Saint Patrick’s Day is a holiday that involves wearing green and drinking green beer. If taken to an extreme, the green beer part can cause you to actually turn green. Not that I have any experience with that, mind you.

I can’t wear a “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” button on St. Patrick’s Day or any other day. According to 23AndMe I am 100% Norwegian, which confirms that I’m the whitest guy on the planet.

My wife is a genetic mishmash. While the bulk of her DNA is from Germany, France, and Holland, she also has a smattering of genes from Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. She is probably just a tiny bit Irish, which is as good as excuse as any to kiss her on St. Patrick’s Day.

I was only dimly aware of St. Patrick’s Day when I was a kid. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Mortimer, believed that her charges should have a broad, multi-national education. Part of her teachings about St. Patrick’s Day involved instructing us to make shamrocks from green construction paper.

I knew how clover looked. But my tragic lack of artistic ability prevented me from successfully transferring that knowledge onto a sheet of paper. Many of my classmates produced shamrock cutouts that were strikingly similar to the real thing. Due to my woeful scissoring skills, mine looked as if though had lost a battle with a high-horsepower lawnmower.

My wife and I have several friends who hail from Ireland. It’s always a pleasure to listen to their delightful Irish lilt, although I often have to stop myself from asking them to say, “They’re always after me Lucky Charms!”

Corned beef is a traditional dish that’s enjoyed on St. Patrick’s Day. Corned beef is made by soaking a brisket in brine, then slowly cooking the meat until it becomes tender and succulent.

Traditional Norwegian cuisine includes a tasty treat called rullepølse, which is another way to make a less than desirable cut of beef into something that’s both salty and delicious.

Whenever we butchered a beef animal, Mom would ask the butcher to save the flanks. She would spread the thin, flat sheets of meat on the kitchen table, season them generously with salt and pepper and slather them with a layer of chopped onions. Mom would roll up the concoction — the roll part of rullepølse — and stitch the seam with a ginormous needle and butcher twine. After binding the rolls with more twine, they would be soaked in a cool brine for a day or more.

The rullepølse would then be boiled until it was done and placed in the refrigerator. Mom would serve slices of the delicacy either as a treat or as the main ingredient in a sandwich.

My sister LaDonna has mastered Mom’s rullepølse recipe and has made it numerous times. Biting into a slice invariably transports me back in time.

I’m a teenager once again and am standing on the headland of an oat field that Dad and I are seeding. As our “Johnny popper” tractors idle nearby, we are fortifying ourselves from the chill spring breeze with the hot coffee and the scrummy rullepølse sandwiches that Mom has brought us.

St. Patrick’s Day holds a special place for my wife and me for reasons other than food and drink. On the St. Patrick’s Day that took place 43 years ago, my betrothed and I were just four days away from our wedding. Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day was the last thing on our minds.

We — and by “we” I mean my fiancée — were hectically making last-minute wedding preparations.

Were the candelabras going to be delivered on time?

Would the rental shop furnish the candles?

Which reminds me, does anyone have a lighter?

Those were just a few of her many worries.

My main concerns were: what time am I supposed to show up at the church? And I would finish milking my 30 Holsteins soon enough to take a shower?

In this part of the world choosing a wedding date of March 21 is a crapshoot. The weather on that day can be anything from a balmy spring day to a full-bore blizzard.

The luck of the Irish was with us. Our wedding day was sunny and mild, and our hitching ceremony went off without a hitch.

As we and our guests enjoyed lunch in the church basement, it occurred to me that the only way things could have been better would be if the sandwiches had included rullepølse.

But that thought was quickly brushed aside by the sweet kisses I received from a lovely young lady who is just a tiny bit Irish.

— Jerry’s book, Dear County Agent Guy, is available at http://Workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.