Crazy family stories - past and present

[Peppergirl]

Just got an idea for this thread. I'm mainly thinking of funny stories about crazy stuff your family has done, like stories told through the generations.

They don't necessarily have to be happy or uplifting or fun, just nothing awful enough that would cause Fratching topics to ensue.

I'll start:

I actually remember fragments this story. It was the mid 1970s and I was probably 6 or 7 years old at the time. I remember the phone ringing in the middle of the night (never a good thing) and I recall my dad stomping out of his bedroom and cussing, waking everyone up. Seems that his younger brother had gotten himself arrested (again) and he needed to be bailed out. The charge? He got intoxicated and jumped the wall at Riverfront Stadium and ran out on to the baseball field where the Reds and Pete Rose were mid-game. He apparently got very excited when Pete broke one of his records and wanted to shake his hand. He was promptly arrested.

Fun side note: There is actually a sports memorabilia book that has a pic of Pete Rose standing in the dugout looking VERY confused, shaking the hand of my unkempt, drunken uncle. The caption reads, "Overzealous fan jumps the wall and runs past security in order to congratulate Pete on breaking (such-and-such) record."


There are many, MANY stories similar to this involving my uncle that I need to think about and ask my dad for clarification on. I'll probably have more later.

Anyone else?

[MoonCat]

Only thing I can think of is this:

Background: My dad had a glass eye. He lost one due to cancer back in the 70's. Hell, he lost more than one glass one, too...accidentally flushed it! And these things were not cheap. But very realistic looking. When he had it in, you couldn't tell it was fake unless you knew about it.

So sometimes at work, he would take the glass eyeball out, hide it in his hand and say to one of the guys he worked with, "hey, you wanna see something?"

Which usually got him one of these:

[Mishi]

One of my great-uncles was a night watchman in one of the large ports. He used to spend a lot of time walking through the warehouses, making sure that everything was secure and where it should be. Now, at this time, carpet pythons were prized as vermin-catchers and the warehouses had quite a few of them. My great-uncle would walking along and they'd gently drop from the rafters onto his shoulders for a pat. He'd keep walking, pat them for a bit and then put them in a new spot.

So one night, my great-uncle was slightly late doing his rounds. He was walking towards one of the warehouses, when a bloke (wannabe thief) ran out, screaming and swearing about the snakes 'jumping' onto him!

[RecoveringKinkoid]

My cousin stuffed a mug full of scalding hot coffee into his man bits and then hit the Jersey Turnpike.

Hilarity ensued. He became known as the "The idiot with the burns on his dick" by the late night ER crew.

My dad, when he was a young guy in New Jersey, liked to fish. When he caught eels, he gave them to his cousin. He'd let himself into the guy's house (he was at work during the day) coil them up and put them in pots in the guy's fridge. Guy would come home in the evening and he had the habit of taking off all his clothes when he got home (bachelor and, evidently, nudist) and opening up the fridge. One eel got out and wedged himself upright against the door seal. