I’ll Celebrate Almost Anything

By Jim Hagarty
2006

This is a big month for special days. Next Friday, for example, is St. Patrick’s Day. Perversely, as someone who’s pretty much addicted to all things Irish and fascinated by the story of St. Patrick, I have no great affection for this day, at least not as I find myself rounding third base and beginning to head for home. Forty years ago, now that was a different matter. But as it stands in 2006, the day is all gimmicked up with little green leprechauns and green beer and everyone using a silly Irish accent. The national colour of Ireland isn’t even green, for Pat’s sake, or Pete’s sake, or whomever. (It’s blue).

Wednesday was International Women’s Day, a more recently created special day than the one dedicated to the fifth-century saint of Erin. No green beer drunk on this day and, in fact, I don’t think any sort of mind-altering substances are encouraged to mark the occasion. Though International Women’s Day was adopted by the UN only in 1977, the idea for it began at the beginning of the 20th century when women’s struggles focused on universal suffrage, reads a press release sent to my newspaper editor’s desk this week.

“The efforts and courage of women seeking social, economic, and political equality demanded, and finally achieved, symbolic recognition.” I applaud the day and recognize the absolutely dreadful mistreatment of women that still persists in so many parts of the world today, including our own country, but being of the gender that causes so much of that pain, I find it hard to celebrate. This day is for women, not for men.

That leaves National Potato Chip Day which was Tuesday, and not to diminish the importance of the two other days, if there ever was a food that was deserving of a national day of its own, it is the potato chip. Much-maligned in health-promoter circles these days, the potato chip, nevertheless does a lot for the soul if not for the heart of a human. That delectable crunch of that first chip out of a newly opened bag, the salt that covers every lovely square inch of each thin, wavy wafer, the cold pop required to wash down all those delicious bits.

My love affair with potato chips goes back a long, long way. If memory serves, my best friend and I once bought small bags of them for five cents, then eventually 10 cents. We used to walk the mile and a half to the gas station in the village, him in one ditch, me in the other, searching for returnable pop bottles to exchange for our treats. In those days, it seems, everyone tossed everything out of their car windows, so there were lots of goodies to be found, if you made it to the ditches before other eager fortune hunters arrived.

Seven cents for a small bottle of pop, five cents for a bag of chips and my friend and I were livin’ large. Then along came NHL hockey coins inside bags of potato chips and our joy was complete. To this day, when I open a bag of chips, I half expect to see a miniature round photo of Gordie Howe’s face smiling out at me.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and exclaim, not knowing this to be true for sure, that the reason my family left lreland during the catastrophic potato failures in the late 1840s was the need we had to get to some country that still had potatoes – and potato chips. Because addiction to our chips is as much a Hagarty characteristic as freckles.

Ironically, if you ask for potato chips in a shop in Ireland, they hand you a mess of great big french fries on a sheet of newsprint. What we call potato chips, on the other hand, they call potato “crisps.” Potato crisps. Potato crisps. Nah, it just doesn’t have it. Which is why I could never live in Ireland. Besides, you could never find a bag of crisps there with Gordie Howe inside.

St. Patrick, maybe. On the other hand, didn’t he once play goal for the Montreal Canadiens?

(That last paragraph contains an oblique reference, lost on most people now. Former NHL superstar goalie Patrick Roy was often referred to as St. Patrick.)

Author: Jim Hagarty

I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.