1. An Introductory Chat With Dr. Finklemyer

 

"WHAT DO I remember about those early years? Plenty! Too goddamn much if you want to know the honest truth, Doc. Frankly, I'd like to forget the first eighteen years of my life. No kidding. Hey, look, Doc, if you want to get in some lobotomy practice, please feel free to go ahead. Give me a lobotomy. Strip away those first twenty years. Every stinking memory."

"Now, now, son. Don't you think you're being a little excessive?"

"Excessive? Me? Ha! Ha! Ha! That's a good one! That's a laugh! Clearly you've never heard of my family. That's for sure. Because if you did, Doc, why you'd think a frontal lobotamy was playing it on the safe side."

"Now, now."

"What the hell's all this 'now, now' business, Doc? You're starting to get on my nerves with all your 'now, now's'. Look, I'm telling you, my family is really something. I'm not kidding. You've probably never heard anything like them before. Christ knows, no one else has."

"Why don't you tell me something about them, then?"

 

 ‹,II. An Abbreviated History of the Red, Scrygmeour's (up to, ‹,great grendad, the first Mick) but excluding

 

I DON'T know, Doc! I don't even know where to begin. It's all one giant horror story. I'm searching my bean for a safe entry; a soft, pleasant memory so I won't frighten you off. But with my crazy family that's impossible. That's expecting too much.

How's this, Doc? How about if I give you our family history so that you know what kind of people I come from. On second thought, maybe not. Even the family's earliest history is a horror story. Doc, everywhere I turn tragedy, humiliation and catastrophe stares me in the face.

We're Irish, Doc. The Red Mick Scrygmeours come from that pimple of an island in the North Atlantic Sea. And when I say we're Irish, I don't mean some Paddy‑come‑lately Norman‑Irish or even the Celtic‑Irish with their cutsie blonde hair and blue eyes, and their bizarre need to create abstract artwork that leaves you scratching your head, wondering, 'Geez, what crazy thoughts do ya suppose were goin' through that poor geezer's bean when he made that?'

No, sir! We're real Irish. The real McCoy! We belong to the oldest of the aboriginal tribes. So old, in fact, Doc, archeologists didn't even have a name for us until some smart‑assed prof with a keen eye noticed we all had big noses. So he called us The APWBN (Ancient Peoples With Big Noses). Or just The Big Honker Tribe (BHT) if they wanted to be cute. Who says archeologists don't have a sense of humor! They're a riot, Doc. A regular comedy routine.

 
 

How do I know all this, Doc? How do I know how old my family is? Simple! There's this dolmen in Northern Ireland that's been there for 6,000 years and no one's been able to figure out this inscription until Professor J.D. Saligaud bounced up from Trinity College, Dublin. He spent fourty years of his worthless life trying to decipher the inscription: ******************. And then ‑‑‑ bang! He was having a little fanfare with his wife, you know, blowing a few few romantic notes. And he was just laying back to light up a cigarette and then bang! It just came to him like that.

You know what it said, Doc? It said: BEWARE OF THE RED MICK Scrygmeours!

No kidding, Doc! I kid you not. Now, how would you like to find out that even 6,000 years ago people hated your guts, thought you were such incurable troublemakers that they went to the trouble to erect a dolmen warning future generations about us. No wonder my nerves are shot, Doc. What a tremendous weight to bear on these slender shoulders of mine. I've got 6,000 years of catastrophe weighing me down.

No, it doesn't end there, Doc. That's only the beginning of my nightmare, my congenial tragedy. We became Druids, that I know. We danced amongst the oak trees causing the entire country to sink into a kind of sexual promiscuity. We created these bizarre rituals even the Romans wouldn't invade. One Roman General wrote home to Claudius how he had taken Britain but he recommended they avoid Hibernia at all  costs. 'There is,' this general wrote, 'this family there by the name of Scrygmeour. Nothing but trouble. Dearest Caesar, best to avoid the place.'

So, we lived among the oaks until one day, Doc, a scrawny little fart who went by the name of Saint Patrick bounced over from Gaul. In fact, he mentions us in his Confessions Of A Rat Killer. Perhaps you've read it. Perhaps you've heard the story how ol' Saint Paddy led the rats out of Ireland. Don't believe a word of it. Don't believe a word of it. Rats are just a euphemism for us Scrygmeour'. At first he couldn't get enough of us. That's the way it is with us Scrygmeour'. We're an impressive lot at first. We spellbind without theories and plans. Doc, we've got abstract theories coming out our ears. But then we start to wear on your nerves just like we began to wear on Saint Paddy's nerves and soon he couldn't stand the sight of us. He didn't want to baptize us. He rued that day all right.

And how we loved Christianity! We loved Christianity the way a child loves a new toy to pull apart, to see how it's guts operate. Some of my family even took the vows and went off and joined the Skellig Michael monastery in Kerry. They were simple people, doc. Mostly they just sat around in their stone, behive shaped cells mumbling prayers to You‑know‑who. But that was before us Scrygmeour' arrived. We filled their simple little beans with philosophy and Godknows what that a year later the suicide rate increased five hundred percent. Those poor monks were throwing themselves off the cliffs left and right.

And Saint Columba, doc? He was seriously impressed by our eggheads, too. Why he thought we were the right sort to go over to Britain and Christens those wretched Angles and Saxons, those pagon tautens fled in horror at the very sight of us.

And don't get the wrong idea, Doc. We always managed, somehow, to support the wrong cause. No one wanted us on their side. Our support was doom, defeat, confusion ‑‑‑ we corrupted everything. Take the ******* War for example. We were supporters of the O’Neil’s.  and Brian Boru. Perhaps you've heard of Boru, King of Munster, last of the High Kings of Ireland.

Naturally the O’Neil’s lost and Boru went on to claim the throne of Tara, symbolic High King of Ireland.

 [note: yellow pages start here. When you've finished key punching yellow pages, go back and read over white pages. Travels: Open another disk. Back to Dr. Fincklemeyer. Might call it Travels of a Pagon, the first of two sessions.]

 ... Scrygmeour' in here!" He defeated the O’Neil’s and became the sole claimant to the throne of Tara, symbolic High King of Ireland.

We went back to the King of Leinster. Do you think he was happy to see us? Not on your life. He saw us motely Scrygmeour' coming on his side and he knew that was it. Sure enough, the Lienster king and his wretched little Danish and Norse allies were beaten at Clontarf on Dublin Bay.

Suddenly we had a change of heart. We switched sides. Brodar, the Viking, wandered into Brian's tent and killed the bastard. Do you think they blamed the Norsemen, Doc? No sir! They took our little clan down to Armagh, the diocese of St. Patty. "We should hang the swine. What horrible creatures these Scrygmeour' are."

We barely escaped with our lives.

