Texas Poker Wisdom, a novel, by Johnny Hughes

Johnny Hughes

My novel is about Irish-American poker players living here in West Texas. When I posted here earlier, several made fun of me with the usual stereotypes of Texas...yelling Yee-haw, and wearing a 10-gallon Stetson.

Check out an excerpt and editorial reviews at www.JohnnyHughes.com

I am certain that Irishmen are stereotyped here far more than Texans are there. You may think the Irish comments and Irish songs in my book are a yawn. Here we say "he has his Irish up" when we think someone is angry. We say, "well, he's Irish, isn't he?" if someone drinks a bit much. People here wear T-shirts that read, KISS ME, I'M IRISH with lots of shamrocks. Do they have those T-shirts there? On St. Patrick's Day, we go wild with big drinking partiers, green beer in the bars, and cornbeef and hash served everywhere.

When I was in college, a group of my Irish-American friends really overdid it. At parties, they'd wear green, fake a brough, play Irish music, and drink Irish whiskey and rum. It was all a bit phoney.

In my part of Texas, it seems the Irish-American names are nearly the majority. We don't know much about our roots, really.

Johnny Hughes

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

Johnny Hughes

Thanks, the Scientist! I enjoy being ribbed about Texas.

Doc Farrell

(discretely taking off my 'Kiss me Im Irish' t-shirt and replacing it with my 'I Shot JR one)

hope you don't take the internet personally Johnny, there's a lot of rage online.....

hope to give your book a read, best of luck.

mocata

Am pretty sure i have never seen corn beef and hash?! altho i am from the north, maybe its different?

I do eat spuds and bacon and cabbage three times a day tho, and count guinness as a fourth food group.

I like johnny's writing style, tells a good story, so will add his book on to the next batch of amazon stuff i buy

DeadParrot

hash browns, the yokes you get on a breakfast roll I would imagine

Killme00

Corn Beef Hash rocks as does ordinary hash

RoundTower

rum?

jayhawk

From Wikipedia: There is a commonly held misconception that corned beef and cabbage is a traditional Irish dish. Corned beef is actually an Irish-American tradition adopted from neighboring Jewish-Americans in New York City. It gained popularity as a replacement for the traditional dish of bacon and cabbage, since immigrants had difficulty obtaining bacon or pork while beef was more readily available than it would have been in Ireland.

More importantly, cabbage was cheap and corned beef would keep longer. New York City apartment hallways STILL reek of boiled cabbage.

And the bacon reference is not thinnish American-style strips; it's customarily a thicker, bigger, chop-shaped rasher, often smoked.

The St Patrick's holiday here is much lower-key; more overtly religious and certainly less "Irish," since that would be pretty much redundant. American celebrations, although good craic, are stereotypical excuses to party down. Annual festivals in places like New York, Chicago, Savannah and Kansas City would astound and amuse the average Irish person. And the less said about weak, watery lager, tinted with green food coloring, the better...

Icarus152

Johnny,is Judge Judy a real judge? And,have you met her?

Johnny Hughes

In one scene in my novel, Matthew O'Malley is watching Judge Judy. Now we have both admitted to watching it.

I used stereotypes of Irish-Americans in my novel. Hell, I am a stereotype of an Irish-American. Speaking of stereotypes, my favorite stereotype of Irishmen and Irish-Americans is happy-go-lucky, charming, smiling, a twinkle in the eye, cheerful, fun to be around. Is this accurate? I would hope that it is so. I promote the image of myself as lucky. I wear a hat often that says Lucky and has shamrocks. In poker, there is no luck. In life, there is tons of luck, and I have been lucky. Another stereotype of Irishmen is superstious. Superstition can make you unlucky. I don't believe in superstition but I act like at do at the poker.

Much of our stereotypes of Irish-Americans come from John Ford Calvary films, Victor McLaglen, Barry Fitzgerald.

So are Irishmen cheerful and happy-go-lucky??? I sincerely hope so.
JohnnyHughes.com

Tar.Aldarion

This thread makes me want a tshirt that says, ' kiss me, I'm a tshirt'. How odd.