Stories to be filed under Murphy's Law

If you read last Saturday’s edition of this column, you’ll remember I showed you a "mystery object" owned by Baldur Holm, who needed help identifying it.

Baldur’s query triggered a slew of emails, among them what well-informed Free Press reader Mary Holmen sent in: "Dear Laurie... Your friend’s mystery object is called an oil stock. It holds holy oils that are blessed by a bishop for three different purposes. In each case the initials are for the Latin words for the purpose of each one (sorry, my Latin is a bit rusty so I can’t remember the original names)."

Oh I hear you, Mary: I’m the world’s worst at remembering names and the only Latin I remember is Santana. I love his music.

Baldur is thankful, of course — and thrilled to have the mystery solved. Thanks to all who responded.

Baldur’s issue brings to mind some decades-old "mystery pictures" I was once sent by a chap who had found them in the attic of the house his family had just moved into. The images had a bit of romance to them — a nice-looking couple, apparently in love.

I ran the pictures in the publication I was with at the time to help find the owners and found out it was a guy having an affair with a considerably younger woman, whose wife had never told the "kids" (now all grown up) that long-deceased Daddy had been a cheat.

That didn’t go well. So please don’t send me any old mystery pictures of couples behaving amorously.

While on the subject of things that didn’t go well — and old pics — for some reason this has stirred a memory of an old picture, or an image actually, that I didn’t see in person but that was described to me by my mom back when I was in my early teens.

We were living at 192 Library Place at the time — the street the St. James Library is on — and following a full day of work in the lingerie department at the Bay downtown, Mom had arrived home expecting to find supper nearly ready, prepared by her mother — my dear old wee Scottish grandmother, Mary Lyle, who lived with us at the time. But when she came in the house, there was no supper on and no Grandma anywhere.

That surprised her considerably. She checked around, called out and as a last resort headed down to the basement, where she found Grandma.

Prior to noon sometime, Grandma had gone into the basement and, while there, had attempted to hang a big red devil fishing lure with three barbed hooks onto a spike on a beam. She had stepped up on something to accomplish her mission, slipped a bit and had two of the barbs go into her fingers — which basically hung her from the spike as well — and that’s where she had spent the day.

She was exhausted and hurting, but otherwise fine; the feisty old Scot in her was more ticked off than anything. Both this tale and the prior one are excellent examples of Murphy’s Law: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

The same holds true of my Dad’s experience of reaching into the medicine cabinet one night in our dark pantry, grabbing the brown bottle to take a slug of castor oil and getting the Javex instead. He nearly croaked, but over the phone, the doctor told my mom to "give him milk and raw eggs, Mona, quickly!" She did, and he recovered.

Another beaut’ from the Murphy’s parade: my buddy’s father, one day back in the ’50s, was living on Linwood Street and breaking up their concrete sidewalk, loading it in a wheelbarrow, running it up a plank and dumping it in a long since overgrown double outhouse pit.

It was a hot day. He ran up the plank, dumped the concrete and was surprised as it broke through into decades-old liquid poo, which came straight back out the entry hole, covering him completely. Oh, there were many bad words uttered that day.

In closing today, I leave you with this pic of our Library Place home (still there). Note the screen porch. Why, here in mosquito hell, did we ever stop adding those? I guess if Trump can be elected president, anything is possible. Murphy chuckles.

lmustard1948@gmail.com