MAGIC         PORK

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! I’m not Catholic, or even Christian, and I don’t see why St. Patrick converting Ireland to Christianity is worth celebrating, but on the other hand I’m of Irish descent so that’s good enough for me!

Of course everyone claims to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. I have had people with a straight face tell me they’re 1/16th Irish. Uh… huh… Look, it’s America. Almost everyone has some Irish in their family tree. Can we just agree to that and not go around claiming you’re Irish because you heard once that your great-grandmother on your father’s side was Irish?

I commonly say I’m 3/4 Irish when asked, because 3 of my grandparents were of Irish descent. (The other is Italian.) But really I don’t know exactly what percentage of Irish blood I have because both sides of my family came to America a while back and there’s probably some other blood thrown in there somewhere.

My family has some old letters from the McMillens in Ireland to the first McMillen family to come over. I don’t know all the details, but Robert McMillen came over with his family, early 1800’s. His daughter Anne died on the trip over. They settled down just down the road from where my parents live and used to farm. Each first-born son has been named the same so my cousin’s son is Robert Albert McMillen VIII. I don’t know what the original Robert’s father’s name was. It could go back even further for all I know.

Whenever I tell people that, someone either asks why I’m not named Robert or says I must have an older brother Robert. So I’ll explain it more clearly. My grandfather’s oldest son is my uncle, not my father. Therefore my father isn’t Robert and I’m not Robert. Clear?

I don’t know much about my mother’s father’s family history (Malone) but I think she said they came over around the same time. All I know is there’s a ton of ‘em living in my hometown.

Anyway, I’ve bored you enough with that. The other St. Patrick’s Day thing I wanted to talk about was a follow-up to my post about Fox’s. I had their “New York New York” sandwich today and it was deee-licious. It’s hot corned beef & pastrami on rye with slaw & Russian dressing. Mmmm.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 6:02 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.