The Plumber’s Union of Chicago just dyed the Chicago River emerald green. I say “emerald” because the sun reflecting off the surface of the river makes the river shimmer. Emeralds shimmer, too, when the sun catches their facets. “Green” alone doesn’t do it for me.
Does it seem kind of funny that of all the groups available to dye the river, it is the guys who work on broken water pipes and stopped up toilets that get to gussy-up the a waterway which snakes mostly from East to West across Chicago? Why not the firemen who extinguish fires all year round in the “City that Works” or even the college of alderman of the “Windy City?”
Maybe the answer lies in the history of the event. It’s the day of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade when the Chicago River becomes spectacularly green. Could be that the plumbers union of the “City of Big Shoulders” at one time featured Irishmen who took it upon themselves to paint an unpaintable canvas of moving water the color of the “Old Sod” and that it has been so forever since? I’m not willing to look it up. I want to believe that it’s so.
I wonder if St. Patrick had a sense of humor. I know he was serious about the conversion of the barbaric tribes that populated the Irish island fifteen-hundred years ago. But I think that any man who could write the “Breast-Plate” prayer that begins “Christ above me, Christ below me” would also have a sensibility wide enough to include the stout men who, with a twinkle in their eyes and smiles on their lips, today float on a river glittering green because they wanted it so.