Ah, St. Patrick’s Day. How times have changed. Long gone are the crazy, boozy decade of the 80s where friends and mates from our softball team would bar-hop our way around the crowded taverns and dives of downtown Lowell, listening to bad Irish music and wolfing down salty corned beef and cabbage dinners on plastic plates that made you thirsty for more beer. Those were the days when March 17th meant that softball season was just around the corner, a “high holy day” where attendance was required, if only to make sure everyone emerged from the collective post-New Year’s winter hibernation safe and sound and ready to play ball. I have lots of fond memories of those days, remembering just how the weather was different from year to year – one year a bar or two would have an outside tent and folks would be out in shirt sleeves, another year we’d all be bundled up and trudging over snow piles on the sides of the roads and freezing our butts off.

The good old days, for sure. Somebody queue up Boston pol of old Albert L. “Dapper” O’Neill’s “The Irish Belly Dancer” on the jukebox. And, of course, we all need to hear “The Funny Guy” Andrusiatis tell his leprechaun joke for the millionth time.

Fortunately, we all made it through those years safe and sound, though how is anyone’s guess. Just the luck of the Irish (and non-Irish), I guess.

Nowadays, it’s just corned beef and cabbage here at the house and listening to some Irish music live from Dublin over the Internet. Still, just the day itself is enough to conjure up memories of days and friends and times long past. A few of us are still around as Goodboys, a few have passed on, and more than a few friends and acquaintances (not to mention the bars and dives we used to frequent) have been lost to antiquity. Which in some cases may not be a bad thing!

So Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all from the Goodboys and Goodboys Nation weblog.