Planning a parade: Chez Charlie owner says “It’s not a sane day”

untitled-(5-of-14)

Mauzey was in Chez Charlie Monday, replacing some records in his juke box with Irish tunes.

Larry Mauzey’s two bars on Broadway are known for darts, but no projectiles will fly Thursday on St. Patrick’s Day.

All dart boards will be removed then, said Mauzey, safer that way.

He will open both of his bars at 9 a.m. to get ready for the parade that goes down Broadway from 11 a.m. to about 2 p.m.

There will be corned beef and cabbage at Chez Charlie, 3809 Broadway, but no food served at the nearby Blarney Stone, 3801 Broadway.

The Blarney Stone does its best business of the year then and will be too crowded for staff to deal with food, Mauzey said.

And the theme of this year’s parade is “Blarney on Broadway,” which could pull in more people.

Mauzey was in Chez Charlie Monday, replacing some records in his juke box with Irish tunes.

They will be played plenty the morning of the parade, when he gets customers who took off work for it, he said, and played more after 4 p.m. when customers get off work and hit the bars.

“It’s not a sane day,” he said, and strange things sometimes happen.

“One year a guy rode a horse in the front door,” he said. Fortunately, a man with a wooden leg grabbed the horse by the nostrils and expertly backed it out the door.

“It could have killed somebody if it got all the way in here,” Mauzey said.

And then there was the baby elephant painted green. One year, someone took it into what was then Kenny’s Newsroom tavern across the street.

The elephant saw its strange reflection – a green elephant in a mirror – and panicked, knocked down two people and ran down the street, Mauzey said.

But such events are rare and most green elephants that day are probably imaginary.

At the juke box, Mauzey put in song after song, things like “Irish Eyes Are Smiling” by the McCarty’s, and many tunes by Bing Crosby or Charlie Taylor.

Taylor is “Irish all the way,” Mauzey said. “Nobody knows who he is anymore.”

He does “Danny Boy” and “Lord of the Dance” and Mauzey’s favorite, “The Wild Colonial Boy.”

He plays that ballad, which was in the movie, “The Quiet Man,” and it begins: “There was a wild colonial boy, Jack Duggan was his name.”

He was an Irish outlaw who took up highway robbery in Australia, and so the story goes, robbed from the rich to help the poor.

A lawman shot him through the heart.

So drink a beer for tragedy, and put on another Irish song.

 

Part 3 of Planning a Parade – a series of stories on preparing for the St. Patrick’s Day event

previous posts

Uptown Arts Bar starts getting ready for St. Pat’s in January

Show time for the parade committee

One Comment

  1. Rose says:

    funny

Leave a Comment