And who do you think the Irish blamed for the Norman invasion of Ireland, Doc? The rest of the world knows the history. [The traitor Dermot, the disposed king of Leinster, turned to Henry for help. Raised an army of Welsh Normans.] It was a papal sell out? Henry II? Richard Fitzgerald de Calre, Earl of Pembroke? Who do you think go blamed? Naturally our side lost. We Scrygmeour' told the blockheaded Irish kings, those dipsomaniacal farts, "Look, your Highness, if ya wanna win then ya gotta modernize, for gawdsakes. You're no match for them."

So who do you think won? Naturally the Normans. They had a field day stringing up Scrygmeour'. A Scrygmeour hung from every tree in Ireland. "Is there no end to these Scrygmeour', for God sakes?"

Then came the time of the great rebellions. The Fitzmaurice's of Munster and the Black Hugh O’Donnell’s and the Fitzgerald’s and Shane O’Neill’s. Naturally we Scrygmeour' chose the wrong side each time. What else is new? We finally figured it out. We got out act together. We joined up with with Red Hugh O’Donnell when the British fleet and forces under Lord Mountjoy at Kincade. We were going to get even alright. We were going to give it to those British, alright! They were going to get theirs. So what does ol' Red Hugh O'Donnel do? The foolhardy fart attacks and is forced to surrender. It figured! All the clans feld. We Scrygmeour' fled with the O'Sullivans. They had their stronghold in Dunboy Castle on Bere peninsula. The British wouldn't let us surrender. One of our side suggested we take our own lives in way of protest. A kind of Masada. "Fellow Irishmen," Hugh O'Sullivan shouted, "Why should we allow the British to take us. Kill ourselves." Very noble, Doc, but pretty stupid. We Scrygmeour' have been eggheads for eight thousand years, but we're not fools. "Sure, sure, Hugh, spendid idea. First rate. Marvelous! You all go first." And the pathetic cretins killed themselves. One thing about the O'Sullivans is that each one of them has the courage of a thousand me, but they've got peas for brains. A pea is too big for them.

So what did we do? We got out of there faster than you can say Irish swine. We beat it out of there. And that was it. The end. Norman‑Celtic Ireland was dead. But don't despair. We have our catastrophes. Our disasters. But we always rise up from the depths. We joined up with the O'Neils. The O'Neils were first class pests. A royal pain in the British buns. They were disposed in Ulster by two hundred thousand Solties.

 
 

One of my relatives was a good friend of Roe O'Neill, newphew of Red Hugh. They returned from Europe to lead a civil war. Oh, they were sure this time. No doubt about it. Thousands of haggis eaters lost their lives. They were having a field day, Doc. They were sure of victory. "Of course we're going to win." Then over sails Cromwell and he wasn't too thrilled about it, Doc. He was hanging O'Neills and O'Burns and O'Dunns. The blood was flowing in the streets. And we Scrygmeour'? We took one look at Cromwell and beat it the hell out of there. They put a special bounty on our heads. The Irish weren't tickled with us.

Then the Penal Laws came into effect. We got in there with Theobald Wolfe Tone. Over in Paris and the French landed on the west coast of Ireland. "Of course we can win."

After the Irish Parliament was dissolved we, for reasons of politics, turned Protestent. Why not? It was easy for us to turn prot. Most of the great minds were goddamn protestant ‑‑‑ Oliver Goldsmith, Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Moore and William Butler Yeats! "Christ, those Scrygmeour' never stop talking. Isn't there anything that'll shut the bastards up?"

We finally get entrenched in the Anglo Acsendancy. We knew that Henry Grattan was nothing but a weak kneed liberal, a whimp of the first order. And ol' Theo Tone, that meglomaniac. "Tone, for goadsakes, give it a rest."

And then who should come along but some trouble maker, Daniel O'Connell. What a little moralist he was. Our family split. Some went off to join St. Patrick's College at Maynooth, staffed by the hard‑line Jansimist from France. Then imancipation for Catholics and repeal of the Act of Union. His heart embalmed and taken off to Rome.

We finally get some land together in Sligo, Doc. [With Catholic emancipation the Catholic Church went on a building spree. "Oh, you Macmanus'. You make money!" Money? What a joke!] We were up to our ears in debt. They didn't want to work. "Oh, fine landlords you Scrygmeour' turned out to be. First you steal our land. Then you tax us and we have no potatoes." [note: do research on the land.]

Doc, a million peasants died, another million and a half fled the country. They use to picked our house. "Lousy prots! Damndable beasts!" We were hardly eating ourselves. No one would talk to us. Our sons leave! Our peoples! Oh you wretched protestants! Oh, you swine. You talk about justice except for us. We die in our grand millions. We will all do penance. We will all go to Croagh Patricia in County Mayo to ask for a miracle. We will walk barefoot over the ragged rocks. Purify us like Patrick of old and fast for fourty days and nights.

Few of us are romantics. Thought it those days. It's said that Hugh Scrygmeour was a first class hedonist. He found himself shipwrecked on the shores of Clare Island. When he woke up there was Grace O'Malley (or Grainne ni Mhaillie, pirate queen of Connaught. This was a woman. She took no guff. Not even from Elizabeth of England. She pirated English shipping. No more Irish than the O'Malley's of County Mayo. A real hellcat. "And who might you be?" "Scrygmeour." "Oh," she said, "come with me." He went into the details, and after dinner. We were pretty Christianized then. She put the old fart through sexual bouts you wouldn't believe, Doc. The woman was a hellcat.

Afterwards they got talking about thing.

"My little Diarmuid." "I beg your pardon." Like all Scrygmeour' he was a little thickheaded. Brilliant, but thickheaded when it came to sex. "You don't believe that nonsense?" "She was taken with him. The old goat wouldn't leave him alone.

The day he landed gathered by grown men in straw hats. It was St. Brigit's Day. When the 'little folk' were on the prowl. the straw boys, the tradition of mummery. In come the boys in shaped hats, others wearing steel like helmets.

  

Even the gypsies, or travellers. What a motely group.

"What? ‑‑‑ an Irishman at sea." "I was experimenting.

 Insert earlier:

All of my family went to Trinity. Right from the very beginning. Joined the ranks of alumni like Synge and Wilde and writer‑philosopher Swift, Goldsmith, and Burke. Irish patriots like Robert Emmet, Henry Gratten, Thomas Davies, Issac Bute and Theobald Wolfe Tone. They were crazy about education.

None was brighter than my great grendad, the thirty‑second Mick. Doc, what a fella. Never a brighter man. Like all Scrygmeour', but not an ounce of common sense.

[note: add this earlier? Finn McCool A.D. 200, he lifted a rock out of Ulster and flung it into the ocean, thereby creating the Isle of Man. The hole that's left is now Lough Neagh.

Also, During a hurling match, Grainne, betrothed to Finn, has an eye for the hurler Diarmuid. It seems that Diamuid has a magic 'love spot' on his forehead. No maiden who ever saw it could resist him. She saw it and went the way of all flesh. Needless to say, it was Diarmuid's last match.]

[note: possible it begins here. Grainne places a curse on the family. They are doomed to be brilliant but always ahead of their times.]

 

‹,III. Grendad, the Magnificent

 

GRENDAD, the thirty‑second Mick, is one of our greatest wonders. A real winner. He was born in Dublin during the depression and went on to Belevedere College. Like all the Scrygmeours he had a first class bean and was a first class nuisance. The Jesuits hated his guts. He was always poking his nose into things. He couldn't leave well enough alone. He was always sticking his nose into things that weren't any of his business.

As a young man he thought he had the calling to be a Jesuit priest. he went off to Trinity College. He drove everyone crazy with his schemes, his endless ideas. He's sit in class and pick apart the poor lecturer’s lessons. Everyone hated his guts. Even James Joyce, who was one of his classmates couldn't stand him. A drunk Fitzgerald managed to get off his knees to ask, "So, wuddit didja really think of that Scrygmeour guy?" Said Joyce, between serious guzzles of Pernod, "Swine! Those Scrygmeour's were well defined pains in the ass."

"But how do you know there are only eight planets?" he asked. "How do you know there's not nine, or ten, or a hundred planets out there?"

"Who said that?" asked the lecturer, fuming. "Who's voice was that?"

"Sir, it's one of the Scrygmeour's, sir," Said that squealing little weasel, James Joyce.

"Well, I should've figured! What nonsense! What trash! What idiacy to think there are more planets. That's so typical of you Scrygmeours. What a brood! God, for your information, made eight planets ‑‑‑ a nice even number."

     The very next day the Times ran a piece on on Clyde W. Tomburgh's [Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona] discovery of the ninth planet, Pluto. It was in all the newspapers except in Ireland. They were furious. "That a Scrygmeour be right! Never!" Even today ‑‑‑ to this very day, Doc ‑‑‑ little Irish brats are taught there are only eight planets. That's just how high feelings ran against my family over there. It just irked them the wrong way. After graduating Trinty, Big Bean senior got the idea he wanted to be a priest. The Jesuit boys were thrilled to death as you can imagine. The admissions staff nearly had a coronary when he applied.

"What a Scrygmeour? Here? With us?" one of them asked>

"What does it mean?"

"The end!" cried another. "Remember, wherever a Scrygmeour goes catastrophe is sure to follow."

They let him in. They had to. But he caused too many problems. He asked too many questions. They sent him out to a remote seminary outside of Bantry Bay. They started with a hundred seminarians. He asked too many questions. That Srygmeour bean of his always clicking away without stop. Religion can't withstand too many questions.

"let's cut the mamy pamby theological nonsense," Grendad said one day. "Let's get down to the quintessential."

"Quintessential?" they asked. "What does he mean?"

"The basics ‑‑‑ the existence of God."

The whole place shook. I swear to God, Doc. The whole seminary shook to it's ancient foundations.

"As I see it," Grendad said, "Christ could've been a miracle or Joseph really did hump Mary or it was a virgin birth."

"What is that boy talking about?"

"God knows."

"Now what I figure it was a virgin birth. If that's the case then Christ was an effeminate male. That is to say, essentially, a girl."

"Essentially a girl! What? What? Who is this guy?" They all cried.

Grendad had to go in the end. He was causing all sorts of problems. They started asking questions. I mean, essential questions and God knows a seminary is the last place where you ask questions. So they bounced him out of there right fast.

Grendad didn't know what to do. He went back to Dublin and wrote a novel. Published by a small firm. They rose in arms at the profanity in it. Along with a big bean comes a big dick. An insatiable sexual appetite. It was in the genes, sort of speak. He met his future wife. The daughter of a rooming house owner, Mr. Bernard O'Hare. They were sleeping together. She thought he was so romantic sitting at his desk in his room with candles writing ferociously. All the Scrygmeour woman are like that. They fall in love with out big beans until they discover out flaws.

No one would publish the wretched thing. It weighed a ton. There wasn't enough paper in the whole of Ireland. Finally found a Jewish printer who had enough in way of balls. The others who read it couldn't understand a word; they caught all the filthy parts.

"Publish this?" they said. "It's ruin me. The paper alone. Why I have little children.

So out came the book. The whole city bought it. No one could understand it except for the filthy parts and dirty words. They were outraged. The whole city was horrified. They couldn't believe one of their own had written such a book. A new committee of the Honourable Society to Promote and Protest Clean Irish Minds got hold of it. They took to the streets and marched all the way over to McAuley Street. Grendad was scared shitless.

"Look at them, Audrey. What little sheep. Why we should get out of here."

He went into one of his tirades which is characteristic of us Scrygmeours. "They don't s=deserve us, my little precious darling."

"Don't darling me."

  Grandma Audrey was scared. The things the crowd shouted at them. It was horrible. They escaped down the backstairs and over the fence that separated Keenan bakery. They snuck around the back and got on the Thorscape moored in the harbour.

"There they go," the mob cried.

They chased them all the way down to the harbour. They got into a leaky rowboat and beat it like all beejeezus out to the Thorscape.

Good Captain Johanson wasn't thrilled. He sailed out of port. Bound for Canada.

"Good riddance," the mob cried unison. "Finally the Scrygmeours are gone. Let them plague some other land. Let Canada have them with our condolences. Send them a wire and tell them to expect a plague."

And so Grendad and Granny headed west to Canada. He stood on deck watching the crowd shrink as the Thorscape sailed.

"They don't deserve us. Why, I'll show them ‑‑‑ those no good Irish peasants. One day I'll strike it and by God they'll be singing a different tune. You mark my words, Audrey. you mark my words."

Audrey bought it hook line and sucker. Look, Doc, she was only a kid. What did she know about balls all.

 ‹,IV. The Scrygmeours Arrive in Canada

GRENDAD HAD wild dreams of success and wanted to show those small, Irish beans a thing or two. Revenge is the strongest of emotions. It dominated him. It consumed him. It was his food those first few years. They arrived in Montreal [note: might make this Toronto. He can't find a job. He's Irish Catholic.] penniless so he took a job working in a factory downtown. [note: Empire Textiles Inc., a division of Crompton Industries, New York.] They made enamel bathtubs and bathroom accessories. They employees were all making fifty cents a day. They were thrilled about it. [note: this was the summer of '38. The depression at it's worst. Montreal was full of sullen faces.] Grendad was appalled.

"How can you live like this?" he asked them. "Where is your self respect? Have you no dignity? You toil and slave for a stinking fifty cents a day? This is slavery while those dogs, those corporate executives live high off the hog while you do all the labor."

He got them all riled up. He told them how they did it back in Europe. He painted a fine picture, slightly elaborated. They elected him their union negotiator. Oh a Scrygmeour is never at his finest until he's elected a chief thos or that. He walks into the office and demands higher wages for the men.

