A bit o' the Irish in my day

When I was young we would take long road trips to upstate New York where my mother's family lives. It was an all day affair, in the big Caprice station wagon (with that seat that faced backwards) and many stops along the way. Once we arrived, we stayed a while and had large family cookouts.

You know, the kind where grandpa was outside grilling tons of meat and smoking out the neighbors; all the aunts brought salads and jell-o molds and so many other food stuffs the tables lined up in the garage were groaning under the weight.

After everyone was done eating, the adults would bring out the webbed lawn chairs and circle up to catch up and gossip. I'm pretty sure they didn't call it gossip (that's not very nice), but really, what else is it? The kids would run around the yard until we dropped. At this point my older brothers, cousins and I would look for four leaf clovers in the grass. Remember, before it was trendy to have high maintenance lawns, we had weeds and we liked it!


I learned there would always be one, if you were patient enough to find it. And when I found it, I learned to leave it there, happy to have the luck without ruining someone else's chance to find it too.

This week when I was out taking pictures I stopped to look for the clover and found a 5-leaf clover. I left it there and today had some very good luck at work. Glad to see some things never change.

M.E.