Click on the above link for the real story of The Unsinkable Molly Brown.
When we were kids and lived in Virginia Beach, my LB whined and carried on for a pet.
We didn't have pets because :
1. We moved around too much. Other Navy families had pets so we kids pretty much called bullshit on this one early on.
2. Grandpa Engwall raised dogs in a kennel behind the parsonage and I know for a fact that my mother , along with her two younger brothers had to muck out the kennels. If you knew my mother , you knew how well this went over. That being said, you did NOT argue with Grandpa....ever.
Flash forward to Va B Va.
For whatever perverse reason, Daddy decided that gerbils....yes...gerbils would be just the ticket.
This was before the Richard Gere gerbil jokes BTW you pervs.
Anyhoo. a pair came home.
In a gerbil aquarium kinda thingy that sat on the hearth in the family room. Furniture by Ethan Allen, gerbils courtesy of Gerbil Hut.
And of course we had to name the varmints.
One was very skinny...long and lanky. When Daddy would put him on the coffee table that he ( Daddy ..not the gerbil ) had built , the lil bastard would slip and slide like a college kid with a gallon of Wesson oil and a twister mat.
Aha !
Hence the name ..." No Traction Sam"..because surely he was the boy.
The other gerbil, a tad plump compared to NTS must surely then be the girl.
Aha !
The unsinkable Molly Brown Mouse.
Sheer fucking genius in our house.
One year, Nana, my dad's mother came to visit.
While Nana was many, many cool things..think Mame Dennis here....she was absolutely terrified of any sort of rodent.
Micky would have given her a stroke.
So off go poor NTS and Molly in their habitat to the attic...which you could enter from the interior of the family room. As I remember it, it had a fan or some such and wasn't something we'd get turned into the SPCA for.
And of course, LB had a fit.
He had become really attached to them and would sneak up there to visit and play with them.
Oh you know where this is going....don't you ?
Of course they got away from him.....
Absolute mayhem.
Daddy couldn't make a martini for Nana fast enough .
The irony.....No Traction Sam was the lady and Fat Molly was the boy.
Did we change the names around ?
Oh Hell No...cause that's how we operated.
Did they have babies....many, many many of them.
Daddy made quite a bit of loot selling them to the local pet store.
Did my father teach them to eat Rice Krispies from his hand ?
You know he did.
Such are the warm fuzzy memories in our family.
It's an interesting article.
Enjoy.
Ciao,
Aunty Pol
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