A couple days ago I mentioned that the whole family visited the amazing World War One Museum over Spring Break. Well, after that inspiring walk through history, we took the short ride to Browne's Irish Market. I talked about this cool slice of The Emerald Isle a couple weeks back when I did a few live segments from that spot for FirstNews on KCWE. It is a terrific place. This trip, Samantha bought a book about a girl in the Irish Civil War, Taylor got a Curly-Wurly (It's a candy that looks like the DNA of the old Slo-Poke Caramel sucker.), Alexander chose a small rugby ball and Harrison picked out a rugby ball plus TWO Curly-Wurlys. My wife and I bought a small Irish cottage. Really.

It is white with a traditional thatch roof...fireplace...already furnished. Okay, you can hold it in the palm of your hand and it's made of cardboard. But, IRISH CARDBOARD! Inside the box: a small stone (of the non-Blarney variety) and six pads of peat. We're big on candles and incense around our house. It has nothing to do with achieving transcendental tranquility. It has everything to do with having teenagers, a dog and the occasionally lactose-intolerant diner. Researchers say that the sense of smell triggers memories more readily than any other way. Having grown up surrounded by cow manure, I go back in time fairly often. Anyway, Ireland travelled home with us, last summer, in our nostrils. I don't mean someone did something unpleasant with a shillelagh. I mean the smell of burning peat stayed with us.

So, now, we can light one of those little peat pads and our house becomes, well, a peat pad. Peat is organic material...mostly decaying vegetation, not unlike some of the stuff I've found under our childrens' beds. It comes out of the bogs and marshes. Bogs and marshes are lyrical ways of saying swamps. You could also say fens but that word always struck me as incomplete...like Webster's pen ran out of ink before he could finish.

One little etymological detour: Back in 1560, the word peat could also mean "merry young girl" as in "Oh, aren't you a sweet peat!" Somehow, the combination of the peat you set to glowing and the kind of peat that would set a young boy to glowing seems incongruous. Maybe it was this confusion that caused all those problems in Salem back in 1692! "Burn the peat?! What are you talking about?"

By the way, the title of this peat-treat is probably familiar to you, if you watch Seinfeld. It was The Limo episode. Jerry and George were pretending to be Irish and Jerry began to wax eloquent on the peat. Now, whenever we light up, someone in the family will say "The peat...aaahhh, the peat." Smart-alecky leprechauns. Still, the calming aroma keeps me from getting too worked up. Now, if I can just convince the neighborhood association to allow us a few sheep grazing in the front yard and a rock people can kiss for nine bucks...Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra!