And Now For a Brief . . .

Hi everyone. FYI, I'm not going to be posting anything in August. Oh, I'll still be around -- visiting blogs, taking photos for upcoming blog projects, collecting LOLcats and other funnies, writing up some future blog entries, etc. I'm just giving myself a little summer break from posting, that's all.

So I'll resume posting on September 1st. With a giveaway if the blog hits 300 followers by then!

Moochie the Entrepreneur

Yes, Moochie had indeed turned over a new leaf and set himself up in business. He boasted to my parents that he had acquired a stable of three aging prostitutes who he was pimping out at the local skid row hotel. "My heavy chevies," he proudly called them. Business was pretty good too.

My parents were mortified, of course. They prayed he would not identify himself as a relative to anyone they knew.

Moochie's career lasted for a while but eventually he was arrested and convicted for "living off the avails of prostitution" as it's called. Presumably he served a bit of jail time. Or perhaps not. Who knows? The last we heard of him was that he had moved to the West Coast where his brother lived. He died there a few years ago.

I'm sure he was able to con his way into heaven. Rest in peace, Moochie.

[Photo by Sean Carruthers and found on his website here]

As The World Turns

True to form, it didn't take too long until Moochie lost or sold or totaled the car, whatever. My mother breathed a huge sigh of relief, knowing there would be no more sneak attack visits. Life moved on. I grew up and left home. My parents and sister moved to a nearby city.

We heard about 10 years later that Moochie and the wife had separated. We assumed it was just a case of welfare fraud so that they could claim more assistance as two single people than as a married couple. But it turned out to actually be true. One day, out of the blue, Moochie showed up in the city and declared himself to be a single man. And -- even more shocking -- he was working.

Well, so to speak.

Tomorrow: Moochie the Entrepreneur

The Big Bag o' Teeth

You have to understand that Moochie and his wife had no teeth. Oh, they each had a set of false teeth but, as explained to us, those were "welfare teeth" and so didn't fit right. Rather than hurt their gums by actually wearing the teeth, the Moochies simply carried them around in a brown paper bag stashed on the ledge of the car's rear window.

When supper was ready to be served, Moochie said to one of the kids "Go get our teeth" and the kid obediently ran out to the car to fetch the Big Bag o' Teeth. Moochie and the wife fished around in the bag, figured out whose uppers and lowers were whose, shoved them in their mouths, gobbled down their meals and then promptly took the teeth out again. Back in the bag for next time!

Nice.

Tomorrow: As The World Turns

Moochie's Sneak Attack!

We discovered that the Moochie clan was mobile one pleasant summer evening when they all showed up on our doorstep -- unannounced -- about half an hour before supper time. The law of hospitality required that they be fed, of course. It took a week's worth of groceries to do so.

We were far from being a well-off bunch ourselves so seeing all that food disappear in a single meal was a heavy blow to our family budget. My mother was not pleased.

They stayed for about an hour or so, just long enough to eat and have a short visit. Finally, Moochie pulled my father aside, bummed some smokes and gas money off him and then they all motored off in a cloud of acrid exhaust fumes.

Boy, did my Dad hear about that later, too.

Tomorrow: The Big Bag o' Teeth

My Cousin Moochie

Every extended family has at least one ne'er-do-well and in our family it was my cousin Moochie. Once upon a time, he had been apprenticed to a sign painter but had never subsequently worked a day in his life, so far as anyone knew. I don't think he had addiction problems or anything. He just preferred to lead a life of leisure. This gave him lots of time for sex which was a favourite activity, obviously, because he and the wife had 10 or 12 kids over the years. Moochie was a fun guy, always laughing and joking. He was a bit of a con artist too, with no qualms whatsoever about creative mooching.

When I was a kid, we didn't see Moochie and his family all that often because they lived about an hour away from us. Municipal assistance was not generous enough for the Moochies to be able to afford a vehicle so they were pretty restricted in their movements.

Until that one fateful summer when -- how, God, how? -- Moochie managed to acquire an old beater of a car. A bit of gas mooched from somewhere or another and . . . woo hoo, road trip!!!

Tomorrow: Moochie's Sneak Attack

What's in a Name? Part 3

Another couple of my older female relatives also had somewhat unusual names -- at least, unusual for their time and place. One was named "Beryl" which is a family of crystal gemstones. Beryl comes in several colours like pink, green, yellow and clear. Types of beryl include emerald, aquamarine, heliodor and morganite.

It's a very pretty name if pronounced properly as "BARE-ill." But everyone called her "BURL" which robbed her name of any musicality whatsoever.

Another aunt from my ultra-WASP family was inexplicably given the Spanish name of "Inez." Where her parents out in the middle of nowhere on the Canadian prairies ever learned that name is a complete mystery.

Again, pronounced properly, it is a beautiful and melodious name: "ee-NEZ." But of course everyone anglicized it and reduced it to the considerably less tuneful "EYE-ness." Matching her Spanish given name first with English and then Irish surnames, my auntie was a pioneer of Canadian multiculturalism in action!