St. Pat’s Day – A Bit Early by Tom Fox
The Philadelphia Inquirer
(Probably from the 1970s)
St Patrick’s Day was celebrated a little early this year by
a small circle of Scranton Irish. Shamus Corbett, the most decorated state
trooper in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and his pal John (Sharkey) Lydon,
an Irish tenor with sky-blue eyes and an insatiable thirst for fine Irish
whisky, invited me up to Scranton for this year’s big St. Patrick’s Day Dinner
at the Casey Hotel.
“Gov. Thornburgh’s coming,” Shamus Corbett said with a touch
of awe. “He’s going to be the main speaker.”
The Scranton Irish are survivors. They worked like hell for
Bob Casey, the Scranton attorney, for governor last year. And when a Republican
WASP from Allegheny County won the office and all the power that goes with it,
damned if they didn’t invite the WASP to be the principal speaker at the big
St. Patrick’s day dinner.
Born in Lifeboats
But it figures. The Irish were born in the lifeboats. “There
never was any downfield blocking for the Irish. It was all elbows and knees,
but that’s how the Irish learned to survive. That’s why the Irish are such
masters of American politics.
“Shall I tell the governor to expect you at the dinner?”
Shamus Corbett asked.
I said I couldn’t make it. The dinner’s this Saturday night
and I’m committed to spend the evening at Joe Hindsley’s saloon, The Fiddler’s
Green, out in King of Prussia. It’s the only place to be on St. Patty’s night
around here.”
“Well, then,” Shamus Corbett said, “we’ll celebrate a little
early. We’ll have a party for Jim Crowley. He’s one of the original Four
Horsemen of Notre Dame. We’ll hoist a few to Jim.”
So I drove up to Scranton with Bob Herdelin in his big,
fancy Rolls Royce, and Shamus Corbett had a real cork-popper for Jim Crowley at
Preno’s, one of Scranton’s finest watering holes.
There was a lot of belting and singing and a whole lot of
outrageous Irish stories, all set in the old coal mining town of Minooka (now
Scranton’s 24th Ward) where Shamus Corbett was born.
A Cruel Town
“Minooka was a cruel town in a way,” said Shamus Corbett’s
brother, Jakey, a car dealer. “The nicknames for some people were brutal. The
ugliest man in Minooka was known as ‘Stop-the-Clock’ O’Hara. Oh, in some ways
it was a mean, cruel place.”