The management wants him out.

"I detest and Irish brogue."

"So ‑‑‑."

The management locks them out, closes down the factory. They're all put out onto the street. Do you think that bothers Grendad? Not on your life. He's rejuvinated by it.

"We've got them where we want them." He tells them during one assembly.

They starve. No one could find work. They took to blaming Grendad, the ungrateful swine.

"He's the one who got us into this mess."

      "Bloody foreigner."

"Never trust and Irishman. He's a plotter for the Anglos. They're the one's behind all this."

"Those stinking butinskies anyway."

"The Scots, too."

"The Welsh are just as bad."

"The whole Cletic race are a bunch of malcontents. Down with the Celts. What a race they are. If they haven't got a mouthful of whiskey it's malevolent."

Duplessi passes a new law. The Celtic exclusion law. Grendad was out of there like a shot. You couldn't see him for nothing. He sank into one of those deep depressions that plague the Celtic mind. He mopped around.

"You've got to eat."

"Eat?" he cried. "How can I eat. Those people."

Empire Textiles let all the employees back in a negotiated deal under the condition that Grendad was excluded. He couldn't go near the place. They were hopping angry, those fellas Duplessi passed the Celtic Exclusion Law, forbidding Celts to ever settle in the province. They all went to B.C. after that heading up the unions, founding the C.C.F.

[note: this scene takes place in Toronto. The Orange Order parades right by their house on Shuter. The white house. They beat it out of town for Catholic Quebec. Safe Quebec.

 

‹,V. Serving God, King and country; in Montreal he joins up; assigned to Intelligence; all of his schemes; he comes up with the mine

 

CATHOLIC MONTREAL was kinder, gentler. Grendad came out of his depression. The war broke out while they were there. He didn't think the Germans would start a war. He was convinced of it. When the war started he joined up. Took and IQ test and they sent him off to intelligence ‑‑‑ they're a bizarre lot. He did a thousand things. Invented a cocking language of Cree, Inuit. No one could understand it. Also came up with chocolate flavored arsenic tabs for soldiers caught. Naturally they were thrilled. There's nothing a soldier wants more is to satisfy his sweet tooth as he's dying. The wingless plane,, ‑‑‑ were all his babies. Big losers. But the biggest one of all came from an eccentric little Brit who came up with the grand idea of turning icebergs into aircraft carriers. Grendad thought it was brilliant. What a lovely little pair they must've made. Born for one another. No one's sure what he did but when an iceburg floated by Montreal, tugged down the St. Lawrence, towards Lake Ontario, it smelled like his work.

Montrealers lined the coastline.

"Look out there."

"Christ, it's an iceburg."

The captains were furious. "Don't you think we have enough troubles with the Germans now you."

"What's your job?"

"I can't discuss it."

   Nothing was harder for him, for any Scrygmeour. They love to talk, can't stop them when they get going. he told her the iceberg was an aircraft carrier, they would shave off the top. Out in Lake Ontario planes landed. The damn thing kept melting. It was only a dozen schemes he came up with. [note: go into his various inventions here.] All of them theoretically possible, brilliant even. But none of them worked. The big beans banned him out to a desk job counting things.

In a mineological survey he hit pay dirt. He goes over some old maps that show desposits of gold near the Chicoulin area. He meticulously copied them out and bought a nice slab of land with his savings. He was sure this was it. The whole office was worried to death about him. He went around laughing manically.

"That Scrygmeour's a strange one."

"No kiddin'."

[note: add this somewhere: He's sent as Canada's ambassador to Eisenhower. They sat around a long, rectangular table of polished mahogany.

"Italy," he says. "Forget the French road business. You've gotta be thinking of the Riskies'. Run right up Italy and cut the Riskies off at their border."

"The Rsokies are our allies. It's deplorable."

"Trust a mick to come up with such a cunning, such Machiveliian deciet," says one British officer.

"Save Poland and could even march into the Ukrain."

"Nonsense."

"Are the Baltic States and the Ukrain any less important?"

"Who is this fellow, anyway?"]

But Grendad was ecstatic over his discovery. He thought he found the way to redeem the Scrygmeour's lost fortunes. Fat chance! It was going to his head. The mine was the final pay off. It's going to make him richer than the Getty's, the Rockerfellers combined. He sat in his room with a map of Ireland. He was plotting his revenge. He was going to buy the island one day and finally show the little micks who was who.

Granny had her doubts. By then she'd come to an understanding about Grendad. She knows all of his tricks, his half-baked schemes, this newest one is a real beaut! A gold mine! A fortune to be had! Yeah, granny was catching on fast. Everything she had heard about the Scrygmeours was true. She was a well-grounded woman. She hadn't bought all that nonsense. Give people a break: what a fool she had been and knew it.

Granny scratches her head and said, "I'm sorry, Eamon, take that one by me again."

He told her once again about the gold deposits.

"What do you know about gold? About mining, Eamon?"

"Enough," he said. "It's a winner. We can't lose on this one."

"I've heard that before."

"Not this time love of my life. It's a sure thing. Gold's up there. I feel it. We Scrygmeors have this instinctive thing."

In the end Granny gave in. She didn't want to go. She had made a nice little home. Why couldn't he be like all the other Canadians she'd mer. They never had ideas, they were so quiet, went about their business, hardly ever opened their mouths. And if they ever came up with brilliant ideas they certainly kept them to themselves. She wanted them.

 

‹,VI. Grendad's grand obsession; he's determined he to offset the disasterous Scrygmeor history; moves up north and begins mining.

 

GRANNY HAD her doubts alright and frankly speaking, Doc, the old goat was thoroughly justified. A year later, and Grenma pregnant with Big Bean Junior or BBJ, they pack up the prewar Ford and drive all the way to Chicoutimi. They don't speak a word of French. Grendad speaks Latin, Italian, Classical Greek, Hindustani, and a dozen other languages but French he can't master. No one knows why. I desperation he closes the book and refuses to speak it. It doesn't exist. [He never forgave the Frenchman for their remarks. That was it! French was out!

They drive to a real estate office. No one in the office speaks English. He was very protective about his secret. "Loose lips sink fortunes to be had." He was very careful.

"This land here?"

"That's right!"

"But it's bush!" she told Grendad. "What do you want it for?"

Grendad was seized with fear. "What do you care? Isn't this a democrarcy? I think so. If I wish to buy a forest then a forest I will buy. Isn't this freedom? Private ownership is one of the foundations of democracy, wouldn't you say?"

The poor sales clerk didn't know what to say. Never before had she heard such a tirade. She was a real live one. Her eyes were popping out of her sockets. She got the papers prepared real fast. There's nothing a Canadian (French or English) hates more in this world than a confrontation. So she had those papers prepared in a flash.

