During the first few minutes of this piece, I thought the reporters just took tape recorders around to bars in Butte, Montana and that was the whole story. We hear happy drunks, incoherent drunks, fighting drunks, drunks of all kinds. And why not? It's St. Patty's Day, for gosh sakes. Fine, but predictable. And then the story takes a fun turn. The guys with the recorders decide to climb a fire escape and kick in the door of an abandoned building. They get arrested. They spend the night in jail. And then they learn some old guy lived in the first floor of the "abandoned building." Some old guy with a gun. He had it pointed at them as they were exploring the building. Yikes! Great tape of the old guy ... and a great turn of a story. Might be fun to play it on the morning of March 18 so the public radio listeners with hangovers can have a good scare.

St. Patrick's Day may be the happiest of all holidays, as one of the people in this story say. But it brings a tear to the eye, knowing that there was a time long ago when you could hear such great, fresh-sounding stuff on ATC. This piece still sounds great. A wonderful surprise for PDs to drop in during drive time on March 17 -- your O'Public Radio fans will love it.