St. Pat's Day

[taks]

i came from a school that is listed on the wiki as one of the longest running st. pat's day celebrations. we started in 1908, so i have been unable to figure out how this year was considered the "100th annual" when in fact it is the 101st. perhaps they should change to the "100th anniversary."

 

anyway, i was also a member of the st. pat's board, which is mentioned in the little blurb about rolla's (UMR's) celebration. the blurb oddly mentions alice, which has maintained a sort of legendary status, but has been over and done with for about a decade. i've been in alice. in spite of what the articles claim, we do know what went into alice. it ain't pretty. we'll just say that much of my "hazing" over my two year stint (1988-1990) helped out.

 

in my opinion, the part that sets our celebration aside from the rest is street painting. we start with what is known as a "street painter's tea" sometime around 4:00 a.m. saturday morning, which then moves to some local place for breakfast (Bs&Gs, with beer, of course) by 7:00 a.m. by "tea," i mean a sort of high-alcohol concoction everyone else in the world would call a punch or similar. not sure why we call it tea. this year's tea was grain with mountain dew. not too bad. we then paint the streets with a sort of lime-based paint and mops. of course, they didn't have enough paint this year and we were done in a half hour, i barely got any paint on me at all.

 

my buddy and i did not make it till 6:00 a.m. or so but we were on the streets for painting. the wiki article on MS&T's st. pat's celebration has a small picture of street painting in action. a better picture of all the guys afterwards is here. the last picture was a rather low-attendance year apparently. i estimated 250 or so alumni painting streets this year, with many others on the sidelines taking pictures.

 

i held the tea at my apartment one year (1995), conveniently located on the street we paint. besides forgetting to add water to the tea (white liquors, green kool-aide mix, sugar and ice), we also left the door open so street painters could get back in to drink more. they mopped the apartment. i got evicted.

 

oh, the guy in the first post here, is my 9th alumni rep. he's almost 50 years old and nothing short of insane. we used to have to do an "alumni chug" as far back as our lists went. my list went back to the early 70s, and the guy in the pic was from 81. when you get up to 10 or so and you're screaming "my alumni, alumni, alumni, alumni, alumni, alumni, alumni, alumni, alumni, alumni rep is..." after drinking all day it gets difficult.

 

i should add, i got into KC (MO) on wednesday, then drove down to rolla thursday morning. got back after a 13 hour drive last night at 9:30 or so. it'll be a few days before i recover.

 

happy st. pat's day everyone. i've got my green on and so does my family.

 

taks

[LadyCrimson]

The thing that set St. Patrick's Day apart in my personal mind is it's also my father's birthday. It made for some strange celebrations at our house.

[walkerguy]

Don't pinch me lads I'm wearing green.

[Tale]

it's also my father's birthday.

I've known lots of people with St. Patrick's birthdays. Myself for example.

[Gfted1]

^Yay! Happy Birthday!!!!

[Shryke]

i forgot all about it to be honest

 

i guess that does explain all the people in green when i wandered through town last night though....

[walkerguy]

Aye, forgot ye did. Well lads, Saint Pats is overs, we doesn't has to wear green 'nmore.

[taks]

indeed, though i often wear green anyway. i've still got about 30 shirts from my years attending UMR, and i got 2 more this weekend. we sold russell sweatshirts (kelly green) as a means for funding our celebration so i have scads of them lying around. most don't fit due to the fact they do shrink and i have grown around the waist a bit, but there are several that still get use. interestingly, at one point we were the 2nd largest seller of russell shirts in the world, the 1st being fort leonard wood which hands them out to their boot camp attendees. fort leonard wood is 30 miles down the road from rolla, coincidentally.

 

happy belated, tale. the buddy that i attended the festivities with has a son that waited till the 18th to be born. today is his 5th.

 

i'm almost recovered from the trip though i managed to pick up some sort of cold along the way. having a child in pre-school has been detrimental to my family's health. ugh.

 

taks