The March 17th Blues

It’s Saturday and it’s raining but if I were back in the City, it wouldn’t matter; it’d roll off my back. But I’m in Albany, where I live now. Don’t say anything, like “How can you call that cesspool of corruption home??”, as a friend indelicately put it when I announced my plan to move. Come to think of it, Rose’s response when I first broached the subject: “What??? Where!!!” fell short of unalloyed joy. This depression I feel in my bones on March 17th is only for today. ‘Buck up, boyo,’ the Irish spirits whisper, ‘the Thruway is a two-way street.’

Modern Albany was practically invented by the Irish, after they’d ousted their Dutch Protestant ‘betters’ who’d held power since the Civil War. Dan O’Connell won at the polls in 1921 and his Democratic Machine ran the City forever after, today still. Dan came from the Irish South End where his father owned a Bar. He cannily persuaded Erastus Corning the Younger, a Brahmin scion, to throw in with him, and the rest was history. Corning was Mayor of Albany for 42 years till his death in 1983, but if you wanted a big enough favor, you visited Boss Dan O’Connell, hat-in-hand, at home, up until he died in 1977. These were the days of the Ward Men whom you met on the street or in a Bar on Election Day to receive $5 for your vote. An Irish version of The Godfather.

Two things I know about St. Patrick’s Day in Albany: Go to the Ancient Order of Hibernians Hall on Ontario Street for the corned-beef-and-cabbage, boiled potatoes, carrots and two kinds of Irish Soda bread; and skip the Parade. The Parade actually occurs on the Saturday before the 17th. How un-New York is that! I went to it once, and was appalled. The Albany cops couldn’t control the corners at the intersections along Washington Avenue (or didn’t know how). On Parade Day, The NYPD would post officers on foot and horse on both sides of Fifth Avenue from East 45th St. to 86th St., then down 86th to Second Avenue, the last stop. (Of course, the APD has 350 cops while we had 35,000.) There were
Pipe Bands in the Albany Parade, but their leaders did not look like Detective Finbar Devine. Truly, no other human ever did. Six-feet-five inches, broad-shouldered and bull-chested, perennial Drum Major of the NYPD’s Emerald Society Pipe and Drum Corps; in kilts and the high Black Bear Hat, he strode up Fifth Avenue, marking cadence for his men with swings of his shillelagh-sized baton, like Finn MacCool straight out of the mists of Irish Myth. Finbar has been gone from us a good while now, doing his thing in the celestial Precincts, I like to think.

In The Day, it was a mix of pride and wild joy I felt marching up Fifth in the first rank of a uniformed column as a Sergeant of Police. We were hundreds but the crowds lining the route were thousands. Past St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Cardinal, Mayor, et al preening in the grandstands on its steps, we moved past smartly to the wail of the pipes. New York loved us That Day and told us loudly. At the end of the march, we’d hit all the Irish Bars along Second Avenue, from 86th to 22nd Sts. Still in uniform, the drinks were free as were the women. Our destination was Molly Malone’s Pub, around the corner from the Police Academy on East 20th St. You’d have to shout over the din to be heard, the pipers competing with the juke box blaring out Danny Boy and The Wild Colonial Boy. I was in my 30s then and pronounced it good.

The world moves on; me, too. I know Albany cannot have the number and magical élan of those New York Irish bars I knew so well, now long gone. The world is drearier for it.

© 2015 Robert Knightly

On Being Irish in Albany on March 17

Look. I’m from New York City where the Irish celebrate St. Patrick’s Day like it’s a Sacrament. How can you think otherwise when you’re marching up Fifth Avenue and within the first six blocks you’re passing the Grandstand at 50th Street on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with the Cardinal in his Sunday best and all the politicos—even if just Irish For the Day—flapping their wings at you. And, of course, I’m in the uniform of an NYPD Sergeant marking cadence with the hundreds of cops moving with measured stride up the Avenue. I should mention that the last time I marched in the parade was thirty years ago. A lot of water under the bridge; today I’m lucky to be walking, never mind marching. And I now live in Albany, moved here five ears ago looking for a smaller city, never having lived anywhere else but the City.

No regrets, but I miss my Parade of memory: the pageantry, the pride, the bagpipes the bars. But not my fellow marchers, I have to say. When cops drank afterward at the Emerald Society Bash at the cavernous St. George Greek Orthodox Church on Ninth Avenue at 60th Street, then later at the Irish bars along Second and Third Avenues from 86th Street on down to the last stop, Molloy Malone’s at 22nd Street—we’d be shouting at each other over the din of the pipers parading up and down the aisles while ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’ blared simultaneously from jukeboxes. You got tired, hoarse and drunk, in no particular order. Being in my 40s, I’d grow impatient with my comrades, but make allowances for the policewomen.

