EPISODE 203 ELSIE AND RED SKEOCH…PARENTS
alan skeoch
DEc. 2020
If you are easily offended stop reading now…wait for another episode…avoid this episode
“NOW, Kevin, let me tell you how to smoke a good cigar.
First you nibble the round end…bite off a small chunk and spit it out…anywhere.
Next you remove the label…White Owl Invincible…expensive cigars.
Next you lick the cigar like it is a popsicle…get the taste of the cigar leaves…moisten the cigar.
Next you get a good wood match, strike it on your Jeans and put the flame to the open end.
Next you take a puff..couple of puffs…not so much that you choke.
Next you breathe out the cigar smoke before it gets too deep in your lungs.
Next you now know how to smoke a fine cigar.”
A fine cigar is a showpiece.”
(*Avoid getting judgmental. Both boys do not smoke ,..except for a cigar in memory of Dad on rare occasions…very rare)
And neither do they drink very much. Now men with their own families.)
“Grandpa, why does grandma insist you smoke in the back yard or up at the corner of the street?”
“I do not rightly know Kevin. Women…your Grandmother in particular..are very hard to understand.”
“AND why does grandma put your Limberger Cheese in the clothespin bag and reel it to the back pole?”
“As I said before, women are hard to understand…as you will discover in due time.”
“And why do you call Grandma “Methusalum” ?
“Now that I can answer. Methusalah was the oldest person in the Bible. And “Methooz” is older than me. I like to remind
her of that. Why do you say Methusalum rather than Mefhusalah? “
“Sound better…has a nice ring to it. I have improved the Bible.” The short
form is even better….”Methooz”
“Does she like that name?”
“She has never objected. You want to know something interesting Kevin?”
“Yes.”
“Your Dad and your uncle…Alan and Eric…did not know her real name was Elsie for the longest time.”
Life can be very strange. We thought everyone had a mother snd father
similar to ours when we were small. The older we got the more we
realized the Skeoch – Freeman sets of grandparents were very different.
Both sets marvellous.
But the one thing we never appreciated was the way Mom held everything
together. We took her for granted. Being taken for granted is a rather backhanded
compliment. She seemed to like it that way. No hugging and kissing. Just the
warm feeling that no matter what went wrong in our lives our home was
the safest, most forgiving, place.
Mom, as I have mentioned, was a seamstress. She could make a sewing machine
do wondrous things. Her income came from the sweatshops of Toronto. For Eaton’s
she made dresses as advertised in the Eaton’s catalogue and was told “make the front
look nice…do not worry about the back.”
So mom worked with other women. Lots of them. Eric and I felt we had dozens of mothers
because mom made sure we met all her friends who seemed to love us…like Joyce Bannon
and Annie Smith in the picture with Mom and Dad. Her friends all gave us boxes of chocolates
each Christmas. So we lived in a circle of women. Not men. Dad was the only man.
Which leads me to one of the most endearing stories about him. I may have told this
story before but it is worth hearing again and again.
Mom and dad lived in a rooming house at the time…house full of women machine operators. Dad was
the only man. Which he did not particularly like. “Too many goddamn women.” Goddamn
was one of his favourite words as was ‘son of a bitch’ and ‘bastard”. Manly, right?
Well dad arrived home one night and found Joyce in the apartment with mom…I was
a baby in the crib. Dad did not like this. He had to do something to assert his
manly nature. Ahah! The radio…a big floor model. Dad went over to the radio
and said loudly. “Look at this Mathooz, I can write my name in the dust.”
Then Joyce piped up with one of the best Zingers I have every heard. “Oh, Red,
isn’t it wonderful to have an education?”
We have told that story over and over in our family. So many times that
even Dad gets a grin on his face.
A weird thing happened a few years ago when I was asked to be the
guest speaker at the University of Toronto Women’s club. I thought the women
would enjoy stories about Dad. I was wrong. There was a dead silence
most of the time. A silence that got deeper and deeper with each
story. At the end, my high school French teacher whispered to me.
“You poor boy!”
She missed the point completely. Mom and dad were terrific people who
kept Eric and i feeling lucky to have such interesting parents.
Here is the opening of that speech.
“Ladies, my father, Red Skeoch, loved nicknames. He never called us Alan
or Eric. Most often he referred to us this way. “I have two sons, one is
a gutsy bugger and the other is as stupid Joe’s dog.” This was flattery.
Dad spoke in opposites a lot of the time. He called me a ‘goddamn fool’
most of the time which meant he like me. I knew that. Was I the gutsy
bugger or the son that was stupid as Joe’s dog? My brother when
he became a teen ager called Dad up on that term.
“Dad, that expression ‘stupid as Joe’s dog’ makes no sense. Just how
stupid was Joe’s dog?”
Dad got a gun on his face that was a mile wide. He had been waiting years
for that question.
“Eric, Joe’s dog was so stupid he jumped over nine bitches to screw his own shadow.”
That was the introduction to my speech. No one laughed. And I still had 40 or 60
minutes to speak. So I kept the stories flowing. And the silenced deepened.
Hence the term “You poor boy”.
Marjorie commented that it was unlikely I would be asked back to speak again.
And I have not.
Some of you have heard these stories before. They are worth repeating.
Mom and dad were so goddamn human. Makes me cry.
So many more stories. Outlandish But, oh, so human.
I only ever brought one of my girlfriends home. That was Marjorie. She and dad got along perfectly. His
extremes of behaviour were accepted. Once he knew that there was nothing Marjorie could do wrong.
She had to give up trying to breast feed our boys because dad showed up at our house every day… it seemed.
I think Dad liked Marjorie more than he liked the horses where he blew all his money. And when
Marjorie showed an interest in the racetracks of southern Ontario, dad thought she was a perfect
person.
alan skeoch
Dec 2020
P.S/ “Should I send this or not, Marjorie?”
“The only part I do not like is that definition of Joe’s dog…crude”
“Dad would never have said that in your presence.”
“I guess Joe’s dog cannot be avoided…certainly removes
you from the Speakers Club.”
“I am not sure about that…look at what Trump has said.”
