Among American youth, the question of heritage is often met with percentages and fuzzy ancestral remembrances. Unless you claim Irish blood.
The mother’s lineage matters little when a father bestows a name like Murphy or Kelly or O’Sullivan onto his children and marks them forever as a product of that green and shining land.
After the potato famine, Irish immigrants flooded the American heartland, stamping green boot prints on forlorn paths and forgetting pots of gold at the terminus of each rainbow they crossed.
And March 17th of each year, St. Patrick’s day gives a moment to commemorate the hot Irish blood of approximately 33 million Americans. Chicago city employees pour 40 pounds of dye into the city’s river to turn it ogre-green for the day. People search the dark corners of their closets for the annual appearance of their “Kiss Me I’m Irish” T-Shirt as school children pinch each other for not wearing green.
But there is little of Ireland in our celebration of the Irish. And this is most seen in the most famous drink of the holiday.
In bars across America, revelers order a drink rarely served in the British Isles: the Irish Car Bomb. In a uniquely American way of crafting a cultural smorgasbord of all things Irish, this drink combines the three most common forms of Irish booze.
Ingredients:
Guiness: a dry stout first introduced in 1759 that causes consumers to feel as if they have eaten an entire loaf of bread. But because of the low-alcohol content (4.1 to 4.3 percent), an imbiber must down quite a few, which is not altogether the most pleasant experience.
Jameson: an 80-proof blended Irish whiskey first introduced in 1780. For whiskey drinkers, it goes down easy. For those new to the past time, the cough after each swallow is part of the fun.
Bailey’s Irish Cream: an upstart whiskey-and-cream-based liqueur introduced to the market in 1974 that boasts 17-percent alcohol by volume and curdles when introduced to any weak acid.
The Process:
Pour most of a bottle of Guiness into a pint glass.
Find an oversized shot glass and fill with equal parts Jameson and Bailey’s.
Drop the latter into the former and chug the foaming concoction before it turns to sour cheese. Or more precisely, get it in your stomach so it can curdle there instead of in your glass.
The name of the joke has always been a source of contention. It harkens back to the IRA days when acts of terrorism frequently included explosives hidden inside of cars.
A friend told me that a couple of guys he knew went to Ireland, saddled up to the bar, and ordered two Irish car bombs because they thought that’s what they drink in Ireland. The bartender squared his jaw, poured the guiness, mixed the Jameson and Baileys, set the drinks on the bar, and said: “Here are your 9/11s.”
As culturally insensitive as it may be, the drink is fun. Chugging one causes the sort of coughing, belching, and retching that befits a celebration of Irish culture as distorted and commercial as St. Patrick’s Day.