St. Patrick's Day (Observed)

Happy St. Patrick's Day (Observed), Internet!

The legend is born: the 1214 crew in Clare, ca. 2003.

For years, St. Patrick's Day has ranked right up there with Christmas and Halloween as one of our family's favorite holidays.  Personally, Yours Truly started appreciating it back in 2001, when I started hitting up Clare and the Doherty with my college friends for Clare Irish Fest.

Throughout the remainder of my college years, Clare became an institution, most noteably in 2003.  That, dear readers, was the year that my friends and I registered our band - Virgil Q's Dixieland Kazoo Revue - in the annual Clare Irish Fest Bed Race as a dot com business, stole the winning team's place in the parade, and threw handful of cigarettes to children as we marched 'in victory' down McEwan Street.

Good times.

Celebrating St. Pat's in Navrongo, Upper East Region, 2004.

In the years that followed, when I was serving in the Peace Corps in Ghana, I made sure my fellow PCVs fully appreciated St. Patrick's Day (or, at least, put up with me while I did so.)  Of course, good beer and bagpipers were hard to come by, so we were forced to make due with what Irish music I had on CD, green clothing, and bottom-shelf liquor.  It was pretty bad, but we made lemonaid from AIDS, I guess.

Virgil Q's (minus Adam), reassembled for battle, ca. 2006.

I was fortunate enough to be able to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Clare once more in 2006, during that brief year when Kris and I lived in Michigan, sandwiched in between our years in Africa and our eventual move to Florida in January of 2007.   This once-off Irish Fest in 2006 saw the reunion of the 1214 crew in Clare, and once more beds were raced (Virgil Q's epic return), parades were marched, and, consequently, tables were broke and cops were called.

Whoops.

All in all, 2006 ranked probably 2nd (behind 2003) as my favorite St. Patrick's Day of all time.

The Houghs in Melbourne, ca. 2013

While in Florida, we Houghs obviously couldn't celebrate the holiday in Clare (that's one hell of a commute for getting drunk and wearing green), so we had to improvise.  As you may recall, we learned about the city of Melbourne and their annual Irish festival, and that soon became our family's go-to St. Patrick's Day destination over the years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.)

My annual weapon of choice.

One of the many perks of our triumphant return to Michigan this year was the inevitability that we would finally be able to introduce our family to the glory that is the Clare Irish Festival.  It had been nearly a decade, but finally Kris and I would be able to see grown men ride cows down McEwan Street, watch pipers play in the Doherty Hotel lobby, and share "what have you been up to"s with other hometown heroes we meet along the way.

The Hough girls, St. Patrick's Day 2016

As is the case with many things growing up, however, our expectations fell short. . . by quite a lot.  None of the 1214 boys were on hand (with the exception of Black Paul, who also had his family in tow), so the rowdiness factor was down considerably.  Also hampering our style was our two small offspring, who can't really pound back the Guinness like their old man, and tend to 'get bored' standing around and listening to Irish music over a few beers.  Little did we know at the time, but we had gotten spoiled over the years by Melbourne's great weather and its enormous spread of children's activities (ponies, bounce houses, craft stations, etc.) to keep kids from getting too bored throughout the day.  This would come back to bite us in the ass, sure enough.

Clare, MI ca. 2016

All in all, St. Patrick's Day 2016 was a definite awakening:  the Clare Irish Festivals of the early 2000s were gone forever.  Instead of breaking tables and drinking two dozen beers, I was now breaking up sister tantrums and drinking two beers.  Instead of marching down my hometown street in a parade, I was trying to keep my kids from running too far into my hometown street to retrieve parade candy.  Times have changed, and that's sometimes a hard beer to swallow.

Check it out:

I ended up leaving right from work on Friday so that I could take my time going through my late granny's house, collecting more camping supplies, house items, etc. (I ended up scoring a shit-load, filling up my car a second time.)  Kris and the girls met me over at her house around 6pm, and from there we picked up dinner and headed over to Dad and Cindy's.  Dad was out of town for work again, but Cindy was nice enough to let us know stay the night so that I could make it over to the High School for the early morning start to this year's 5K (more to come on that a little later.)

After dinner, the girls starting bugging Cindy to let them use the hot tub.  They didn't have suits, so Abby had to use one of Jeff's old suits from the early 90s, and Alayna had to use her shirt and underwear.

After about twenty minutes in the hot tub, the girls were funned out and wanted to play pinball (a fan favorite.)

I love Guinness.

(I'm a snappy dresser.)

Cindy let Olivia out of her cage so the girls could check her out (she's usually squawking back in my parents' bedroom whenever we visit, so the girls are always curious about her.)

This is a super friendly bird.  Cindy tells us we'll be inheriting it after they die, so that'll be something to look forward to. . .

The girls await their dad in the 2016 Clare Irish Fest 5K.  BP and I were both running it this year, for no other reason than we'd both never run one before, and figured it'd be cool to do.  He had been training for awhile, but I was an idiot and only started training for it three weeks before the race.  Before this, I made it a habit to only run when I was being chased by something, and I think the last time I did so was when an elephant chased after me in 2003.  Seriously.

BP and I only walked for about 30 seconds of the whole race, believe it or not.  The first time I needed to stop to catch my breath was about two miles into the race, and of course after a few seconds of walking that's when I saw my family on the side of the road, so we started running again.  Nobody wants a picture of them walking in a 5K.

It's a lot easier running in a herd than by yourself around the neighborhood.  Of course, running around walkers gets a little tedious. . .

Coming into the final stretch of the race, right behind the Clare High School.

We ended up finishing in just under 32 minutes, which meant I had shaved about a minute and a half off my mile.  I'd like to get it down to about a 9 minute mile someday, but that would take a lot of work.  I'm horribly out of shape.

