We had the good fortune to have Dixiecat and her daughter, Jeaneva with us In Chicago for the St. Patrick's Day festivities....I'll qualify that because the crowd was so big and the city seemed so confused about routing the crowd to Columbus Drive that we didn't even get near the parade.

But Dixie and Jeaneva did manage to get a front row seat on the banks of the Chicago River to see the famous dying...



Tom Hay once again took the long train trip into the city from Michigan to join us and as Tom and I were searching the enormous crowd for Dixiecat, we spotted this guy who was the best behaved member of the crowd.



And here we all are and as close to the famous "Bean" as we could get:



We literally got sent around in a circle as we tried to get over to the parade route...I have to apologize to these guys for us not being able to get over there. This being Chicago, I should have paid somebody off...ahem..sorry...made a generous campaign contribution to one of our local politicians to get us on the reviewing stand so we could see the parade...next year...

All was not a total loss; we did manage to get back to The Duke Of Perth for lunch before the hordes left the parade and descended on North Clark Street. Things were very nice and the company was superb. Tom took off to catch the train back and Dixiecat and Jeaneva wandered off down Clark Street to do some shopping...I stayed at the Duke and let me tell ya' it got brutal after a while...you couldn't have slipped a leprechaun in sideways if you greased the little fella.

Thanks to Tom and Dixie and Jeaneva for their patience...

Best

AA