[thenightwriterblog] The Night Writer: St. Pat's regurgitation

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Posted by The Night Writer:
St. Pat's regurgitation
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1174080114.shtml


   I know that the title for this post doesn't sound appealing, but I'm
   swamped with work, travel (travel for work) and with getting through
   this thing we call Life. Rather than let this significant [DEL: excuse
   for public drunkeness :DEL] holiday pass by unremarked I'd thought I'd
   re-run a previous post that described some of the college St. Pat's
   hi-jinks I enjoyed back in the day. If you read this last year at this
   time, well, I hope the re-run isn't as noxious to you as that
   morning-after taste in the mouth. If you didn't see this last year,
   then just forget this entire paragraph and sit back and enjoy some
   refreshing adult entertainment.

     I don't think there will ever be a St. Patrick's Day when I don't
     think about my first semester of college when I enrolled in the
     Spring term at the University of Missouri-Rolla campus. UMR is
     mainly an engineering college but it was close to where I lived at
     the time and a convenient way for me to knock out some general
     liberal arts credits before transferring to the main Mizzou campus
     in Columbia.
     St. Patrick's "Day" was actually a 10-day party at UMR. The campus
     was about 90% male then, almost all in grueling engineering classes
     that seemed to require binge drinking in order to cope. The reason
     St. Pat is such a big deal at UMR is because he is deemed to be the
     patron saint of engineers for having driven the snakes from Ireland
     and thereby creating the first worm drive (engineering humor). The
     rites and festivities of the season were under the auspices of the
     St. Pat's Board: upper classmen (some I think were in their 30s)
     elected by their fraternities, eating clubs and campus
     organizations. For most of the year their duties seemed to be based
     around regular "meetings" marked by drinking and carousing. Come
     March, however, they were especially prominent in their filthy
     green coats (part of their semi-secret initiation rites) as they
     enforced the rules and protocols of the holiday (for those familiar
     with the St. Paul Winter Carnival - especially in the older days -
     think green Vulcans).
     Part of the tradition was that all freshmen males were to have
     beards in the week or so leading up to St. Pat's, and were to carry
     shillelaghs (an Irish cudgel). Most people think of shillelaghs as
     being a bit like walking sticks, but at UMR there were specific
     requirements: the shillelagh had to be at least two-thirds the
     height of the student and at least one-third his weight, and it had
     to be cut from a whole tree with at least some of the roots
     showing. The punishment for being caught beardless by a Board
     Member (and they usually traveled in packs of two or more) was to
     have your face painted green. The penalty for being without your
     shillelagh was to be thrown into Frisco Pond. Frisco Pond was
     actually the town's sewage lagoon, but was called Frisco Pond
     because the St. Pat's Board of 1927 rerouted the Frisco railroad
     into the pond after one of their meetings. I'm sure it seemed like
     a good idea to them at the time.
     Fortunately I was able to cultivate my first beard, red and wispy
     as it was, and I cut myself a suitable cudgel. Carrying books and a
     shillelagh of the stated dimensions was a challenge, and even more
     so when certain professors wouldn't allow them into class, meaning
     they had to be stacked in the hallways and guarded because Board
     members liked nothing better than to snatch unattended shillelaghs
     and then wait for their rightful owners to appear â followed by a
     honking procession to Frisco Pond. (I did mention the campus was
     90% male and fueled by alcohol, right? During St. Pat's week the
     campus looked like No Name City from "Paint Your Wagon.")
     The reason we carried cudgels was in case a Board member approached
     you with a rubber snake and demanded that you "kill" it. This
     generally meant pounding on the snake with your cudgel until the
     Board member (not you) got tired. I weighed about 170 then; you do
     the math as to what my shillelagh weighed, minimum. I was fortunate
     to go largely unnoticed (as unnoticed as a guy carrying a tree can
     be) through most of this period. This was especially remarkable
     given that one of my friends from my hometown was on the Board.
     Toward the end of the week, however, he came up to me in the dining
     hall. "Red," (for my beard) he said, "I think I see a snake." With
     chants of "snake! snake! snake!" I was led outside and my "friend"
     tossed said snake on the ground. It landed, however, in a flower
     bed. "Freshman! Kill!" was the command. Hoisting my club over my
     head (and somehow not tipping over backwards) I brought it crashing
     down onto the hapless rubber creature â and even more hapless
     plants in the soft earth.
     "Hit it again, it's not dead," was the order. I looked down once,
     then again. "Oh, it's dead, alright," I said. Actually, it would be
     more accurate to say, "Missing, presumed dead" because the rubber
     snake was nowhere to be found in the newly-created crater. Rather
     than wait around for CSI, or the gardener, the small group repaired
     to the dining hall to toast the success of the mission and I
     survived the week, the highlight of which was the St. Pat's Parade.
     In those days the St. Pat's Board would be out early in the morning
     with mops and barrels of green paint, painting Pine Street in
     advance of the parade. High school bands from around the area would
     march, car dealers would drive demo models with pretty girls in
     them and various and sundry other parade standards would be
     present. In particular, however, I remember the Precision Pony
     Team: a group of students scooting along on empty pony kegs
     strapped to skateboards with rudimentary heads and yarn tails
     attached to the kegs. They wove patterns and formations down the
     street, stopping periodically to lift the tails of their "mounts"
     and drop handfuls of malted milk balls.
     Much like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, the event culminated
     in St. Pat (not St. Nick) appearing on the route, riding a manure
     spreader and attended by his Guard. The duties of the Guard were
     largely to keep St. Pat vertical (he'd probably been drinking for
     four days straight) and to bring any fetching lasses from the crowd
     to St. Pat for a good luck kiss. (I did say the campus was 90% male
     and fueled by alcohol, didn't I?).
     After this particular St. Patrick's Day all the other ones I've
     experienced have just kind of faded from my memory.
     Note: the annual UMR St. Pat's parade and related festivities still
     go on, but in a much more muted manner. A couple of
     alchohol-poisoning deaths were a factor (sad and true) to be sure,
     but I also think it was because some of those Board members finally
     graduated.