KELSO PRIEST FROM IRELAND PLANS MELLOW ST. PATRICK'S DAY

KELSO -- His kind Irish eyes are framed in fashionable brown-rimmed glasses. His hair, still as thick and even-flowing as the River Shannon, has traveled the course of auburn to a distinguished gray.

But some features and habits still persist when the Rev. Oliver Clavin, 48, celebrates St. Patrick's Day.

Clavin, who was transferred from a parish in Lebanon to St. Augustine Church in Kelso, will talk to his mother and family in Westmeath, Ireland, by telephone as he has done for 24 years.

His family will tell him the latest on the cease-fire in Northern Ireland. He will tell about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams' visit with Bill Clinton at the White House.

They might talk about Irish celebrities, but not Sinead O'Conner.

"My two older brothers still won't forgive Sinead O'Connor for tearing a picture of the pope on 'Saturday Night Live' a few years ago," Clavin said. "I still can't believe she did that."

The Clavins will talk about the St. Patrick's Day feast.

"They have corned beef and cabbage here, but you won't find that anywhere in Ireland," he said.

And, Clavin will likely thank his mother, Mary, for the wool sweater she knitted for him.

After talking to his family, he will go about the business of being a parish priest in a town known more for its German heritage than its Gaelic descent.

"It doesn't matter whether it's German or Irish or whatever," Clavin said. "People around here seem genuinely friendly and that makes us all the same."

Through his years in America, Clavin's brogue has mellowed.

"The brogue isn't nearly as thick as it used to be," he said, recalling when "Father Huels at St. Mary's Cathedral in Cape Girardeau told me when I first came here that if I wanted the people to understand me I would have to try to work on my dialect." Because there was no H in the Gaelic alphabet, Clavin would try to say "thanks" to someone and it would end up like "tanks."

And, he won't forget one of his first experiences away from the old sod.

"When I landed in Chicago, I told someone I was headed to St Mary's Cathedral in Cape Girardeau," Clavin said. "He asked me how to spell Cape Girardeau. I said, `Doesn't everybody know that?'"

The "vastness" of the United States was one of the first discoveries he would make when he traveled from Chicago to Cape Girardeau in 1971.

"Ireland is only 300 miles long," he said. "Here, it seems like there is just an endless amount of land and opportunity."

He is fortunate to have obtained a college education at St. Patrick's College in Calow, Ireland, and to move closer to his sister, May, who is with a Dominican order in Durango, Colo. Only about 10 percent of the Irish get the chance to attend college.

He has used his education to spread the word of God and meet as many people along the way as possible. After leaving Cape Girardeau in 1972, he transferred to Joplin, where he spent two years, then to Willow Springs for five years. Then, on to Lebanon.

"I heard they really get excited about St. Patrick's Day in Rolla, which is pretty close to Lebanon, so I decided to see what they were talking about," he said.

What Clavin saw was something much different than what he would have witnessed in Ireland.

"In Ireland St. Patrick's Day is treated like a religious holiday," he said. The bars and pubs are closed -- the opposite of here.

He visits Ireland annually, usually in the summer.

As a youngster, his town had one telephone and one television, and the road was so narrow a truck couldn't be driven on it.

That's changed. There are highways there now, but the past fostered an appreciation of a traveling storyteller.

People would gather around these "shanckies," or storytellers, at night to listen to limericks and tales of other cities.

"I think the reason Ireland is so famous for the short story is because of the shanckies developing the art from one generation to the next," Clavin said.

He continues that tradition Sundays, telling stories wrapped in the wit and wisdom of the land that welcomed St. Patrick.

"St. Patrick was actually from Scotland, but he was brought to Ireland as a slave," Clavin said. "When he learned to speak Gaelic, they finally accepted him as one of their own and he began to preach Christianity and Catholicism to the pagans."

While Clavin learned to drop a wee bit of his Gaelic 24 years ago, he has continued the tradition of St. Patrick.

"I met with some bankers today," Clavin said. "Now that's where the real green is."