I spend time in Texas, but I haven’t started firing six-shooters if cut off in traffic. I dislike guns: they kill people and animals. They sometimes are discharged in passion or error (e.g., Cheney mistakes a colleague for a mallard).
The “Sights You See…” was a phrase used by my maternal grandmother, Helen McCabe Murphy. She used it when someone offended her sensibilities.
Boston Public Gardens, circa 1967: Nana sees young people bathing loudly and gleefully in a fountain. Nana’s chagrin was palpable. She hiked her “pockabook” up her arm and hastened my gait toward the fountain and the “hippies”. She emitted a “Tsk, tsk”, shaking her head slowly from side to side. Loud enough to be heard over someone screaming “BLITZ!!!” (-- hard core “Bingo” played in smoke-filled basements of Catholic halls in Dorchester, MA).
Once noticed, Nana looked at me, looked at the fountain bathers, and back at me, bellowing: “THE SIGHTS YOU SEE WHEN YOU HAVEN'T GOT A GUN!!!” The “gun” reference went over big with the bathing crowd who’d placed their anti-war signs by piles of their discarded clothing… I was eight and mortified. I know we survived because I came to in Bailey’s, eating ice cream slathered with hot fudge and marshmallow. It revived me. Good thing, because I was too young to knock back a vodka.
I was (and still am) amazed the “hippies” hadn’t pulled us in and held our heads under water. In gratitude, I became sympathetically anti-war, figuring if the peace children had stared down the barrel of Nana’s verbal gun without retaliation, they must be on to something.
She wasn’t pro-war but was intensely loyal to family. And part of her family -- her nephews -- served in Vietnam. She supported them in their service, but “wore her fingers out” praying the rosary for their safe return. Her directed outrage was with perceived disrespectful conduct. Bathing naked in a fountain in the Public Gardens didn’t fly with her. Or, as they say in Texas: “That dog don’t hunt…”
Nana used “The sights…” phrase with some regularity in public. It’s a miracle that she was never assaulted. Definite proof of a Higher Power’s intervention. Made me believe.
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3 comments:
~~~An absolute hoot as Curl strikes again with her amazing details. I know that when my mother, Lil, or my aunt, Dot, would use "the sights..." adage it was done with that keen observation and quick wit both were known for. The Bailey's reference puts this over the top for me bringing back with it the taste of that famous hot fudge!
Wasn't that hot fudge the best?!"None better, damn few as good!"
This takes me back in so MANY ways! My family's version was "...when you're out without your gun," delivered in the ever-popular Irish whisper, i.e., mortifyingly audible. And MY Nana was horrified because I marched with the Quakers on the Common even as my husband was serving in Vietnam. And Bailey's was, is, and ever shall be the gold standard for hot fudge Sundaes. Right on, Carla!
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