First decade of the 21st centurty —

Andrew Ryan's pub in Kilkenny city was closed for a couple of decades — closed, but still existent, and partially operational.

Some friends, locals, were telling me about this one time that we were there.

They were saying that it was "closed" for those years, with the same name above the door — and with the same door and frontage as it has now.

They said that people would drink there, the whole time — even though the pub was not open for business.

People would still come and go — those who had keys. Old lads, friends of the proprietor. But the place was not open to the public, for 20 or 25 years.

This was the old Ireland — the Ireland of the young adulthood of my Irish friends.

In order to retain a license to serve, they told me, a pub would have to open to the public for something like one day of the year. Licensed, of course, it could remain in operation; it could buy supplies and conduct business.

My friends drank next door, for several years, at a pub that was then called "The Widow's," on location but within a smaller space of what is now "Rafter Dempsey's." It was their "local."