Back in January, my brother accompanied my uncle to Ireland to begin making arrangments for what would turn out to be a second funeral for my grandmother. Patrick couldn't say enough about how great the trip was and how much he was looking forward to his return trip in August. In addition to drinking lots of beer, he was able to meet the scores of family members scattered throughout the country and experience their good natured hospitality. One of those relatives was Harry, a kindred spirit for Patrick, although perhaps in title only.
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Harry is a "garda", an Irish policeman. They call them guards. As in England, Irish police officers do not carry guns. Harry has a badge, and uses it occassionaly, but not in the way you might think. He's never made an arrest. He's never issued a citation. For a cop he pays almost no attention to detail. While showing my brother around Dublin in January, he often got lost, prompting my brother to call him "the worst guard ever". Harry just laughed it off with his deep from-the-gut guffaw. That's Harry.
Harry works on communications equipment. In the states we have "sworn police officers" that carry badges, guns, drive around in police cars and enforce laws. We also have non sworn support personnel that keep the computers running, the cars washed, and the paperwork flowing. In Ireland everyone who works for the guard is "sworn". So even though Harry's job has little to do with fighting crime, he's still considered a police officer in Ireland.
Although Patrick was the only one who had ever met Harry, we all met his brother and sister-in-law, John and Phil, in November when they flew out for the original funeral in Oakland, California. John and Phil live in Cork, the next destination on our itinerary. We'd be seeing them in a few days but, in the meantime, John insisted that we look Harry up while in Dublin as Harry was anxious to show us around. Punctuating that anxiety was the fact that Harry hadn't stopped calling us since we checked into the hotel.
Once everyone got settled at the hotel, the seven of us went out to a pub called Q Bar for dinner a few blocks away. Patrick rang Harry up to see where we could meet him. They made arrangements to meet at the Judge Roy Bean pub at half nine. That announcement nearly caused a riot. My parents flatly refused to go. It was coming up on 8PM and they did not want to wait around for over an hour. "I need to go to bed" my mom said. A few minutes later they reluctantly agreed. After all, it was only a little more than an hour, we'd have one drink and then everyone could go to bed. We left the Q Bar in search of Judge Roy Bean.
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Daniel was not aware of any pubs by that name and Harry had given my brother the general area the pub was in but no address. To give you an idea of where we were, our hotel was situated literally across the street from the north wall of Trinity College. Temple Bar, a district in Dublin just west of Trinity College, is where all the nightlife takes place. The area reminded me of Las Ramblas in Barcelona. We knew the Judge Roy Bean was next to Trinity College right at the beginning of Temple Bar so we walked the six blocks from the Q Bar and started looking. We asked a bunch of students who were lingering at the entrance to Trinity College and none of them had ever heard of Judge Roy Bean. We walked to the south side of Trinity College...plenty of pubs, but none bearing the name Roy Bean.
My brother and I walked across the street. There were a couple of bouncers standing in front of a trendy looking club called the Porterhouse. I sent Patrick to ask them if they knew where Judge Roy Bean was while I consulted Danny Boy one more time. Patrick came back a moment later and declared "that's it."
What? That clearly was not the place, the sign said Porterhouse.
"I asked them if they knew where the Judge Roy Bean pub was and they said that's what this place used to be called". We looked at each other, shook our heads, agreed that Harry is the worst guard ever and motioned for our party to join us.