A St. Patrick's Day on Eagle Street

Saint Patrick's day is a big drinking event these days.  There is a parade, green beer, and the stereotype of the drunk Irishman is celebrated.  But it didn't seem like that big a deal back in the 60's and 70's in our neck of the woods.  If the day fell on a school day, you needed to be sure you had green on, or else it gave the boys an excuse to pinch you.  We didn't eat corned beef and cabbage, or watch a parade.  It was really just another ordinary day.  But there was one  St. Patrick's Day that I remember.  It was Sunday, March 17, 1974.

About a dozen Eagle Street kids, ranging in age from five to 14, were out in the street playing kickball together that afternoon.  Our kickball game was sort of like playing a fusion of baseball and dodgeball. You kicked a big rubber ball, trying to get it past the other kids who were clamoring to catch it,  and you then ran to base trying to avoid being hit with the ball before you got there. Our playing field was the street, and the bases were the four sidewalk corners at the intersection of Eagle and West Lewis Streets. It was a safe place to play because there was no traffic whatsoever.  The only cars coming through belonged to the people who lived there.

An elderly Irish widower named Mr. Martin lived two doors south of us.  His yard was full of rose bushes and he employed a full time gardener to keep them beautiful.  Usually this gardener was always busy pruning and fertilizing the roses, and mowing the expansive yard.  But today, he was different.  He was wearing dirty clothes, his hair was uncombed, and he was laying on the grass, drinking one beer after another.  I ran over to catch the ball near where he lay,  and that's when I first noticed him amid all the empty beer cans. I could tell he was drunk because he was yelling at an imaginary person.

Around 3 o'clock, one mom after another came outside and started calling their kids in to eat dinner.   My little brother and sister and I started towards home, and just as we reached the steps leading to our porch, we head a car door slam, then a gunning of an engine, then screeching tires. We turned around to look.  In a second, the drunk gardener had taken off down Eagle Street, driving past our house, slamming into parked cars on one side of the street, then the other.  He blew through the intersection of Eagle and West Lewis, where a dozen kids had been playing just a couple minutes before.  I quickly ran down the street to see what would happen next.  There was only one more short block before Eagle Street ended at a dirt road. There was a white wooden fence separating the street from the canyon leading to Mission Valley, and I wondered if he was going to stop.  After sideswiping another car,  the gardener sped up.  His car smashed through the fence, become airborne, and then disappeared from view as it descended down into the canyon.  By this time all the grown-ups had heard the noise and they came out to survey the damage that was done to their vehicles.

The end of Eagle St today.  The white fence is gone, replaced by a driveway leading down the canyon to a new house. 

Soon, the other kids joined me at the canyon's edge.  Dinner for all of us would have to wait, because somewhere down among those thick bushes and trees there was a big smashed up car and a drunk guy, and we wanted to see if the guy was dead or alive.  The police came, then the fire truck, and soon, Cathy Clark from the TV news was doing a live report as the first responders headed down a hundred feet to rescue the drunk gardener.  They carried him up out of the brush on a canvas stretcher.  He was barefoot, bloody, confused and still yelling.  It took a tow truck about an hour to drag the smashed car up and out of the canyon.

That was the most excitement Eagle Street had ever seen. Mom's car was one of a few that was not hit during the incident.  I don't know what happened to the gardener, but we never saw him working in the yard again. Mr. Martin's beautiful house and rose gardens have since been transformed into an out-of-place 11 unit condo complex. The site of the crash is now home to a couple of million dollar canyon-side houses. A big tree now grows at the end of the street to stand guard against any future car calamity. The large families that once lived on our street have been replaced by childless and very well-off professionals.  It is all different there now.  But every year when St. Patrick's day comes around, my mind revisits that day.  Thanks to the grace of God and all the mothers calling their kids home to dinner at the same time, none of us were killed by the gardener who celebrated the day by driving drunk on Eagle Street.