[note: might add this:

"And what are you looking at me like that for? What's the matter with you? Canadians are a funny lot. Weak kneed if you ask me."]

As they were leaving, the real estate agent took Granny by the arm. "You have my sincere condolences, madam."

"Thank you," Granny said. "You have no idea."

The property, this terrific investment, is about thirty kilometers west of Chicoutimi, between St.‑Fulgence and Ste‑Rose‑Du‑Nord. It sticks out in the Saguenay. You could only get to it by a canoe back then. There weren't any roads. They take a canoe.

"There it is."

"There' what?"

"That mountain piercing the heavens, toughing the skies." His gut was doing triple flips; the famous Srcygmeour gut.

This is the Irish bean at it's best. The hyberole, the excessiveness that comes out of an Irish mind is something to behold. The fact is it was a dump, a bald fart of a hill, surrpounded by a forest of trees.

When a Scrygmeour has something rattling in his bean there's no stopping him. He built a lean to then a log cabin. He was in a hurry to get to the mountain and start digging. It looking promising on paper, a triumph of architectural technique. But what a mess it turned out to be! What a catastrophe! None of the logs fit. The windows were lopsided. It stunk during the summer      and you froze your butt off during the winter.

"Don't worry," he tells her, "it's just make do. I'll build you another one. A great mansion of polished marble and Greek pillars."

"I don't want Grecian pillars."

"And Italian marble flooring."

"I don't want Italian marble flooring either."

"Three stories, sour stories that screeches to the heavens." 

      "Eamon," she said. "I don't want any of that ‑‑‑ all I want is a roof."

But Grendad was too busy to build a roof. She did it herself. And not hald bad either. He was too anxious to get back to his mountain, where his destiny awaited him, smiled down at him. Every morning he jumped out of bed, gulped down his breakfast, and he would run the trail he cut up to Mount Eurika, which is what he called the mountain. The day  he found gold he planned to cry Eurika. It was all planned.

Days led into motnhs and months into years. The face of the mountain began to look pot marked. Big Bean Junior was born and still there was nothing. No gold at all.

 

‹,VII. Big Bean Junior is born and the townsfolk become anxious about what Grendad is digging.

 

BIG BEAN Junior, my old man, was born in the fall of '48. Where was Grendad you might ask. Shortly after BBJ was born, Grendad was up on the side of the mountain. Some woman came in from town to help with the delivery. They didn't want to. Oh, the rumours they heard.

He's a Nazi, some thought. He tried to assassinate Churchill. He's an escaped con. A Russian spy

The stories about Grendad were wild. So naturally the good womwn of Ste‑Rose‑du‑Nord were a little worried. They were terrified of Grendad. They delivered the kid. Just like a Scrygmoeur he started whining right off. The woman were taken aback.

"Have you ever seen such a child?"

"Incredible."

Like I said, Doc, we're an extraordinary group. A difficult birth. We all are. It's a premonition of the lives we'll lead ‑‑‑ nothing comes easily to a Scrygmeour.

"What does your husband do?"

"Do?" Grendma bitterly laughed. "Not much."

They got along famously. Grendad came back and walked in and started giving them instructions on how the kid should be born. Technically he was right, theoretically perfect. But practically a jerk.

"Get out of here Monsieur Srcygmeour."

Later the husbands came by to pick   their wives up. They all worked for the lumber mill. Frankly, they all thought Grendad was no good. Besides, he was one of those Anglos and what's an Anglo doing up in these parts if it's not to exploit the poor French who've never been given anything but troubles.

"So, tell me Monsieur," he said, "what do you do up on that mountain you call Mount Eurieka which we call Mount Gorbonne after one of our illustrious founders?"

"And why do you pick holes in the side of the mountain, there?"

Grendad was none one's fool. Well, like most intellectuals he was everyone's fool but no one's particular fool. One slip about the gold he was mining and he would have a stampede. He knew how people behaved. They would be coming out of the woodwork, the swine. So he lied and told them he was an archeologist.

"An archeologist? Him?" they all laughed.

None of them really knew what an archeologist was. Grendad told them he was looking for Jacque Cartier's ancient burial site. He said the first thing that popped into his bean. That he was excavating for the burial site of Brenden the Mariner.

 
 

"Brendon the what?"

"The Mariner."

They all had a good laugh over that. They caught on real fast. It was a load of crock. No one had ever heard of an Irish Mariner, for God‑sakes.

"It's a wonder they got across the Atlantic and the Saugenay with them beigng drunk all the time."

No, the Chicoutimities didn't buy it one bit, not a byte. It only made them more curious. Small towns are like that. They need to know everything's that going on, the nosy snoops. They weren't having any of it. They would come down and pass the mountain.

"Say, Monsieur Scrygmeour, you find any hide or tail of that Brendon character?"

Then they'd all break out laughing, bent over, staggering down the road like they were all drunk.

None of this bothered Grendad. If anything, it made the old goat all the more determined. Every morning during the summer, and once he was burrowed enough in the winter though it was mighty cold even in the belly of a mountain.

"Now my little beauty," he would say each morning, hands on his hips, staring up at his mountain, "what treasures will you reveal today? Ha, ha, ha!"

Look, you begin to talk that way when you've been mining for a few years. It had become an obsession. It possed his bean, his body and his soul. At first it scared the living bejeezus out of Granny. She didn't know what to do. He was so fanatical on the subject.

"Eamon," she would plead, "It's been two years. For Godsakes give it up."

"You don't understand, Dot," he would say to her. "This is my way of redeeming myself, my family. It's there! I tell you it's there."

She suffered the worse. Everytime she went into town she got it from the Chicoutimites.

"That poor lady."

"What a husband he must be. What a thing to go digging on the side of a mountain. And that poor little boy. How he must suffer. And look how's she's dressed."

The women in our family never amounted to much in the way of sewing. this held true for my old lady as well. It has something to do with their eyes. Blind as bats. Which is why they probably marry into the family in the first place.

"Look at those pants! You could make sails with all that material she's wearing."

"And education."

Frankly, Granny had enough of the woods.

"It's not for me Eamon," she pleaded. "Then for little Mick. He's got to have an education."

Grendad agreed.

 

‹,VIII. Big Bean's education; sent to Chicoutimi; then Jseuit College; then finally to McGill; his essay on sadistic God

.

[note: read booklet The French Canadians.]

EVERYDAY GRANNY took Big Bean Junior into Chicoutimi to go to school. She had no alternative. All the other kids use to toment him. He was that Anglo brat with the crazy papa.

Big Bena did all right at school, academically. The teacher's couldn't stand him, though. He was the exact copy of Grendad, without half the tact. He was always poking his big nose into other people's business. He sailed right through elementary scool and Cardinal Begin Highschool. His teacher's were amazed.

"He's got a giant sized eban," they all agreed. "But, Christ, is hard to take."

