“Aye, me lad, did I ever tell ye how me and me six brothers had to go work the mines just so our Mam could afford potato chips?”

What? You don’t have any brothers. Your Mom always has plenty of potato chips around the house. And you don’t even like to go into an underground parking garage, let alone some mine.

“And me just ten-years-old and all! Evil days, them was! A’course that was back when the Ballyknocknaclough Soapstone Pit was the only job a lad like me could get ‘round these parts. Soapstone country, this was. The soapstone dust in the air, I swear ye couldn’t see to the end of your clay pipe! Lot of blood, sweat, and phlegm all so some fancy Orangemen could keep their cool drinks cool and their hot drinks hot, I’ll tell ye that.”

Uh, Brendan? You grew up right here in Wichita. I was there, remember?

“Oh, and the Sisters at the school, they loved their whiskey stones as well. Saints preserve ye if ye ran afoul of Sister Mary Maria Marie if her drink had gotten watered-down. Put her in a foul temper, I can tell ye. Take President Kennedy’s name in vain when her Tullamore Dew had got weak and she’d give you thirty whacks across the knuckle with a cabbage. I can still remember it hanging there on the wall, that cabbage…”

What are you talking about? We both went to Hadley Middle. There weren’t any nuns there.

“We had a set of our own whiskey stones, but in them days there was just the one refrigerator in the whole village. Right in the village square for us all to use, under the statue of Shane MacGowan. Alas, the village square was three hours away from our house by donkey cart, so we took ours neat as often as not.”

OK, next time I’ll know better than to let you drink Irish whiskey.

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