Houli in Ireland 2021

I’ve been traveling to Ireland every year consecutively since 2013, and just returned last month from my 10^th trip back into the arms of Kathleen ni Houlihan.

She never disappoints.

Usually I’m lucky enough to have between a dozen and forty companions on these journeys but Covid kissed all that goodbye. Most people were too spooked to hit the airports and be humiliated and interrogated like spies as we crossed over international waters. But our small but mighty crew leapt at the opportunity to joust with Vax Nazis, bureaucrats, and hotel security.

We survived and now live to tell the tales.

The lovely and vivacious fiddler Katie Grennan joined us along with her paramour, Irish music guru John Williams. Without them, we were a crew of Magnificent Seven including Haggerty brothers Ricardo and Billy, Walking Eagle Peckham, retired CFD “Chief” Mike Miller, Robert “Moon” Mullins, former military intelligence agent flown in from Dallas, Dennis A. Kearns, grandson of “Weeping Jim Kearns” the father of the Chicago flag and the star of our film, who arrived last from Austin Texas by way of Heathrow, and me.

It was a wild group of old geezers drinking like they were headed to the electric chair and whenever there was a lull in the pub-crawling, Katie and John would introduce their instruments, take center stage and with electrifying trad music just blow the roof off the joint. Memories were made. Much credit to Derry Cronin of Specialized Travel for helping us make this pilgrimage.

The expedition had begun auspiciously when Chief Miller and I met up at O’Hare airport, the requisite four hours early, to ensure that our “papers would be in order”. Now we know what it was like in the late thirties entering Berlin. Once you get there it’s not that bad, but they’ve created so much paranoia about Covid and vaccinations passports, people locator forms, and PCR tests that you go into it fearing worse than the bowel prep for your last colonoscopy.

That kind of stress makes you want to start drinking. So, Mike and I breathed a sigh of relief as we got close to our gate and strolled into the British Airways Lounge and shouted to the scary lady at the desk, “Skinny Sheahan sent us!”

That was good enough for her as she invited us into the VIP Lounge. Mike cracked wise as we entered the room and the ladies in attendance treated us like dignitaries, thirsty dignitaries. We ordered up some drinks, (“keep ‘em comin’”), and lunch, and relaxed for our three-hour wait. Mike chuckled, “Looks like we’re on scholarship!”

Of course, we duked the sweet young ladies who helped us out all afternoon and then made our way to the plane feeling no pain. Great start to the journey.

We arrived the next morning at six AM to check into the Fitzpatrick Castle in Killiney. Mike and I were jet lagged and worn out and the gorgeous blonde at the Fitz asked what we would do if there were no rooms ready at that hour? “That’s okay, we’ll just sleep right here in the lobby!”

In a flash she handed us keys and welcomed us back to the Fitz. It sure helps to know the boss, and we threw Eithne Fitzpatrick’s name around and it was magic. My room was the size of Gately Stadium, a suite with a dining room table and breathtaking view of Dalkey’s Dublin Bay.  As I collapsed in the boudoir with adjoining bath I mused, “It just gets better and better.”

Woke up around 11AM and went down to the Fitz Castle lobby for waffles and bacon for breakfast. Havin’ a cuppa tea and enjoying the scenery when the Hags brothers show up with Moon Mullins and Walking Eagle Peckham, who is wearing General McArthur’s uniform hat, and a t-shirt that reads “Booty Hunter” across his ample bosom. This guy is a dead ringer for the late Professor Irwin Corey, looking like Santa Claus with white beard and man-bun. And he thinks he’s a chick magnet!

Ignoring him the best I can but it’s difficult when he is approaching waitresses and asking them “would you like to pet my weasel?” and producing a bagpiper’s sporran that looks like he found it in the alley next door.

