Saint Patrick's Day As a lad I can recall the week that surrounds St. Patrick’s Day as a big one for mother Thack. She would start the week warning everyone to “beware the Ides of March”. Nobody ever knew what she was talking about , but if one was so uncultured to ask, she would punish the fool with a thorough explanation. Of course we all know March 15th, the Ides of March, as the day Julius Caesar was murdered. I can’t think of any other single person’s murder in history that gets its own date except for maybe, Jesus. Even still I’ll mention to people: “oh dear! It seems to be the Ides of March”. No one ever responds to this call- nothing more than a despairing search for a fellow ex-con of a classical education. The morning of St Patrick’s Day is special. Mother Thack would always boast of the enormous breakfasts her ancestors ate. Then serve us toast-heels. We were told our Irish born Grandmother believed in a full, hearty breakfast to help her get through her day of fighting and drinking. Mother Thack does not encourage the family to wear green on this day but rather requires us to wear orange. Green is for the Irish Catholics and we’re protestants. Fortunately we’ve grown accustomed to annoying people from the Ides of March thing and being the only ones not in green should be a breeze. Also we get to remind everyone that St. Patrick’s Day is not a lighthearted celebration where everyone pretends to be Irish for a spell, but a day for religious battle. For dinner mother Thack would poison her family with an authentic and anachronistic Irish meal. Corned beef, cabbage, and carrots stain our plates that night as mother Thack eagerly waits for us to request seconds. Every year she proudly serves this meal that we began dreading just after the new year. The only hope we had to make the meat seem like something familiar was not a sauce but a mustard. Unfortunately it was not the bright yellow mustard we recognize but the brown, grainy kind that has been in the fridge since before the children used forks. It hid in the back behind the pickles separating its liquid and solid parts while a seal was created around the lid by an increasingly blackening contagion. This semi-liquid was our only hope of concealing the bizarre taste of the unusually bright meat that too closely resembled a still-living thing- like that traveling show, “Bodies”, that features skinless peasants mummified and put on display in entertaining poses. Eventually this annual punishment resulted in one of her children leaving home to search the continent for barbecue. Larry Thack hopes to open a can of tennis balls on his deathbed