4th of July in Boston, the irish pub story

The craziest thing about the day was one of the pub we stopped by with my friend T. We enter this Irish pub, 10 people in it, a sad family at one table, few men at the counter and a woman with a Red Sox bluse, nobody says a word, nobody gives us a look, the bartender does not welcome us. It is a local pub. Irish gig music is playing. If Dante's limbo in modern time can be anything, it is something similar to this, spend the eternity in an Irish pub populated by silent souls staring in the void and back to their drink. And Gaelic music. An old poster of JFK is hanging with under it a black and white photo of the JFK aircraft carrier. A Budweiser map of Ireland. a Samuel Adams old clock. a sign saying 'we proudly serve Guinness'.
After 10 minutes, however, as I am watching the dark pattern of the red bricks and mortars that compose the wall near our table, a realization takes forms in my head: this is the real thing, IRA and Sinn Fein, there are no signs but the walls still smell of them, these people are the orphans of "the cause". Who knows how many meeting, how much money has been raised on Sundays afternoons? Few minutes afterwards the confirm comes from the music, political ballads from the 1920s on Ireland and IRA come through the modern digital system. We remain for a couple of hours, paying drinks to the local, Jameson, the republican whisky of course. We play Irish songs by the Pogues, and some old ballads. The other damned souls appreciate and they rescue for us some comments and stories about being 'republican', the pub has been here throughout the 20th century and the fathers of this people dwelt here, some even tell the story of visits to Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s, stories of family, awful food, and religion that possess a powerful scent, coming from another century.