Finbar Devine

So last year I went to Albany’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade downtown on Washington Avenue. There were a number of Pipe Bands but I found myself looking for, not finding, Detective Finbar Devine, the quintessential Drum Major of the NYPD’s Emerald Society Pipe and Drum Band, in kilts and tall Black Bear Hats with a sprig of green—Himself, all six-feet-five of him, directing the stately procession of the lads up Fifth. Finbar has been gone for some years now, but I will always see him on the Day in my mind’s eye. I didn’t last long at the Albany Parade, the cops annoyed me. College students bunched up at traffic intersections, spilling out in the gutter, blocking our view from the sidewalk. Two Albany cops on motor scooters zipped up and down the street barking orders ineffectually. It appalled me that the APD doesn’t know how to police a parade. In The Day, the NYPD posted officers on foot the entire length of the parade route at intervals of 25 yards on both sides of Fifth Avenue and down East 86th Street to the end on Third Avenue—forbidden to do aught but face the crowd and keep order. Yeah, I’m getting old but that still is the way it’s done. True, New York had 30,000 cops while Albany has just 350. But still…

Albany is still held hard by a Tammany Hall-style Democratic Party. Not surprising when you consider that the City has been run by a total of three Mayors in the past 72 years. Erastus Corning, the first, held sway from 1941 till his death in 1982. He was a very hands-on politician as was the real power behind the throne, Boss Dan O’Connell, who ran the Democratic Party like his private fiefdom for even longer, till he died in 1977. Next was Mayor Thomas Whalen, in office a mere ten years, till Jerry Jennings took over twenty years ago and shows no sign of leaving. Although there are some black leaders in Albany—all Councilmen or women—this is definitely not a New York City kind of City Council. By some sleight of hand in revising the City Charter awhile back, Mayor Jennings must approve whatever the Council passes. No wonder he is loathe to leave. Blacks comprise one-third of the population of Albany, which is 94,000-plus, but have zero political clout. The Irish and Italians, the longtime residents, wield local power. Whenever I take a ride in the black urban ghettos of this City—Arbor Hill, West Hill, the South End—I come away wanting to get Al Sharpton on the horn and tell him he’s urgently needed.

How describe the Irishness of Albany today? I’d say bland, washed-out. I had to drive nine miles to a venerable Italian restaurant in the Lansingburg section of Troy last St. Patrick’s Day to get a good plate of Corned Beef and Cabbage. Yet, there is a vestige of Old Irish Albany. I think of him as The Last Irishman, the novelist William Kennedy. He put Albany on the literary map in the early 1980s with his cycle of Albany novels: “Legs,” “Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game” and “Ironweed.” There’s no better guide to Albany’s labyrinthine politics than Kennedy’s novel, “Roscoe.” And for the global view, “O Albany,” his encyclopedic biography of his hometown.

Maybe I’m just at an age where a seat at the Ringling Brother Barnum & Bailey Circus beats standing room at any parade.

Robert Knightly

St. Patrick’s Days Past

On The Day, I’d wake early at home in Brooklyn, having had a grand sleep, because I’d made myself stay in the night before with a book or the TV. To my mind, I was in training like fighters. Then, a light breakfast: there’d be Bloody Marys (Virgins for the Pledge-Takers) at the jumping-off location, the Blarney Stone on East 44th Street. Run a rag over the black shoes, pin the Shield to the Summer Blouse (don’t remember it ever being so cold that I had to wear the Winter Choker), pull on the white gloves, adjust the tilt of the eight-pointed uniform hat and out the door. One of us would take his car, leave it in designated parking for ‘Police Vehicles Only’ around the 108th Precinct in Long Island City, grab the Flushing #7 train two stops to Grand Central Station. No one in his right mind, especially a cop in uniform, drives into the City on St. Patrick’s Day.

East 44th Street belonged to the NYPD: we formed up in ranks along the street from Fifth Avenue to Sixth (New Yorkers call it “Sixth”, not “Avenue of the Americas”), filling it with hundreds of Irish cops in uniform, grouped by Borough of Command. The next street over belonged to the FD (New York City Fire Department), but it was the cops who stepped off first onto Fifth Avenue at noon, behind the thumps and wails of the Emerald Society Pipes and Drums Band – the pipers in kilts and tall black bear hats with a sprig of green – Himself, Det. Finbar Devine, Drum Major, all 6-feet-five of him, in the lead and counting cadence with his baton. We headed up Fifth Avenue to the wail of the pipes and assault of the drums thundering ‘The Garryowen’, ‘The Minstrel Boy,’ ‘The Wearing of the Green’. We were The Seventh Cavalry, high-flying with no need of a horse.

We marched up Fifth Avenue ten-abreast, feet and swinging arms keeping faith to Finbar’s time. We passed the Cathedral, its steps crowded with the faithful and The Cardinal. Ice skaters abandoned the Rockefeller Center Rink to get a gander at us. People crowded the balconies of East Side residences, hung out the windows of office buildings, ignored the horse-drawn hansom cabs outside the Plaza Hotel at 59th Street and Central Park. Our route was straight as a die for 42 City blocks, past the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 81st Street. Its steep stone stairway rising to the front door, hundreds of watchers filling its steps, when I looked left and up, I saw the Pyramid of the Sun in the dead Mexican City of Teotihuacan. A sharp right turn onto 86th Street and down to the end of the Parade Route at Third Avenue and 86th. No one was tired; the City lay before us; Irish cops were the Chosen.

Then an unhurried descent down Third with forays to Second Avenue along the way. Like the Pony Express riders in the Old West, we’d stop at way-stations to refresh the horses. Every Irish bar from 86th to 22nd Street received us. McFadden’s, The Mean Fiddler, Ulysses’, Ryan’s Daughter, Hibernia, Finnegan’s Wake, Nancy Whiskey Pub, the Failte Irish Whiskey Bar – to mention a few – and finally Molly Malone’s at 22nd Street, the unofficial end-of-tour, appropriately around the corner from the Police Academy on East 20th Street. We drank for free – “on the arm” is the term of art – at all these places. It was accepted as demeaning to ask a cop in uniform to pay for his drinks on St. Patrick’s Day. But we tipped the barmaids handsomely, sang the old songs gustily, and behaved decorously.

Perhaps I’m mistaken in some of that. After all, it was a very long time ago.

Robert Knightly