We both took free t-shirts, but skipped on the free pancake breakfast.  Thanks but no thanks, Clare Irish Fest.

Irish Houghs, 2016.  We came back to the house to shower and suit up before heading downtown for the annual parade.

We parked in the Hospital visitor lot about ten minutes before the parade started (which, oddly enough, had a ton of spaces left - I guess most townies think that lot's for staff only, which was good news for us.)  We even got a prime spot on a street corner in front of the Doherty Hotel, which was insane seeing how we were relatively late getting downtown.

It was cold and windy out, so, needless to say, Kris and I were definitely missing Melbourne as we waited for the parade to start.

Some Irish pom-poms Grandma Jordan made for the girls (we ended up meeting her downtown for the parade.)

This year they kicked off the parade with several fly-overs down McEwan Street.  I just finished watching HBO's Band of Brothers, so I couldn't stop anticipating these planes opening fire and strafing the crowds with machine gun fire.

My telephoto lens is awesome.

After several fly-overs, the parade still wasn't starting (or maybe it was, we were pretty far down the route to be honest.)  The kids were starting to get restless.  Which is always fun.

Of course Clare has a mounted police department.

This parade was obnoxious.  Every single fire engine in the county thought it was important enough to have a space in this year's parade.  We didn't see a single bagpiper, but probably watched two dozen fire trucks roll past with their sirens blaring.  Not impressed, guys - it's just a f***ing truck. 

More mounties.

The Clare High School marching band.  Apparently they have new uniforms now (those old ones I was forced to wear were horrible - they were from the '70s.)

The band always stops and performs in front of the Doherty, so we were able to see them break into Uptown Funk from our vantage point.  Meh.

Here's this creepy asshole. . .

The Clown Band.  Doing their thing.

Way to go, Clare.  We're all really impressed by. . . tractors.

The town's Mayor decided to make an appearance in this year's parade, which I felt was pretty nice. 

After watching the Firetruck Parade for awhile, we decided to get a head start on the Doherty before the place got swarmed with parade goers.  We had our hearts set on eating lunch there, so we had to leave the parade early in order to nab a table.  Consequently, we missed out seeing a few more townships and their fire engines.  We're still coping with that loss.

The epicenter of the Clare Irish Festival

Our table for lunch was in a quiet, warm wing of the hotel, away from the cold streets outside and noisy drunks in the adjoining bar, so we were all pretty pleased with our good fortune.

More Guinness.

Awaiting our food

This is what passes for macaroni and cheese at the Doherty Hotel.  Abby was not a fan.

After lunch, Abby started complaining about being bored.  Constantly.  We tried showing the girls around the hotel to keep them occupied, so here's Abby reading some kind of map outside the pool area.

After Cindy and Marcy took off, Kris and I took the girls into the Conference Room to check out some live music.  BP and his fam met us up there and we snagged a table right across from the stage.  Alayna occupied herself with our PowerShot camera, as you can see here. . .

 

The band playing was a rockabilly outfit out of Grand Rapids (of course.)  The lead singer had stereotypical rockabilly bangs and a stand-up bass (yawn), and the other two were equally hipster.  There covers weren't bad, but I just can't embrace the whole GR hipster thing - it's obnoxious as hell.  The elderly guy in the wig here danced to every song.  His spectacle was either really, really awesome or really, really terrible - it was hard to tell.

D, BP

BP and I enjoyed some cocktails and watched our roommates cut a rug (er, wood flooring. . .?) to The Hipsters (not sure if that's the name of the band or not.)

Keeping busy in the hotel lobby. . .

An auxiliary booze station where I picked up a whiskey - aside from my Guinness at lunch, the only drink I had throughout the day.  Seriously. 

The kids were growing more and more restless, so BP and I marched our families across McEwan to the city park (the one with the water tower) in order to check out the "kid zone."

The set up was comically awful compared to Melbourne, and Kris and I had both attended private birthday parties down in Florida with bigger bounce houses.  The people running it - who looked like meth heads - lacked any kind of social etiquette that one would expect from someone running a children's bounce house.  "No running," "Don't jump hard," etc.  What the hell do you expect kids to do in a Bounce House, lady?!

There were a few skeevy ten-year-olds in this bounce house, and their obese mother stood by clucking away to some other trailer-diva about God knows what, not paying attention to their mammoth children plowing over the younger kids inside.  Fortunately, my girls weren't roughed up in any way; had they been, I would've hit that woman square in her jowls.

Freezing.  And bored.  And not drinking whiskey.

This is what passes for a "Photo Booth" in Clare, Michigan.  Holy shit. . .

This was so depressing I couldn't think of jokes worthy enough with which to ridicule it. . . 

Thug life.

After wasting a half hour of our lives in the "Kid Zone," Delia was getting tired so BP and his wife, Sam, took her back to his parents' house.  Kris and I had originally wanted to return to the Doherty for more music and a couple more drinks, but Abby was being a total pain in the ass.  We decided to cut our losses and just head back to Dad and Cindy's.  So much for reliving the past glories of 2003 and 2006. . . being a parent sucks sometimes.

We came back to my parents' house to find the dogs had worn themselves out considerably (that usually happens after a few hours of wrestling one another.)  After loading up our crap (and Watson), we said our goodbyes to Cindy and headed over to Granny's to pick up some last-minute items (and to further load up Kris' car, since mine was filled to the brim with plunder.)  We loaded up a few totes of holiday decorations, my great grandmother's rocking chair, and some other large items in the back of the van before driving back to Midland.  It was a pretty low-key St. Patrick's Day, but I did run a 5K and scored two more carloads worth of free shit. . . so not too bad, I guess.

- Brian