The Road to McCarthy (21 page)

A section devoted to popular song and entertainment gives an insight into the social niceties and racial attitudes of the era. There’s sheet music of a Chinese person singing “I No Washee Today” and another bearing the title “I’m Going Back to the Land of Spaghetti.” “Yonkel the Cowboy Jew” was a big hit for “that Yiddish loafer Glen Burt,” predating by almost a century the satire of Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jew Boys and songs like “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore.” “Neighborhood ethnic theaters were a cultural refuge for new arrivals,” explains the caption. “On stage the players spoke a familiar language …. [they] freely lampooned the foibles of ethnic Americans using ludicrous stereotypes that today would be
considered insensitive and demeaning.” There’s a song called “Ireland Must be Heaven for my Mother Came from There” by my long-lost cousin Joe McCarthy, but pride of place must go to “Since Arrah Wanna Married Barney Carney,” a moving tale of cross-cultural fertilization. On the cover a Native American woman, as she would be now, or Red Indian squaw, as she’d have been then, is dressed as a bride for her marriage to a parody Paddy with a green top hat and a shamrock on his lapel. An Indian chief straight out of the comic books is bowing in front of them in the “we are not worthy” position. With Celtic fusion music now sweeping the globe, the time could be ripe for a revival of this number. Imagine the video.

Tucked away around a corner is a framed cartoon of a brawl featuring assorted Bolsheviks, Commies, Paddies and Micks. the u.s. hotel badly needs a bouncer, reads the text. no beggars or loafers allowed in this establishment. no bomb throwing. no incendiary talk. no communism. no fenianism. Another shows a man saying, “Well, I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here I found out three things. First, the streets weren’t paved with gold. Second, they weren’t paved at all. And third, I was expected to pave them.”

The afternoon light is fading as I head back to the boat. I sit next to a young architect from Queens who’s been working on Ellis Island. Without my asking, he tells me he’s Jewish.

“But not fanatic, okay? When I’m in New York, I’m Jewish. Abroad, I’m American. Makes life easier.”

He tells me about a Jewish sect from central Europe who have managed to survive intact for over 2,500 years.

“And you know how? Because most of them live in Queens. So what’s the big deal with Israel? It’s just a patch of dirt. Give it up! Go to Queens. Everybody gets along.”

Paddy’s Day breakfast
is a big disappointment. I’d been hoping the hotel might make an effort—after all, if you dyed bacon green and put it next to a fried egg, it would look like the Irish flag—but there isn’t even an emerald cappuccino. I can’t help feeling it’s a missed opportunity.

Things buck up when I hit the street and the first thing I see is a nun setting her car alarm. This seems a fair indication that a colorful day lies in store. I know we live in a postfeminist society, but I can’t quite shake off the feeling that there’s something …. well, unnatural about nuns driving cars. The current pope is widely regarded as the most reactionary for a long time. He won’t allow contraception or women priests, so you’d have thought you could rely on him to clamp down on heretical frivolities like nuns driving, and priests playing guitars. I blame the sixties. One minute everything was in reassuringly incomprehensible Latin and nuns had to trudge round the place frowning and dressed like Albanian widows, then along comes the Vatican Council and Swinging London, and the next thing you know the nuns are all in light gray Mary Quant twinsets, grinning like Lulu, driving Minis to folk masses fronted by priests who think they’re Crosby, Stills & Nash. And there was the Singing Nun. You don’t hear much about her these days. Perhaps they found her floating face down in Keith Richards’s swimming pool one morning. The Vatican is a very secretive organization, so we may never know.

The nun walks up the street ahead of me with the confident stride of a pickpocket from the Bronx who has dressed this way before and is at ease with his femininity. She turns right underneath an advertising hoarding for Smiling Pumpkin Ale and disappears from view. I’m soon caught up in a tide of people heading east towards the intersection with Fifth Avenue, where the parade is due to begin. I pass a man in an overcoat buttoned all the way to the top who says, “Only the Lord Jesus has the power to transform your life,” and another in a black ski jacket who says, “Blow weed, Coke E,” which I think might be a quote from the storm scene in
King Lear
.

By the time I’m a block from Fifth the crowds are thick, milling back and forth in the search for the best vantage point, so I pause to consider my strategy. Next to me on the sidewalk a family of two stout parents and four big-boned children have paused at a vendor’s stall while Mom buys an enormous submarine roll filled with onions, ketchup and flame-grilled roadkill. “Aw, Mom,” says her daughter plaintively, “don’t pig out now! We’re gonna be pigging out on the pasta buffet for lunch. You really gotta want it!” The family are all wearing white plastic bowler hats covered in
Bud Light logos and shamrocks, which might at first glance look silly, but when you think about it are just like miniature versions of how St. Patrick’s coracle might have looked if he’d been sponsored by Budweiser to sail from Wales to Ireland, so in a way they’re very authentic.

