Helpless in the face of Fonts
Start of July 15 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998

I’m more Irish than I thought

In 1978 I was a business reporter for the Oregon Journal, assigned to cover a series of hearings being held in the four corners of Oregon.

I rode with several Irish staffers. We spent dozens of hours driving in Oregon’s hilly hinterlands. Radio reception was sketchy and there was often no source of sound in the car save the human voice.

Midway through the tour, Dick Feeney, a former reporter who was running an institute at Portland State, turned around from the front seat and said, “Paul, who are your people,” a question I hadn’t been asked since college.

“One-fourth Irish on Mom’s side, pure Swiss on Dad’s,” I answered.

“Well,” he said, “one drop of Irish blood makes you Irish, but you may be more Irish than you think.”

“How’s that?”

“What part of Switzerland?”

“The canton of St. Galen.”

He chuckled as did one of his colleagues.

“That explains it. You’ve held your own in conversation for hours. It is clear you've kissed the Blarney Stone.”

(He meant that figuratively, but a few years later I did it literally.)

“You see Paul, there was a wave of Celtic migration to St. Galen. There is a Celtic Cathedral in the capital. I suspect there’s more than a little Celt mixed into your Swiss as well.”

That may explain something I had noticed for years. I thought of myself as half Swiss, but all my Swiss relatives were taciturn. As Everett Dirksen almost said, Irish here, Irish there, the first thing you know you’re an almost Irishman.

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