In the photo the empty lot behind me blurs in the Atlantic City distance, making faded letters advertising salt water taffy impossible to read on the peeling side of the building.

Yet memories of my youth glisten amid the gravel and dirt of that barren piece of property where Eddie’s Shamrock Bar, the first bar off the boardwalk on Kentucky Avenue, once overflowed with customers where I briefly tended bar the summer I turned 21.

And I do mean briefly.

My Scranton Irish American family helped me get the job because the native-born Irish bar owners had a Scranton connection. I lived above the bar in a long neglected yet spacious room, sleeping for free in one of many dingy rented bedrooms on the second floor that came to resemble an oddball flophouse in an historic building that offered who knows what endless comforts during Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties.

Because I needed to save money to study, box and connect with relatives on my grandfather’s native Irish soil, I vowed not to drink too much during that summer of ’72 except for the occasional foray into the city for a few beers.

So I took a long walk to the city public library, signed up for a card and took out a hardback copy of Big Sur, Jack Kerouac’s pseudo-novel about the rugged California coast. I had packed my own paperback copy of the Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy and each week bought a thick Village Voice to read front to back while sitting on a wooden bench on the boardwalk across from one of the open-front auction houses that did steady tourist business on hot nights.

Veteran Shamrock bartender Jimmy Jeffers from Minooka (the once powerful Irish neighborhood in Scranton where my Irish coal miner grandfather sired many members of the Corbett tribe) showed me how to properly pull a beer. But I kept holding the tap half open and got frustrated with the foam when he corrected me.

Something I did know how to do occurred one night when I threw two of the owner’s son’s buddies out of the bar after catching them pouring their own whiskey from a pint bottle the one guy tried to hide beneath the bar.

“We’re friends of Johnny Moran,” he said.

“Out,” I said,

My other gift was pouring shots.

“Go down to the other end of the bar,” I’d say to a customer. “The bar’s slanted where you’re sitting. If you move I can fill the shot glass all the way to the brim. You’ll get a full belt instead of the bar soaking up the runoff.”

I also drew attention to the bar when word got out I was giving away drinks to anybody with a real Irish accent. Irish-born bar owner and tightwad Mary Moran wore long black dresses, ruled with an iron swizzle stick and could have been 50 but looked much older. She knew I was up to no good but couldn’t prove the bold impertinence I called public relations. “The Shamrock” was an Irish bar, for Christ’s sake.

Mary lost any faith in me that remained after her older brother Pat asked if I could take him for a drive the way my father Shamus and he used to tool around town after World War II. Pat was a gentle alcoholic bruiser his sister imprisoned in his room because of his drinking. A poor soul who could once lift beer kegs over his head with ease, he now could barely navigate. Good at heart, Pat counseled me not to drink out of glasses when I got to Dublin for fear of catching a disease.

“Only bottles,” said Pat as we sat across from each other at a big round table covered with a stained white cloth in the cavernous sunroom with a 20-foot ceiling, a tiny greasy kitchen and floor-to-ceiling open windows that caught the salt air when bartenders and their friends came upstairs to play poker.

So out Pat and I went cruising on a fine summer day. When we got back, Pat asked if we could take a short walk on the boardwalk. Of course, I said. When hawk-eyed Mary spotted us heading up the boardwalk ramp she went ballistic.

“What are you doing?” she screamed “What is the matter with you?”

Yeah, well at least I’m not opening poor Pat’s mail, I thought.

But the icing on the soda bread came a few nights later when the Irish owner of another Irish bar threw me out of his establishment at 4 in the morning for singing “The Wild Colonial Boy” onstage with the band. He came running down the steps from his apartment howling that I woke him by stomping my foot on the stage.

“I was keeping rhythm,” I said.

“Out! Out!” he screamed.

You’d have thought I was pouring my own whiskey.

After a leisurely sunrise boardwalk stroll back to the Shamrock I discovered much to my dismay that Mary had removed the key from where it always hung on a hidden hook. People staying upstairs had to know the key was there in order to get in after Mary locked the door before she went to bed. Drunk or sober, though, I always considered myself good in a pinch.

In the parking lot next door I found a beautiful wooden extension ladder on the ground. Raising the ladder to its full height I leaned it against the Shamrock’s outside wall, scampering up to the second-floor window. With two windows wide open, their thin frayed curtains blowing in the wind, I took my pick and crawled inside.

Asleep in minutes in my musty room I awakened with a start when I heard loud police radio voices that signaled trouble. Stumbling groggily to the same window into which I had earlier climbed, I spotted Mary on the sidewalk in her long black dress she wore like life was one nonstop Irish wake. Strictly business from the old country, she had no time for a wild colonial boy like me. Serious cops spoke serious words to Mary as they pointed to the ladder I had forgotten to remove from the side of the building.

Then they pointed to me.

I waved and headed down to confess.

Some people just don’t have a sense of humor.

By that afternoon with “Dirty Eddie’s” in my rearview mirror I headed back to Pennsylvania singing “The Wild Colonial Boy” at the top of my lungs while driving my 1966 VW bus with the green hubcaps and matching shamrocks my father had painted on the back one night without my permission.

Another uncharted chapter in my unfolding life had closed.

Next stop?

The National Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, where in a few months I would face off in the center of the ring with the terrifying red-haired Irish cop and wild west farm boy Christy O’Brien to fight for the county and city novice heavyweight boxing championship.

Don’t go away.

The punches are about to fly.