"No joke!" the other agreed. "He's always poking that nose of his into things it doesn't belong. What a pain he is. What do you suppose he'll do in life?"

"Who knows."

No one could stand him even from the beginning. The principal hated his guts. Big Bean Junior gave him a complex.

"Corporeal punishment doesn't solve a thing. And this dress code, sir, why it'll have to go."

And another time he insulted Maria Chapdelaine. "You call this writing? You think this is hot stuff? I wouldn't wipe my bum with it! It's that bad! Quebec lit in general. Cap Eternite is too much! La Canada Chante, Lamontagne, Englebrut, Gallege and Desibets were morons. Look, the only one worth reading, brilliant, was Emile Nelligan and he went nuts at twenty!

The SQLS (Save Quebec Literary Society) foamed at the mouth. "Our scared Hemon! Oh, this is so typical of those wretched Anglos, the swine!"

I always figured they pushed him ahed in school so they could get rid of him. He got on everyone's nerves. He was always questioning the teachers. One miserable time, Chicoutimites still talk about this is hushed voices, Big Bean Junior wrote an essay titled: Why I Think God Is A Sadist. Well, I can only tell you that went over well. When Father Germaine read that he croaked from cardiac arrest right then and there. The whole region was up in arms, the hypocrites. You've got to remember this was back in the 50's.

The local government held an inquiry, the mayor was there.

"Oh, this is typical of those Irish Srcygmeours. What a group they are. They come here to live and what do they do? ‑‑‑ they stab us in the back. First he insults our writers then our painetrs and now he insults out God. Is there no stopping these Anglos? God, please tell us what we must do?"

"Little boy," the good priest said. "What do you mean when you say that God is a sadist?"

"What kind of person, self-respecting person believes in that mumbo jumbo, anyway, for Godsakes? Look your worship, your high and mighty, or whatever it is you call yourself; if you think there is a God where is he? He stands by."

Well after all this was said and done there wasn't a sound, not a thing. They were all outraged. This little snot of a kid. They couldn't believe it. There had to be something.

"Remember Revelations," cried one hysterical woman.

And they did. They were convinced he was the son of Lucifer, no less. I only wish. There would've been a few monetary benefits in that sense.

Big Bean Junior ran back home. They were chasing him.

He goes to McGill.

"You're your father's son for sure, Mick. Why do you do this, Mick?"

"What stupid asses they are."

"What kind of family is this for God sakes."

[note: writes a book on Gross Ile, where 6 to 15 thousand Irish died, cholera and thyphoid; Dr. Douglas?; crowded on ships; great Celtic Cross.

"Why stir things up."

 
 

"What a wretched trouble maker he is."

 

‹,IX. Life at McGill; the first few years; and a short story.

 

 [note: might insert Broughner here. Written by his roommate in frustration.]

BIG BEANS life at McGill wasn't much different. He quickly established himself as 'that know‑it‑all pest.' This was only after a few months at McGill. His roommate at the time was Bosh Lavelle, the Senator's son. A nice guy from what I understand.

 

‹,An Absolute Aquital, Absolutely‹, a short story‹, by‹, Bosh Lavelle

 

AND SO the accused, one Charles Edward Myers, mounted the witness stand, and, in his own defense, said, "Look, your honour, I'm not going to decieve you. I'm not going to lie. The police report was absolutely correct. Perfectly thorough. Not a single flaw. It's absolutely true I knocked off that Scrygmeour character. It's true I strangled that little rodent until those funny weasel eyes of his popped out.

I guess it sounds like a pretty reprehensible thing to do, your Honour. But I want you to know it's not typical of me. I don't usually go around knocking people off. In fact I'm not violent at all. I'm lacking in aggressiveness, in fact. You heard my basketballs coach's testimony. He has a helluva time getting me motivated. Once I knocked over a player by accident and felt so guilty I let him score just to make it up to him. Your Honour, I was a Boy Scout. I was an alter boy too and never touched the wine. Well, once I touched the wine but I quickly confessed it, your Honour. When my hamster, Maury, died, I gave him a funeral. I sang the National anthem at every baseball game. Every mother's day I send flowers home to my mom. I never had to be asked to mow the lawn. I'm putting myself through college, your Honour ‑‑‑ not a stinking cent from my old man who could easily put me and half of McGill through college. I vote regularly. I'm a straight a student. Your Honour, I don't mean to puff myself up, but is this the psychological portrait of a murderer?

No, I'll tell you what it was, your Honour. It was Broughner. Oh, your Honour, you would've had to know that little rodent to trult understand what I mean. Just two minutes, three minutes tops with the little creep and you would understand all you needed to know.

‹,or

"OK! ALRIGHT! ‑‑‑ so I knocked the guy off. So what! You don't think he didn't deserve it? Look, your Honour, I've never met anybody who deserved it more than Scrygmeour. And it's not just me saying that. Geez, I could give ya a list of a hundred, two hundred guys who wanted to do what I did. No kidding, your Honour. I got hundreds of telegrams from all over the country thanking me. Even one from his goddamn ‑‑‑ sorry about the 'goddamn' business your Honour ‑‑‑ anyway, I got one telegram from his goddamn ‑‑‑ sorry again ‑‑‑ kindergarten techer which said, and I quote, "Thank God someone finally did it. That boy was a plague!"

 

And that was his kindergarten teacher! There were hundreds of others. They even took up a defense fund on my behalf. Money came in from every province. Even from the Northwest Territories. Some half-witted Inuit sent me ten bucks and said ‑‑‑

I know it's damn ‑‑‑ sorry ‑‑‑ hard to understand, but you see you had to know him, sir. You wouldn't've had to know him long. Two minutes with Scrygmeour was all you need and I swear to God even you, your Honour, you would've found your hands and dreaming various ways of doing the wretched weasel in. He affected everyone the same way.

I should've trusted my first impression ‑‑‑ I only have myself to blame. I knew right off that wretched weasel, that plague, was nothing but trouble. The moment I walked into my dorm room there he was sitting behind his desk and I said to myself, I said, 'Geez, the computers gone and made a mistake here. It's out of whack if it matched me up with this wonder, this red‑headed catastrophe. Get out of here,' I said. 'Kid, get outta here while you still can.'

But do you think I followed my own goddamn ‑‑‑ sorry ‑‑‑ advice? No, sir! Not me. My parents are liberals, you see.  Real flaky liberals if you know what I mean. I mean, they drive a BMW and read Psychology Today and when they watched some wretched PBS documentary about impoverished Newfoundland fishermen beating cute seals over the heads they broke out into tears and wrote about a hundred thousand letters to editors, politicians, God knows who else.

