Wearing a green ball cap with a shamrock logo that matched his T-shirt, Chris Carper worked the grill behind the bar at Coeur d’Alene’s best-known Irish tavern on the nation’s best known Irish day.

Carper filled orders Tuesday for Reuben sandwiches and corned beef, cabbage and potatoes at Paddy’s Sports Bar — the place he owns on the 600 block of West Appleway in Coeur d’Alene.

It’s the usual Irish fare on the one day that gaudy beads swing from the necks of patrons who sip green beer as they hone a brogue they haven’t practiced for a year.

“I have to have an Irish beer on St. Paddy’s Day,” said Tom LaPoncey, who donned a knit, green newsboy cap and toasted a pint of black and tan — an Irish stout beer that floats like a cloud on a layer of lager beer — with Carl Bjerke, a fellow retired firefighter.

Although Carper began cooking up 150 pounds of corned beef a week ago in small increments, he didn’t know what to expect Tuesday on the dawn of what typically is one of his tavern’s biggest events.

Many businesses have closed because of the coronavirus scare, and the uncertainty left a question mark hovering in the air.

“We’re about half of what we usually do on St. Patrick’s Day,” Carper said.

A lot of patrons are ordering food to go, he said.

“We let people make their own choice,” he said.

But it’s a little past noon and the afternoon crowd has not yet made an entrance.

The ones who are here — a lot of families — order the traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal.

Coronavirus concerns are likely not the only reason patrons are fewer.

“That, and there’s no March Madness,” Carper said. “That’s usually a big draw for us.”

The TVs over the main floor showed sports reruns.

Despite the slowdown, Paddy’s remains as the only long-standing Irish pub in the midst of many other breweries and eateries.

Stepping from behind the grill, Carper ticked off the names of former Irish establishments, taverns and bars in Coeur d’Alene that no longer exist, leaving Paddy’s floating like a lily pad on the pond of Irish-themed proprietorship.

He has worked at the pub on Appleway since he was a kid making money for college.

That was in ’01, he said. Carper attended NIC, then transferred to UI and LCSC.

“I made the rounds,” he said.

Before purchasing the place with his dad, he watched how three other former owners managed Paddy’s, learning the good and the bad, what worked and what didn’t.

“I knew what not to do,” Carper said.

When he bought it a decade ago, he turned Paddy’s into a family-oriented, non-smoking environment.

The transition didn’t bother Beth Boyle, a Butte, Mont., native who smokes cigarettes outside when she gets the urge.

“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Boyle said.

She has tended bar and served up beverages and food at Paddy’s for 26 years.

On Tuesday, Boyle, too — like the rest of the staff — donned beads and shamrock T-shirts.

She misses the huge St. Patrick Day shindig in her native burg back in Montana, she said, where thousands flock to the copper capital to eat, drink beer and watch the parade — an event that was canceled this year because of the virus scare.

“I worked a lot of them and partied in a lot of them,” Boyle said.

The lean, bespeckled Boyle has a reputation among patrons who step out of line as not putting up with guff.

“I saw her pick up a short guy by his skivvies and walk him out the door,” said Will Cushman, a Coeur d’Alene truck driver.

Boyle insists that was a while back.

“It’s just part of my job as a bartender,” Boyle said. “It doesn’t happen that often anymore.”

Cushman patronizes Paddy’s in part because he grew up with Carper, and because it is a quiet, family-oriented place where he can sip a beer.

“It’s my watering hole,” Cushman said.

He likes that Carper supports a plethora of local sports teams including Little League and softball, golf tournaments and an annual breast cancer fundraiser that usually fills the place.

“He’s so community-oriented, but he does it so quietly,” Cushman said.

Cushman and Boyle agree that the virus scare has thinned the clientele on the biggest Irish fest of the calendar year.

“Normally, it’s wall to wall in here,” Cushman said. “You can’t find a seat.”

But Tuesday’s more quiet 1 p.m. atmosphere was just right for LaPoncey and Bjerke, who both worked as paramedics before retiring.

The coronavirus didn’t scare them away from a table not far from the bar.

“There’s no need to lose common sense,” Bjerke said.

Both men admired their black and tans, the colored liquids in their glasses separating like water and oil.

“I order this anywhere else and it’s just a brown glob,” LaPoncey said.

Sitting at a table, taking a break from the grill, Carper greets customers by name.

“I know about 75 percent of the people who come in here,” he says. “It’s kind of the Cheers atmosphere … I have their beer poured before their butt hits the chair.”

He was confident customers would dust off the 150 pounds of slow-cooked corned beef.

“At the rate it’s been going, I think we’ll go through it,” he said.