Here’s my strategy.

I’m going to gatecrash the parade.

I’m not sure how, but it’s got to be done. I haven’t come all this way to stand and watch it go by. I want to stride up Fifth Avenue surrounded by bishops, drum majorettes and paramilitary fundraisers while the crowds cheer. I want to know what it feels like. I want to understand what it’s for. The problem is you have to be affiliated with an accredited organization and, like the gays, the lesbians and Ian Paisley, I’m not. I’ve been trying my best to get affiliated, but it seems I just haven’t got what it takes. I left a message at the County Cork Association explaining that Cork was the county of my mother and my ancestors, in the hope they’d offer to let me carry the banner, but no one even called back. I spoke to an Irish-American academic whose number I’d been given in Dublin and asked if he could help arrange it, but he said that “the whole day is a total frigging nightmare” and that he “wouldn’t be found within a hundred frigging miles of the city. And Boston’s even worse.” Chris said he could fix for me to march with the retired homicide detectives, which sounded cool, but his buddy who was going to square it for me fell sick and wasn’t going to be there. “Just turn up, say who you are and walk with them,” said Chris. “There won’t be a problem.” I kidded myself I might do that, but, frankly, I’m too intimidated.

In a tactic which may have been specifically designed to discourage gatecrashers, the Ancient Order of Hibernians has refused to publish the Order of Parade, so I’ve no way of knowing whether Cork will be up at the front or way back down the line. I’m wedged behind a police barrier on the corner of Fifth, without a plan, when the twenty-deep throng in front of me start cheering and whistling, and over their heads and shoulders and Bud Light coracle hats I catch a glimpse of camouflage fatigues and bayonet tips going by: the Fighting Sixty-ninth. The parade has started, but I’m still dithering about with no notion of how I’m going to join it.

I head off into the side streets to try and escape the crowds, but they’re
all packed with bands and marchers lined up and ready to filter onto Fifth Avenue when their turn comes. The street I’m in has two banners: At the far end is County Dublin, and in front of them is County Mayo, assembled along the block at which I’ve entered the street. There’s no sign of Cork. There must be dozens of streets like this. They could be anywhere. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to miss it! I’ve wasted my chance. I’ve failed. I feel guilty. Forgive me, Father, for I have ….

“You need some help there?”

A dour-looking man with spectacular ear and nostril hair has spotted me lurking in a suspicious manner. He’s wearing a parade marshal’s armband, so he’s probably authorized to shoot me if he finds out I’m not accredited. Shall I lie and tell him that I am? Or will that make it worse? What if I tell him I’m supposed to be meeting the cops? I know. I’ll just smile and walk away. Oh, no. He’s smiling back, and now he’s walking with me!

“You looking for anyone in particular?”

“Cops.”

“Huh?”

“Cork! County Cork. Do you know where I’d find them?”

“Sorry. Not a chance in hell. Could be anywhere. This here is Mayo.”

He pauses for a moment, and I’m about to make my escape into the crowd when he says, “You wanna walk with us?”

Ten minutes later I’m turning the corner onto Fifth Avenue, walking right up the middle of the street with half a dozen people either side of me, past the dignitaries’ grandstand outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, head held high, smiling and waving back to the politicians, the cardinals, the Kennedys, Michael Flatley’s parents, Seamus Heaney’s second cousins, whoever the hell it is sitting up there applauding us. Then the cathedral is behind us and we’re passing the corner where a few minutes ago I was twenty people deep without a plan. All I could see then was the back of their heads, and now they’re smiling and waving like I was a long-lost relative. This is fun. Doctors should prescribe it for patients who are lacking in self-esteem. You feel like you’re the center of attention, like you’ve won a football trophy or a minor war at the very least, plus you get to see Fifth Avenue in a way you’ve never seen it before, from the middle of the street, with no
traffic. You can look up at the gorgeously ornate façades of the buildings, take in all the faux gargoyles and deco twiddly bits without being in fear of your life. Gucci, Elizabeth Arden, the names keep on coming, and now we’re passing Gap and a woman walking next to me asks did I see the report about the guy with no legs who robbed the store in his wheelchair and stole ten pairs of trousers? She seems serious, but I can’t be sure. It just goes to show it’s true what they say: The British really don’t understand the American sense of irony.

