ride, the plane crashed and Frane landed on a haystack, unharmed, while the crash killed 19 people.
Three years after that, in 1966, he was on a bus when it skid off the road into a river, drowning four of the passengers, while Selak only sustained a few cuts and bruises. Two years later, he was trying to teach his son how to hold a gun, but hadn’t realized the safety was off and ended up shooting himself in the testicles. He lived, though his testicles did not. Lucky, I think not.
At its best, St. Patrick’s Day is a time to celebrate each other, a time when we are all friends.
May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you, and all your heart might desire!
May you be in Heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you’re dead!
When Irish eyes are smiling, Tis like a morn in spring. With a lilt of Irish laughter You can hear the angels sing. When Irish hearts are happy all the world is bright and gay when Irish eyes are smiling sure, they steal your heart away.