Regarding violent people and their holidays-- I remember as if it were yesterday an event from the 1960s, when I must have been 12 or 13. We were watching the St. Patrick's Day parade from the roof of my aunt's building in South Boston, Mass. As you may guess, this was and remains a huge holiday on the Roman Catholic calendar in Boston. As the parade slowly made its way up the street, an open flatbed bearing "colored people" came into view. It was the NAACP float. What unfolded next, I have never forgotten. At some signal, hundreds of beer bottles and other debris flew through the air and descended with great accuracy on the helpless people riding on the truck. They were completely exposed, and because the parade was moving very slowly the truck could not escape. I don't remember police arriving, but they probably did. What I do remember is wondering why these "colored people," of whom I knew very little, were so despicable as to deserve this. What had they done? Boston was rigidly segregated, and my Irish/Polish community had only the slightest contact with Boston's African-Americans, some of whose families had been there since before the Revolution. This event took place before the busing/school integration crisis, which was in the 1970s. So great and so persistent was the violence and mayhem of all kinds associated with the St. Patrick's Day parade, that the event was eventually shifted from March 17 to the nearest Sunday, a day when the liquor stores are closed. Henry Wiencek