danney boy
St. Paddies day sometime in the eighties. In June the year before I had run the Shirley B out to Neah Bay for a coho opening, when I got home a phone message from someone I had helped move a few weeks before had a personal tone. At least that is the way my landlady Janet characterized the conversation. She especially wants you!
There is a lot more to that story than I intend to go into here, but for the next several weeks she had a couple Millers in the freezer for me when I dropped by after work, smoked loosely rolled joints on the porch. Shady block on Iron Street. Light, fun conversation.
The next winter, playing to her father's Irish heritage, she hyped her St. Paddies day party, even had printed handouts. Staged at her folk's apartment somewhere on the south side. Sherman and I drove over together. Quite a few people milling around the place, beer and snacks and those conversations one gets into at parties that seem profound at the time but gosh only knows what it was all about when you try to remember later.
Sherman has what I call the gift of gab, a good story teller with a stand-up comic delivery. At that time one of the schticks he liked to use at parties included a less than kind reference to a Krout. Imagining himself in the heart of Dublin, he never anticipated someone of German decent overhearing from the Kitchen. Mamma in that family. I come around the corner to see her red-faced, sputtering when they start saying Krout I go after them.
Sherman and I ducked out the patio door.
How was I to know? The old man has a map of Irland for a face.
We headed down to La Hacienda. The bartender there captivated our imaginations. Watching her glide between chores behind the bar gave a guy a worm feeling in the middle of his chest. Possibly a perfect woman in every way, witty and intelligent, beautiful like down home cooking. Never flirty. Thursday evenings Sherman and I sat at her feet for an hour or so before going across to Cal's for open mike. Amazing musicians used to sit in and jam. Lots of blues.
In from the party, half looking over our shoulders to see if we had been followed, the tiny pool of light around a cluster of late drinkers seemed like the last haven of refuge in a world of shadows.
Small room. Bar in an L shape, four stools to the wall, Sherman and I one in from the corner, three people clustered a couple stools down the front side of the bar. Two dark figures flanked a woman, alabaster skin all the more pail under a tangle of jet black hair; fragile beauty.
Suddenly we were stunned to silence when she started singing Danny Boy. Voice stronger than her frame might suggest filled the room. Tears cleansed our souls. And all the more had we known our barroom angle could see the grave from where she sat. Heard much later that she lived no more than a few weeks after that evening.
Almost wish I could soft tread above her in loving memory for that moment when she touched our hearts with hers.
There is a lot more to that story than I intend to go into here, but for the next several weeks she had a couple Millers in the freezer for me when I dropped by after work, smoked loosely rolled joints on the porch. Shady block on Iron Street. Light, fun conversation.
The next winter, playing to her father's Irish heritage, she hyped her St. Paddies day party, even had printed handouts. Staged at her folk's apartment somewhere on the south side. Sherman and I drove over together. Quite a few people milling around the place, beer and snacks and those conversations one gets into at parties that seem profound at the time but gosh only knows what it was all about when you try to remember later.
Sherman has what I call the gift of gab, a good story teller with a stand-up comic delivery. At that time one of the schticks he liked to use at parties included a less than kind reference to a Krout. Imagining himself in the heart of Dublin, he never anticipated someone of German decent overhearing from the Kitchen. Mamma in that family. I come around the corner to see her red-faced, sputtering when they start saying Krout I go after them.
Sherman and I ducked out the patio door.
How was I to know? The old man has a map of Irland for a face.
We headed down to La Hacienda. The bartender there captivated our imaginations. Watching her glide between chores behind the bar gave a guy a worm feeling in the middle of his chest. Possibly a perfect woman in every way, witty and intelligent, beautiful like down home cooking. Never flirty. Thursday evenings Sherman and I sat at her feet for an hour or so before going across to Cal's for open mike. Amazing musicians used to sit in and jam. Lots of blues.
In from the party, half looking over our shoulders to see if we had been followed, the tiny pool of light around a cluster of late drinkers seemed like the last haven of refuge in a world of shadows.
Small room. Bar in an L shape, four stools to the wall, Sherman and I one in from the corner, three people clustered a couple stools down the front side of the bar. Two dark figures flanked a woman, alabaster skin all the more pail under a tangle of jet black hair; fragile beauty.
Suddenly we were stunned to silence when she started singing Danny Boy. Voice stronger than her frame might suggest filled the room. Tears cleansed our souls. And all the more had we known our barroom angle could see the grave from where she sat. Heard much later that she lived no more than a few weeks after that evening.
Almost wish I could soft tread above her in loving memory for that moment when she touched our hearts with hers.
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