Life with Fred & Lucy, Part 14: Mama Grizzly

                                             Mom with Me and Jane                            

On episode 12, I covered the topic of discipline in the Maratea homestead. My parents were strict and if they were able to catch us, the spankings were swiftly administered. Although my parents were quite happy handing out corporal punishment to their wild and mischievous offspring, no one else was allowed to place their mitts on us.

There are many memories of my mother coming unannounced to one of my classrooms whenever she felt that the nuns who taught me at St. Monica’s school had overstepped that invisible line drawn in the sand, so to speak. Now you have to remember that my mother was nicknamed “The Kraken” and believe me, you did not want to get her riled up.

99% of the time, if we  kids came home and told our parents that the nuns had hit  us with the ruler, my mother would give us an extra smack just for aggravating the poor nun. But, if my mother suspected that the teacher had over reacted, there she was…at the door.

There was this man, who was fairly new to the neighborhood and who had a reputation of being a drunk and a wife beater; no one liked him. One day, he made the unfortunate mistake of hitting my little brother Michael. The man had apparently been sleeping off his daily drunkenness and my eight year old brother and his friends were playing ball in front of his house. He came storming out of his house and grabbed my brother, lifted him up in the air and smacked him. The other boys stood frozen in fear as my brother ran home, crying.

                                                            

                                Michael, Patty Play Pal, Little Lucy, Mom

My mother was in the kitchen cooking chicken cutlets in the large iron cast skillet when Michael came into the kitchen sobbing. When she heard what had happened, my mother’s eyes crossed, her face got beet red, and I swear I saw steam rising from her head. She dumped the chicken cutlets into the sink and off she marched with that hot iron skillet in her hand. Michael and I followed from a safe distance.

                                                                     

                                                      My brother Michael

When the man opened the door after my mother pounded on it for several minutes, he made the second fatal mistake of the day. He made a rude remark. My mother beat the living shit out of that man. She swung that frying pan back and forth like it was Thor’s hammer.
She left the man unconscious on his door step and walked back home with us tagging behind. Everyone in the neighborhood, adults and children began applauding. No one liked how that man had been treating his wife or children, but everyone was afraid of his temper.                                                  

We never used that skillet again. It was severely dented from where it made contact with the man’s skull., but we did keep it as a trophy. The strangest thing happened after my mother went grizzly on the drunk. He stopped drinking and he stopped beating the wife and kids.                                                                      

I can’t say for sure why that was…but the rumor going around the neighborhood was that whenever that man walked up the street and past our store, my mother would come to the door with that skillet and smile her Kraken smile. She scared him sober.