I overslept after a raucous first night dinner with Dennis et al at the Castle and chastised all along the way the next morning on the road to Galway, where we would spend the next three nights gettin’ after it. We hit Kilbeggan Distillery on the way and caught up with Katie and John on Friday night

The Magnificent 7 (left to right) Billy Haggerty, Houli, Ricardo Haggerty, Dennis Kearns, Walking Eagle Peckham, Chief Mike Miller, and Bob “Moon” Mullins

Saturday night was spent at “Moran’s on the Weir” in Kilcolgan just outside Galway in a private room where we feasted on oysters, prawns, and Chief Miller described the dinner conversation as a “nitwits convention”. He was right but we all settled down when Katie and John put on a concert that soothed the savages by candlelight as we supped and sipped.

Mass on Sunday at Galway Cathedral and then back to meet with my old pal Aodh Ó Coileáin, filmmaker and resident genius, for a quick catch up before embarking for our cruise on Killary Fjord.

On Monday we left for Westport and the Irish premiere of our film IN SEARCH OF WEEPING JIM, ostensibly the actual reason for this trip. I asked the hotel concierge to call me a cab. She called Mary O’Toole who picked me up and Mary chatted me up on the way. I told her my film was premiering that night at the Town Hall Theatre and she says, “Oh I wanted to go to that, but have to work.” Then insisted on not charging me for the ride! Yes, the Irish are great people, especially Mary O’Toole.

It turned out to be a magical night with over a hundred folks in attendance, many of them featured in the film that we shot over several years in Kilmeena and the tiny island of Inishcuttle in County Mayo.  The Irish audience embraced the film, because of course it was about them and they got ALL the jokes. Very special occasion.

Sitting in the back row of the theatre I was touched when footage of Inishcuttle came on the screen as The Saw Doctors broke into “The Green and Red of Mayo” and the audience started singing along.  I broke for the bar in the lobby, but it was closed, when I ran into theatre manager Rosaleen Heraty who asked me, “Mike, do you like whiskey?”

Rosaleen opened a bottle of Grainne O’Malley’s, the pirate queen. “Believe in Grace” it said on the bottle, and I most certainly did that night.

That grace was evident in Mary O’Toole and the lovely audience ….and Matt Molloy himself of The Chieftains as we filmed an on-the-fly episode of OUR IRISH PUB with Katie Grennan, John Williams, Matt Molloy and his son Peter Molloy, jammin’ the trad tunes late into the evening.

It was epic as I turned to Walking Eagle, who was romancing a pair of old Irish witches lookin’ to party, and caught him on camera telling the ladies, “I’ve got more women than I can shake my dick at!” Bizarro World in Westport.

Ordering two at a time is so much easier.

That’s when I decided to make the Irish exit and head back to the hotel. Billy Haggerty guided my stumbling old fella self as he extolled the film to our cab driver, who I asked, “Do you know Mary O’Toole?”

“Of course, I do!”, he chuckled, “She’s, my sister!”

Or something like that. At that point the peak of the party had been hit and the next day we jumped back into our bus for the ride back to Killiney for our final night at the Fitz.

Once again, I was in Room 427, making me feel right at home for one more night. The Magnificent Seven assembled for our final dinner of this adventure.  It had been a Jim dandy exhibition of Irish roguery for the last week and as our waitress came to our table to interrupt our nitwits’ powwow, she turned to Walking Eagle, and her mask could not mask her extreme sarcasm through her lilting brogue aa she said, “Did’ja you bring your weasel?”

She may be the only human on this earth who could shut up Walking Eagle Peckham. He just sorta dribbled into his beard while we all laughed.

It was time to go now. We’d all be heading out of Dublin in no time on different flights and would all be dragging our asses home.

So, I’m sitting on the flight back home and the gorgeous Aer Lingus gal sez to me, “Would you like a drink?”

Her name was Eimear and I told of her my friend, fiddler, and singer Eimear Arkins, and that she should listen to her music or some bs like that and then I asked, “You don’t happen to have any of that Grainne O’Malley the Pirate Queen Irish whiskey, do you?”

And she smiled and said, “Do you believe in Grace?”

I said, “I do indeed, and her name was Mary O’Toole. “