EPISODE 203 ELSIE AND RED SKEOCH ,,, SO VERY HUMAN

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.”

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