I've no more grandparents, but I've some extremely dirty limericks....

My grandmother passed away today (more on this in another post), 12 years and one day following my grandfather. We have spent the day going through her photos, letters and the bits of ephemera that swirl around you after 94 years. It has been, pleasingly, great fun...reveling in her life (and that of my grandfather's) rather than mourning. Best of all, we found some things that she more or less hid to protect us.

For example, my grandfather was born and raised in Belfast, Ireland and had a quick and rollicking wit (among his many talents). Certain people, however, brought out his wicked streak and he their one. One such lifelong miscreant was Tommy Panzera. The two of them fed of each other's antic personalities and the results are the stuff of family myth and legend. We found a letter that Tommy wrote the Granddaddy in 1938. Greenie had hidden it in a dark, back corner as it is full of wildly dirty limericks. Quoting in part [N.B. seriously dirty words, etc. following...you are warned]:

Whereupon I explained that my best pal is a goddam Irishman and therefore there is no foolin' around. He retaliated or reiterated (I forget which) and gave me the following:

There was a young Chinese named Rhoda

Who kept an immoral Pagoda;

Festooned on the walls

Of the halls were the balls

And the tools of the fools who bestrode her.

Meantime his pal was thinking hard and having thunk sprang this one upon us (the dirty slob):

There was a young man of Bombay

Who modeled a cunt out of clay;

But the heat of his prick

Turned the clay into brick

And wore all his foreskin away.

Followed almost immediately by the young man from Thermopylae,

Who found he couldn't pee properly

He said, "Pax vobiscum

Why the hell won't my piss come?

My semen must have a Monopoly."

In my life, I heard my grandmother swear *once* that I can remember (she said, "Damn it" when scolding "the men" at a dinner). She and Granddaddy were so wonderful together. It has been great fun to laugh as much as we have today...