The hard-drinking ghost of my grandfather

It might be remiss to the point of dishonesty to write about the Irish and Irish Americans without mentioning "the powerful weakness" that has stalked them for centuries. It is the stereotype that is sometimes politely left unspoken and at others maliciously or humorously blurted out.

I never knew my maternal grandfather. He died at the age of 51, five years before I was born. But although I never saw him, I have seen his ghost in the lives of my mother, her siblings, and their children.

I have seen it in the way they drank, the way they feared to drink, and the way they sometimes tiptoed around holidays. I saw my grandfather's hand in the partners they chose, whether too much like him or totally unlike him. I searched for the ghost in myself, and I swear I did not find it.

My grandfather's obituary in the Mount Carmel (Pa.) Item said he was "a miner by occupation" who died from "complications of ailments after an illness of two years." The family lore was that he worked hard and drank hard, but that when the mines cut back during the Depression, his drinking did not. And when the mines came back, he could not.

There is truth in this family history. There is also a harsher truth. The Irish can be hard on themselves, and they can also weave versions of reality that are easier to live with. The Irish are nothing if not good storytellers. So my grandfather lived on in the family long after he died, through those he touched and those they touched in turn, within and across generations.

In the coal-region town of my childhood, there was pretty much one test for alcoholism. You could drink as much as you wanted - or as much as you needed - at night and on weekends. But fail to get yourself to work, and you were a drunk. If you made it to work, whatever else you were, you were no drunk.

You started drinking in adolescence, maybe first with elderberry or dandelion wine that belonged to someone's grandmother. You graduated to beer purchased by a friend who was older, or at least looked it. Or you bought it at hole-in-the-wall, heads-on-the-bar establishments that looked at IDs casually or not at all.

Most of us made it to adulthood, with only a few lost to booze, usually mixed with driving or depression. After the age of 21, you were on your own to drink and stand, or drink and fall. Where you ended up depended a bit on chance, and more so on the friends and mate you chose, modified for better or worse by the genes and the home that life dealt you. Irish genes seemed riskier than most.

Some say the Irish and their American cousins have been unfairly maligned and caricatured as drinkers. Others caution that being Irish requires a special vigilance when it comes to drink. I see truth in both.

When I can persuade a friend or two to join me, I have a glass on St. Patrick's Day. It does not matter much anymore if it is Bushmills, from the north, or Jameson, from the south. I sip with some joy and some memory. I even invite my grandfather to come along with the other, sunnier family ghosts - if he promises to behave.