What had happened was, in typical fashion, the end of the Y2K project meant laying off everyone they could. And one of our techs was a Kildare man, and said he’d gone to this Irish bar in DC called Ireland’s Four Provinces where there were live musicians, and they’d asked where he was from and played a Kildare song, and that it had the finest pint of Guinness he’d had outside of Ireland. And we agreed, and so all went up there Friday after work at 6.
We left at 2 AM, having drunk ourselves senseless and bought all the tapes from the selfsame musicians as our man had seen previously (and they played his song again). And the next night, Saturday, we were back again at 6 PM and stayed until closing time again – and in between, I drove through the residual snows to Tyson’s Corner and bought my first pair of Dr Martens 1460 boots, in brown leather, while the McTeggarts’ version of “Whiskey In The Jar” played through the speakers of my old Saturn. To this day, there is one chord in that song that puts me right back in the humidor of Georgetown Tobacco, looking at Domain Avo or Padron 3000 cigars and new Zippo lighters.
It became a regular stop. The 4P’s was where it seems everything in my life happened from January 2000 until June 2004. Everything was celebrated there, mourned there, it’s where we brought friends, and in my mind, if I do as I should in life, Valhalla will be the front table at the P’s at 11 PM with the third set of five just striking up as more friends come through the door and a fresh round of pints are sat down and “On The One Road” begins…forever.
But it wasn’t just limited to that bar and that time. I found myself supporting Celtic FC for the better part of a decade. I got up at stupid o’clock in the morning to go to Bethesda to watch the 2001 All-Ireland Final in football. Five years later, I did it again, three hours earlier, in Millbrae California for the same thing. When I moved to California, I immediately found an Irish place down the street from that first apartment, and then spent years trying to find any place that would have the music (the closest I came was the trad sessions at O’Flaherty’s in San Jose, and when I sang along with the Fields one night, Mr. Ray O’Flaherty of blessed memory pressed a complimentary pint into my hand and asked where in the Holy Land was I from myself). And I never really found it despite my best efforts.
But then my cousin began to date a gal who was living in Galway. And they picked the lock for me to finally spend two weeks in Ireland. And what I found was a country that operated at a human scale, felt warm and welcoming, was conscious of the price of sectarianism and warfare and acutely aware of the demands of modernity and moving beyond the old ways. It felt like what might have been in Alabama had Folsom been re-elected in 1958 and the Birmingham Community Chest’s racial efforts actually borne fruit and Reagan never happened. It felt like home.
And I delved into the history books, watched my fill of Cheap Irish Homes and Derry Girls and London Irish, listened to podcasts from RTE and Virgin Media, learned to appreciate the Irish spots in the Bay Area that were just as authentically Irish even if they weren’t wall to wall trad and rebel songs like I thought. And when I was there last April, Dublin felt like the most obvious and natural place in the world to be. And I felt like I could see myself easily spending the rest of my days there.
It won’t happen, of course. Unlikely in any event. Maybe if a giant bag of money hit us on the head, we could afford the requirements to retire there and split time. But the slogan painted over the stage at the 4Ps has stood up in my mind for 25 years now, and I’ve never had reason to question it, because I have always felt a hundred thousand welcomes.