Part of the blame lies on their liberal heads, your Honour. They raised me to be considerate, kind ‑‑‑ give people a break. Well, I was gullible enough to believe that. A rea first class whimp. When in Grade Two Bobby Morganson went around kicking all the other kids in Grade two in the shins? ‑‑‑ they said I should feel sorry for him. Can you believe that? My gawddamn ‑‑‑ sorry ‑‑‑ knees were black and blue and I'll probably develop cancer or something, but by God I was suppose to be considerate and understanding towards them.

That's the kind of people they were, your Honour. And that's how they raised me. So I thought I'd give this Scrygmeour character a chance. Maybe he'd work out. What an idiot I was. I'm telling you, I was a first class wimp, right off the boat.

It turned bad right from the beginning. He was a psychology student ‑‑‑ one of a hundred and fourty‑two degrees he earned. His old man was some big shot professor up at Yale or Harvard. Maybe you've heard of him. He's the one that spent fourty years of his wretched life observing pigeons and came to the conclusion that people were a lot like pigeons. Like pigeons, if you can believe! And this is what you and I pay taxes for. your Honour ‑‑‑ some wretched old goat staring at pigeons all day.

Like father like son, your Honour, like father like son. This Scrygmeour was a fruit cake. He punctuated his sentences with coo coo's! Yeah, no kidding! He was always coo cooing this or coo cooing that and then he'd flap those funny little arms of his like he was a gawddamn bird, for chrissakes ‑‑‑ sorry, your Honour.

But I could've taken that, your Honour. I could've taken all the coo cooing and the arm flapping. What the hell, we all have our little faults. No, your Honour, it wasn't that. It was all his dreadful analyzing. And it's that he was particularly good at it, your Honour. It wasn't as if he was brilliant like his old man was supposedly brilliant. He was an incompetent, a numbskull ‑‑‑ the things he said.

  To give you an example, your Honour, I'd get up in the morning and scratch my bum. Who doesn't. Maybe your Honour does, too. Ya get up, ya yawn, ya sniff a few good times, then as you head off for the shower ya scratch your bum. It's normal. But not to that Scrygmeour character. Northing is normal. To him, this cretin, this skinny little wretch, it was anal eroticism. Yeah, no kidding ‑‑‑ some blasted thing called anal eroticism. So I asked the little flea, this annoying wretch, exactly what anal eroticism is and I swear to God, your Honour, when he told me I nearly decked him but good. I nearly sent this pinhead flying to the far reaches of the galaxy.

But ok. Alright. Even that's not enough. What really got to eme was when we'd go over to the pub for a few brewskies. Well, he's tag along and sit at our table. Oh, no, your Honour, he never drank. Liqour never touched those thin little lips of his. No, sir. Nor Scrygmeour. He'd sit there while we were all going on and tell us how many billion brain cells one bottle of beer kills. God help you if you smoked. He had you down as a hopeless neurotic.

And he always brought his notepad with him. This note pad really irritated everyone. He'd sit there in the pub and make notes on how much you drank, how many cigarettes you smoked. Every detail of your miserable life was recorded in that notebook of his. If I farted at night, how many girls I slept with, their names, their measurements, how many beers I drank. Your Honour, if you so much as hiccupped it was in that odious notebook of his.

Nothing was private with that guy around. Nothing was sacrosanct. I remember one morning I was sitting on the crapper. You know how it is when you're sitting on the crapper. You haven't got a blasted thing to do. So I reached over for a plastic razor. It's dumb I know. But sitting there I pretended the razor was an airplane. When who should poke his head through the door and see me sitting there? Scrygmeour. That got me another entry in his notebook. I read it in his gawddamn ‑‑‑ sorry ‑‑‑ book.

I'm telling you this guy had his big nose into everything. You'd invite your girlfriend over for the nights aand you'd be ‑‑‑‑ well, you know very well what we'd be doing ‑‑‑ and who should walk in. Why Scrygmeour of course. No apologies or anything. He wouldn't say, 'Geez, I'm sorry there Myers.' Not this Butinsky. He'd sit on the end of the bed and take notes. You Honour, do you have any idea what this does to your sex life? I was going impotent, you Honour. Impotent!

Your Honour, that isn't even the half of it. Not even a third. One morning, your Honour, I woke up suddenly and there was Scrygmeour's ugly looking puss doing something with my eyelids. 'Scrygmeour,' I says. 'What are ya doin with my damn eyelids?' 'Counting youyr REM's,' he tells me. COUNTING MY REMS! I told the fruit cake that he was a good half dozen bricks off the load. I don't even know what REMs are. I don't really care. I was a computer science major, your Honour. We don't need to know much about REMs. But what I do know is that these REM things are mine and if he ever tried to count them again he'd be counting these REM things in another world. If you get my drift.

Do you think any of that entered his thick skull? No, sir! Not Scrygmeour. Nothing affected the little creep. He hauled out that infamous notebook of his and wrote how violent I was. Can you imagine! Violent! Your Honour, I could've killed him. In fact, Your Honour, as I look back now that’s when I started thinking of doing him in. I'd sit in class and doddle a hangman's noose. Mostly, your Honour, I drew his neck and could just imagine my hands around him, squeezing the life out of him.

One thing I should point out, your Honour, is that I wasn't the only one who thought this way. By the end of the first term the whole campus hated his guts. They were terrified of him. Frightened to death. He's sit in the cafeteria, Your Honour, and make notes on their eating habits. You never knew when or where he'd strike. Ted Horton had him in his psyc 100 course and one day he sort of feels someone looking over his shoulder. Guess who? Your Honour, Scrygmeour of course. Who else! What do you think he was doing? Why ol' Scrygmeour was anylizing Horton's writing style. According to the genius, that rectum faced weasel, you could judge someone's personality by the writing style. Incredible!

      He made the fatal mistake. He underestimated the old man. He took a calculator to poker games and worked out the odds. He lectured other students about the evils of booze and the nasty effects of intoxication. Yeah, real popular. His first line of study, one of a hundred and fourty‑two degrees, was psychology. He polished that one off in a joffy. He's into them all.

[note: need some scenes here.]

He joined the perfect revolutionary group called the Underground Socialists. They were communists. The whole of North America was on the outs with socialists and communists, so, naturally, that suited the old man. 

Holding a meeting of corporate sponsors to add a new building. He burst into the room and expounded on his ideas.

"You capitalists. You destroy the whole country. What we want is equality."

Well, the university president was beside himself. usually a soft spoken, gentle man who would harm a fly. That was before he met Big Bean. Big Bean is living testimony for abortion let me tell you, and I'm his son.

Well, the president figured he had Big Bean's number all right.

"You young fellas, you, you want to tear things down but what would you replace it with? Tell me that? Huh?"

That was one serious mistake alright. Your average second year undergraduate might be reduced to a shivering mass of jelly, but not Big Bean. No sir!

"Well for starters we'd do away with order and this establishment."

[note: go into this.]

