A few years ago, while cleaning out my parents’ house after the death of my father, I found a small framed picture of a pub bearing the sign “Curtin’s Roadside Tavern.” I was intrigued because my late mother’s maiden name was Curtin—her father John came to the U.S. in the early 1900s, leaving behind a struggling farm in west Ireland—though I’d never heard anything about a tavern. I looked up the place online and sent an email to the owner, Peter Curtin, who wrote back that he