The Faithful Remnant on Earth, in Purgatory, in Heaven

A couple of stories of “AW” and “The Faithful Remnant”

Here’s one caper AW pulled. One night he wants to go to the Bruins/Rangers game at Boston Garden. He grabs me and some other bloke he knows, Spike Sullivan, whose half-smoked at Hurley’s bar and someone who wouldn’t know a hockey puck from a Hershey bar. Down we go to Tony and Phil’s barber shop and borrow a couple of their white coats. AW’s sister worked in the emergency room at Boston City Hospital and we could had copped a couple there but our tonsorial brothers shop was closer and a lot less traumatic.

AW borrows a wheelchair from Spike whose out of work on a workman’s comp claim from a bad back. Spike only uses it when he goes in for his insurance checkups, never when he’s pumping iron at the Y. Anyway off we go to the old Garden we approach the ticket turnstile with shaky AW in the chair… me and Spike pushing with our white coats on “Long Island Hospital patient and attendants”, stammers AW as we push our way through the turnstile.

The usher seems moved to compassion and gives AW a free scorecard. As noted Spike isn’t much into Canada’s pastime and spends most of the three periods at the beer stand knocking down Ballantine ales. I think the Bs beat the Boardway Blue-shirts aka Rangers and goalie “Gump” Worsley 2-0. Bronco Horvath and Vic Stasiuk scored for the Bruins. During the game AW keeps yelling at Gump, “you have to stop the little black round thing Gump”. On the way out AW and Spike had to swap places in the wheelchair. Spike though he was at a Celtics game.

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AW had this cockamamie idea of making his own beer. So he nails me and we concoct this secret liquid mixture down in his cellar. Only God know what he put in it ---- barley, yeast, pickle juice, hops and even a touch of bleach.

Anyway, he and I fill and cap about 30 bottles of the stuff. AW figures it will take three hours to ferment so he further calculates that we’ll go to Cunningham’s Pub and have a few real ones while it ages. We spend some time at Cunny’s drinking beer and playing darts. No-one at the bar was safe when AW gave it his corkscrew fling. Some of his missiles even went backwards. One even impaled itself in Jack Murphy’s ass who made the mistake of standing up and imbibing at the bar. Back we go the AWs’ house and his father Mick is in front of the house, waving his arms, screaming in Gaelic. The bottles were exploding and imploding all over the cellar floor like hand grenades and there was a sea of green and orange liquid oozing its way out the front door. The O’Leary dog IRA had slopped up quite a bit of the suds and we reeling drunk in the parlor.