He went on for hours. I won't bore you. Take it from me, honestly, when Big Bean gets his mouth in proper gear it'd take a miracle to shut it again. No kidding.

President didn't know what to do. He sat there amazed. His jaw open. Who in the world can talk nonstop for four straight hours without showing signs of being tired?

 

‹,X. OB goes home; Grendad finally                      

discovers gold and Granny passes away.

 

BIG BEAN went home that summer feeling very proud of himself. He takes the train up to Chicoutimi and hitch hikes down to the log cabin. He found poor Granny in bed. Her face was white. She looked terrible.

"What's wrong?"

"Tired."

Big Bean wouldn't accept it. The whole place was in ruins. Grafitti on the walls.

"Who's there?"

"It's Mick."

They let him in reluctantly then quickly close the door, Granny bolting the door from the inside. The place looked like a garbage dump. He caught a good look of Granny once he was inside. She looked like death was going to call any second. No joke. This was in sweet Gab's sweet embrace.

"What happened. Where's Da?"

"Your father?" she said, crying, beyond the point of despair. "He's in hiding."

"Hiding?"

     "Oh, you don't know the worst of it." The poor ol' gal sat down in the nearest chair, great tears the size of mellons sreaming down her white face. "Thousands of them came up from the town."

"Why?"

"Gold," she cried. "He found gold. Who would've expected it. I never could've imagined. I would've written out there was so much going on there. The whole world's collapsing."

She goes on to explain that the old goat finally found gold ‑‑‑ the largest nugget the world's ever seen. Granny was overwhelmed. She let out a howl. She did a little dance for joy. And why not for godsakes the poor woman had only seen disasters all her life ever since she was married to Grendad.

"But you know," she said, her sad eyes gone all squinty, "my stomach started up. I could smell trouble. We were too lucky."

The old gal had a gut like mine. It turns at the slightest sign of trouble. Unlucky people like us know all about guts that do loops. It's too good. It sets the juices in the guts going.

"So I found your father, 'Mick,' I said to him, 'You hide that. Put it away. Well naturally the news broke. He got to drinking in town one evening. Oh drinking! Blast Seagrams ‑‑‑ the Irisman's curse. So he tells the whole story.

The whole town came alive. They all rushed out to Mount Eurieka with pikes and shovels. It was raining pisspots but that didn't stop them. Greed like that in most people. They smell a little gold and by God they're off ina shot, the swine."

Grendad was sleeping it off in the cabin when he heard them all clammering up the mountian. He bolts up out of bed and runs outside.

"There were hundreds of them," the old gal said. "Your Da the best he could. He was jumping up and down. 'You get off my mountain, you no good swine,' he shouted at them. But it was no use. They were walking out of there with nuggets the size of rugby balls in their hands. Running away, or running the best they could carrying all that weight.

"And they took it all?" the Big Bean asked.

"To the last ounce," she said then broke out weeping.

You would think that would be the end of the tragedy. Not on your life. The government was the next looter. Poor Granny couldn't talk about the experience without shaking ‑‑‑ rage and fear.

"They pulled up out there, Mick," she pointed to the road Gramps had built. "A half dozen vans from the Federal Revenue Department and the Quebec Regional Office of Mines and Mines Claims. He was a no nonsense type. Big as a horse. They heard we struck it rich. You know the type. Can't stand to see honest hard working people make a few bucks."

They wanted they taxes, the swine. They'd heard about the big rush. The thought Gramps was hording the lot. They have pretty low opinions of people. These Revenue boys are the no nonsense hard hitting types. Everything you say is a lie. The whole world are cheaters. Grendad, according to Granny, told them he was wiped out.

"They came and stole it."

"Ha, ha, ha ‑‑‑ likely story. How many times have we heard that."

"Dozens."

"There ya go ‑‑‑ dozens of times." He adjusted his pants. "What do you take us for, fools? You think we were born yesterday? You think we're blind? Oh, the stories we have to put up with. You're Anglos aren't you?"    

      "Irish."

"Oh, that figures! That's it there. All you foreigners come here and rape the land to get rich fast. Well, we know your number. We've got you. Search the place."

Granny let out a howl, she told eme. They searched everywhere. They tore down the cabin, log by log. It was a mess. They brought in a bulldozer but still they found cnothing. The two of them sat there watching the catastrophe.

"But how will we live when the winter comes?"

[note: remember that Granny is telling this story from her sick bed.]

"You should've thought of that before shouldn't've you? Hey, hey ‑‑‑ what people you foreingers are! The cunning, the deciet you bring to out beautiful country. You give us a bad name with oyur ambitiousness, your cunning!"

"Oh some of the things they called us, Mick ‑‑‑ it was horrible! But that's not the half of it. They found the nugget, the original one your poor Da had hidden."

Oh, then the fat hit the fire for sure, she said. One of them came running out with the nugget and showed it to a senior inspector, still pulling up his pants.

"It figures!" He said and pointed to his honker. "It's this nose here! It's never wrong. I can sniff out abuse fifty miles away. You reprehensible little foreigners! Hiding things from the government! As if the Frencg aren't bad enough. Ho, ho, ho, you wretched Irish take the take. Shit, you're not even satisfied with the cake. What a race! What a people! You Irish are Jews gone sour. You take all the good jobs, always conniving to get ahead. Never satisfied! You're nothing but alcoholic Jews. Hey, I've got it worked out. You're the lost tribe waundered into England. Ho, ho, ho ‑‑‑ I've got your number and that's for sure. I'm onto your dirty little schemes. The lot of you. I've got my ideas. I've got your number."

Ferret Face and his buddies take off with the nuuget. Wonder of wonders, it works out to be exactly the amount of the back taxes. Not a red cent over. Sixteen years working the side of a mountain and all Grendad and Granny had to show for it was a mountain with holes.

1. Granny Goes To Her Final Reward

 

THAT WAS it for poor Granny …

 

 

 

______________

ALL IMAGES FROM GOOGLE IMAGES, LINKS, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, UNSPLASH, FLICKR COMMONS,

ATLANTIC MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER,THE NEW YORK TIMES, PRINT PERFECT CLIP ART DELUXE (PPCAD - RF),

US NATIONAL ARCHIVE, THE MEDIUM (MEDIUM II), UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO MISSISSAUGA ARCHIVE, TENOR, PUBLIC DOMAIN, GIPHY, INTERNET ARCHIVE, ECSU (ERINDALE COLLEGE STUDENT UNION), WORDPRESS, BLUEHOST, GOVERNMENT ARCHIVES, OLD BOOK ILLUSTRATION, AMERICAN MILITARY ARCHIVE, FREE STOCK PHOTOS, CANADIAN LEGION MAGAZINE, SMITHSONIAN, LEGAL AGREEMENTS,  PERSONAL OWNERSHIP, ONE.COM & TROY FAMILY FOUNDATION

______________

All Rights Reserved - See Legal Note