Ah, scents and sights of St. Paddy’s Day in New York. Well, we never did the beer thing being teetotalers (I know, boring), except for my father who liked his ouzo but didn’t live with us. We weren’t, however, above clapping with glee to Irish drinking songs.Finnegan’s Wake stands out in my mind. We did do the trek from Brooklyn to Manhattan, taking the shake-rattle-and-roll BMT for a nickle from Fourth Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street in Bay Ridge into the city for the St. Patrick's Day parade. I no longer remember what changes or transfers we made or where we disembarked. we always wore a bit of green, usually some sort of shamrock pin and, when I was little, a green ribbon in my hair.

In the days before I was born, me older half-sister used ride her horse in the parade. That little tidbit was ritually repeated to me each year, and each year I received it with much fascination. In my imagination, she was more like Annie Oakley than a dark little girl from Brooklyn who took riding lessons (a gift from a generous uncle) in Central Park.

Mom didn’t make the requisite corned-beef and cabbage. No.That was pretty much out of her area of competence: boiling water for tea! However, many restaurants did a good job of it in honor of the day, so we ate out. If we didn’t, we still got the whiff of cabbage cooking in other apartments of our building, 8829 Fort Hamilton Parkway, #D61.

Other memories: St. Pat’s on 95th and 5th was always appropriately decorated for the week, and the priests’ vestments often included green. In scouts, we put white carnations in green-tinted water to make bouquets of green flowers.

Good days. Good fun. A great and loveable people.

And, in celebration of the day and the Irish, this might interest you: The Dead (the recitation piece), based on the James Joyce short story of the same name and from the John Houston movie. I think that was his last film.