My friends always laugh when I tell them what happened one night thirty years ago.That is they used to laugh,now it's happening again. It was on March 17th,St.Patrick's Day.That particular year I was tending bar part time at the local VFW.I'm not Irish,not by a long sight.But like everyone else,we like to believe we are.Everybody wears something green,if it's only a little bow on their coat or dress.My- self,I like to dye my gray hair and my mustache green.Just with food coloring of course, that will wash right out. I don't want to stand out in the crowd every day of the year. It was a long day behind the bar and I didn't like to drink while I was working. The Post Commander frowned on it any- way.Along about eleven o'clock a stranger comes in.Seems like nobody knew him and of course it being a private club I had to see his VFW card.He cheerfully opened a small sat- chel that he carried and brought out an old weather beaten envelope, with an equally weathered document inside.He han- ded it to me and I read it.I looked at him and he smiled.I thought to myself,"We'll he's not a veteran, but what the hell, we are celebrating his birthday." I nodded and ask him what he would have to drink. "Just give me what the favorite drink of the day is," he said.
Now the rules at the post are that a new guest gets the first drink free.
So he says to me,"Well, I thank ye kindly sir, and for that, ye have a wish a comin."
Well as the night wore on I decided it wouldn't hurt to have a few myself.The bar usually closes at one in the morning,but the Commander asked me if I would keep it open longer.We had a good crowd, spending lots of money,(which we needed badly). The stranger was having a grand old time circulating around the crowds of people, and everyone was enjoying his stories. Seems I was gettin a little bit tipsy, and payin more attent- ion to the young blond lady sitting at the bar, than to what was going on in the club room. It was 3:13AM when the clock behind the bar stopped.That's the time when the electric went off. When the lights came back on I was all alone,not a soul anywhere in the building.The wall clock hadn't restarted, so I looked at my wristwatch and it showed nine-ten. I was still kind of fuzzy and had a little hangover, but outside of that I felt all right.I locked up the building and went home. That night the TV news reported that over three hundred people had disappeared the evening before, mostly from private clubs. I phoned the police station and asked for more information. When I told them who I was and where I was the night before, they told me someone would pick me up and take me in for ques- tioning. Down at headquarters, I told them my story and about the stranger, with his old satchel and the weather beaten en- velope and its strange note.They asked me what the note said. When I told them, they all laughed and called the nearest head doctor.Then they locked me up.The Doc examined me for two days and said to let me go.
"Not a danger to himself or anyone else."
As I said, that was thirty years ago and now it is happening again. I haven't been out on St. Paddy's day for many years, but this year I got out the green food coloring and put it on what hair I have left on my head and on my mustache and decid- ed to paint the town. Sitting at the only bar left in town, I was hoisting a green one when a stranger walks in.....not a stranger to me though.
He says to me,"I owe you a wish and I would like to give it to you now, what would you like?"
"All I want is to know what you did with all those people?"
"Ah, ye know laddy,I chased all the snakes out of Ireland, and now I'm ahelpin the devil to rid the world of sinners!"