I always feel justified in observing St. Patrick’s Day because, after all, it’s my name day. Once, several years ago, I was able to convince my humorless Presbyterian boss that I had to have the day off because it was a religious observance. To my credit, I did in fact go to Mass that day, and at St. Patrick’s. I then proceeded to walk down the street from St. Patrick’s Church and visit every bar between Bank street and the water, ending up back on St. Paul street in a less than religious state.

I love our St. Patrick’s Day parade here because it’s the last of the really big parades. The Toytown Parade went the way of the dodo when its sponsor, Hochschild Kohn & Co., faded into the realm of pretty memories. The newer parades all run for about six blocks along Pratt street, to cater to the twitchy tourists and suburbanites who enter apoplectic shock if they have to find anything more than a block from the ghastly Harborplace. Also, the parade provides the one time annually that it’s absolutely acceptable to be somewhat sloshed while standing in the middle of Charles street. And I did, dear Diary, I did; yesterday afternoon found me planted squarely in front of the Professional Arts building with a beer and the growing realization that I was half crocked at four in the afternoon.

High on the list of Things Stereotypically Irish is sentimentalism. Those people may have been in Maryland since 1810, but they still get misty-eyed over Cork and Clare and Peg in the low-backed car. Which is all well and good, but sentimentalism doesn’t always translate to practicality.

The Irish in Baltimore are a strange lot. They’ve been around so long and there are so many of them. Quite a few of the early settlers were Irish aristocrats, who looked down on the peasantry that came over in the 19th century. Still, Irish blood is Irish blood and all the sons of Eire kept pretty much to themselves. Big chunks of West Baltimore and South Baltimore were Irish territory, but it was the old Tenth Ward that was the epicenter of things Irish in Maryland.

And so yesterday there was much sighing and longing for the Tenth Ward and Old St. John’s Church. Oh, for the good old days of the Celtic and Apollo theatres and First Communion Masses at St. John’s! The days when the St. Patrick’s Day parade was held on Greenmount Avenue, then all-Irish, because snooty Charles street never would have had it.

I, myself, haven’t been over in the Tenth Ward for years, because it’s now a very good place to get shot. The last Mass was said at St. John’s in the Seventies and the venerable old Italianate structure boarded up, and so it remains. A lot of the Irish, as their circumstances improved, moved up the street into St. Ann’s parish; now even St. Ann’s is struggling.

It’s unfortunate that the sentimental attachment to the old neighborhoods doesn’t translate into action. Instead of reminiscing, it might be nice to see someone actually do something to help the old Tenth back to its feet. Rodgers Forge and Towson may not have the neighborly feel and charm that the Tenth Ward once had, but they’ve surely got the Irish investments.