A fish takes for granted the water in which he swims. As a kid in 1970s Woodside, Queens, I never thought twice about how most of my classmates had a parent or two who spoke with a brogue. I attended Saint Sebastian’s, a Catholic grammar school a few blocks from where the 7 Train and Long Island Railroad cross paths at 61st Street station. Here’s a roll-call from memory of the Irish-American kids, many of whom, like me, had a mother and/or father from the Emerald Isle:   Carney Casey Connors Curran Delaney Duff Feeley Ferguson Haggerty Higgins Kilhoury Lynn McDermott McQuade Murphy Quinn Sweeney   And “Walsh” ends that list. My mom, a Rooney, emigrated to America from County Cavan in 1957; my dad’s mother and father hailed from County Galway and County Mayo, respectively, and came to New York in 1922. For all the transplanted Irish and their offspring who lived there, Woodside might as well have been Ireland’s 33rd county.   Despite living beneath this ever-green canopy, once a year I grew keenly aware of my Irish roots: Saint Patrick’s Day. Our classroom decorations served as prelude. In a turf war where the calendar dictated victory, the Micks routed the Wops, St. Patrick ousted St. Valentine, shamrocks replaced stylized hearts, and shillelagh-wielding leprechauns evicted all those Cupids with their bows and arrows.   For me, the day served up an extra helping of Hibernian pride as it’s the day I was born and, hence, the reason for my given name. I’ve always though it quite an honor for them to march a parade down 5th Avenue in celebration of my birthday.   My family never went into Manhattan for the parade (thank Zeus!), but you could be sure that it would be on the television in our apartment. For decades, New York’s WPIX broadcast four or five hours live coverage. Whether we attended or not, that parade on Channel 11 comprised an essential part of the St. Patrick’s Day tradition; deeply ensconced within that tradition you’d find its venerable television host, Jack McCarthy. Manhattan-born, he took pride in his Irish heritage. By the time I started watching the parade in the 1970s, McCarthy had achieved a distinguished mien with a mane of snow white hair combed straight back, as well as his status as an institution, having presided over the announcing since 1949.   Along with legions of high school marching bands and the cops and the firemen with their platoons of dour, kilt-clad bagpipers (every one of them sporting a Thurman Munson mustache), there were contingents representing each county in Ireland. Two lead walkers would hold a long rectangular banner on a pole between them adorned with the heraldic crest of a given county. Cheers went up here and there in the crowd when someone with a tie to that particular county spotted their people going by.   Back in our little Queens apartment, my mom anxiously waited to see Cavan march past. She could be in the kitchen the whole time and still follow the action since McCarthy announced each group as they approached his V.I.P. box on 5th Avenue. When she heard him say, “Ah, and here comes County Cavan now,” she’d run out to look at the TV. She’d get a wistful look in her eye then go back to fixing dinner and baking this guy’s birthday cake.   We often had a party to celebrate the “dual holiday.” Most of the guests were relations. My mom’s sister, Monica, and her family lived in Sunnyside, a hike but still walking distance from our apartment in Woodside. Monica had come over from Cavan with my mom and married another emigrant, a dashing, dark-haired soldier in the MPs originally from Brittany, France. As a kid I was close to George and Monica’s oldest son, my cousin Sean. My paternal grandmother also lived in Sunnyside, still in the same row house in which my dad grew up.   Another requisite attendee was my “Nana,” Mrs. Cahill, who lived in the apartment directly below ours on the second floor. An elderly widow whose kids had grown up and moved away, she was the sweetest honorary grandmother a boy could ever want. She babysat me from the time I was a tot. We’d play gin rummy for hours at her kitchen table as I dipped ginger snaps into a cup of tea or we’d watch I Love Lucy and weep with laughter. A place of honor set aside for her, Mrs. Cahill was a beloved guest with a lively sense of humor.   Three generations converged at these St. Patrick’s Day gatherings. In short order, the conversation became a conjuring of the Old Country. My grandmother grew up in a fishing village on the coast of Galway, one of several areas on Ireland’s west coast designated the Gaeltacht because people there predominantly speak Irish (or at least they did in her day.) She routinely peppered her speech with Irish words and phrases, particularly when chastising me for unruly behavior.   Mrs. Cahill came grew up in Sligo, a county in Ireland’s northwest corner known as Yeats Country because of its great influence on the poet and site of his burial in Drumcliffe Churchyard. She and my grandmother provided the deepest reminiscences of Ireland in the old days. In a bittersweet logic, stories of privation mingled with recollections of simple pleasures. They could recall persecution by the dreaded Black-and-Tans, as well as corporal punishment at the hands of barbaric priests and nuns. Decades later I’d understand with retroactive clarity the terrible double yoke under which the Irish labored, aptly summed up by James Joyce’s alter ego in Ulysses: “I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian.”   Later in the evening, Channel 11 always provided Part II of their All-Things-Irish gala by airing The Quiet Man, John Ford’s 1952 Rom-Com-Drama starring John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Victor McLaglen, Ward Bond, and Barry Fitzgerald. I realize now that the movie must have held tremendous appeal for my dad in several ways; in addition to being a great fan of John Wayne and having fought, like Wayne’s character, as a boxer, most of the outdoor scenes were filmed in Galway and Mayo where his parents grew up.   Among the decorations I distinctly recall were little green linen flags embroidered in gold stitching with the phrase “Erin go Bragh” along with strands of shamrocks and a harp, Ireland’s national symbol. The slogan means Ireland Forever. My dad placed a few of these flags, hung on dowels topped with gold-painted ferrules, in a sturdy mug with same-sized versions of the Irish flag, the tricolor of green, white, and orange. Those flags were mysterious party favors packed with history I’d barely begun to learn.   Coffee, tea, soda bread, cigarettes, and brogue-inflected blarney abounded in joyful profusion. Ah, we shant hear the like of them again…. I wish I’d listened more, but I was too busy scarfing down birthday cake and ice cream.