Saturday Night live

03.07.10

Went out last night to hear an Irish fiddle jam by Jane and Gordon and five or six others. The musicians had gathered at a corner table in the back room of Beef O'Brady's, a neighborhood sports bar where where we used to go to Little League awards banquets. Beneath TV sets tuned to basketball games, a mismatched ensemble played jigs, laughed, sang, drank whiskey and beer. A young fiddler with curly red hair sat beside an older man playing an Irish flute. A tired mandolin player leaned back in his chair. A blue-capped fiddler, with bushy white eyebrows and grim thin lips, could have been an actor perfectly portraying an old Irishman.

Always somewhere to go on a Saturday night, even in a town where everybody complains there's nothing to do.