We pass a roadside protest against the exclusion of gay groups. There’s some barracking, and a guy is holding a placard saying another queer from ireland, which would make a terrific album title. And then everything comes to a halt and there’s time to look around and take in the scene. I can see the banners for Dublin, and beyond them Donegal, and a great line of people stretching out into infinity, or at least twelve blocks. There’s a marching band ahead and a pipe band somewhere behind, and a lot of austere-looking older men, walking up and down in sashes and top hats and taking it all very seriously indeed. The top hats must be the republican haberdashery industry’s response to the much vilified bowlers of the Orangemen, which shows that each side in this futile argument can make themselves look as ridiculous as the other if they really put their minds to it. “Hey, pal! You look a complete eejit in that stupid hat and sash! And you know why? Because they’re slightly different from my hat and sash, you Fenian/Orange bastard!”

It’s a mild day, and as we begin walking again coats are unbuttoned, scarves loosened and there’s a convivial buzz of conversation among the marchers. There are no actual Irish Irish people near me. Everyone is second, third or fourth generation, proud of where their family comes from, though enquiries suggest that most of them have been there maybe once or twice, or never, in their lives. And everyone is sober, which isn’t quite what I’d expected. The city has banned street drinking at all parades, and the mood could almost be described as dignified. There’s a woman who looks like she’s storing nuts in her cheeks and has decorated them with a couple of glittery shamrocks, but for the most part there’s less shillelagh-and-leprechaun Blarneyfication than I’d expected. As we get farther uptown and
the spectators begin to thin out it starts to feel like a local community event, with people calling out to their friends. “We meet people on the same block every year,” says a lady next to me. “There’ll be some McCarthys at 98
^th
Street. I’ll introduce you.” And she does.

We reach the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Central Park South, and suddenly it’s all over, less than an hour and a half after we started. I’m able to take some time to stand and watch the rest of the parade coming up behind me. There are majorettes in green, white and orange capes who can throw their batons so high they can turn a double cartwheel and still catch them on the way down. Noraid marches past, a group of men, and a few women, who have perfected the art of looking so completely deadpan and normal that it’s sinister. Their impact is diminished, however, by a thickset guy with a bushy mustache dyed green for the occasion, which suggests that he may not be quite the political heavyweight he imagines.

england get out of ireland, says the County Derry Association banner, which is being carried by some polite-looking ladies in sensible coats, and has all the more impact for it. Close behind comes the self-proclaimed Irish Freedom Committee, in a uniform of sunglasses, dark berets, black trousers, black leather gloves and chunky cream sweaters with a cable pattern down the front. Andy Williams wore one on the cover of his Christmas album. The bizarre combination of paramilitary chic and yer granny’s traditional hand-knit suggests bedroom revolutionaries whose mothers tolerate the black gear but won’t let them out of the house unless they’re dressed up smart in that nice jumper they got for Christmas.

I walk away in search of lunch and a beer, thinking that it’s all a lot of fun, but perhaps it’s time for New York’s big day to take on a more pluralistic vision reflecting the inclusive Ireland that a lot of people are working to create. You know what, though? There’ll always be room for a nice cable-knit sweater. They look smart
and
casual at the same time and, whether you’re a freedom fighter or just going for tea with Daniel O’Donnell, that’s not a quality to be sneezed at.

There’s a bunch of cops hanging round near the subway station as I make my way back downtown. The New York City Police Department has traditionally been an Irish-dominated profession, but the gardai never
looked like these guys. Their body language is spectacular. They have a way of walkin’—of loungin’, of hangin’, of chewin’ and leanin’ on the wall—that makes it look as if they’re acting cool for the cameras, even when there’s no camera there. Each of these guys thinks he’s in his own TV series. They certainly know how to get the most dramatic impact out of a situation as straightforward as wearing a uniform. Americans are said to be so media savvy that you can stick a microphone in front of anyone and get an instant soundbite. Well, I reckon you could stick a camera on any group of New York cops and get a series. Mind you, they are just a touch on the roly-poly side. Okay, I know they’re not all like that—there are the really super-fit ones you see patrolling Central Park on mountain bikes—but these guys, no mistake about it, have spent plenty of time in the squad car eating pizza and doughnuts while they wait for the bad guys to show up. It’s not necessarily a disadvantage. Fitness is an overrated virtue in a law enforcement officer. In their way these guys are much more menacing. They’re putting out a subliminal message: “Don’t run away. We can’t chase you, so we’ll have to shoot.”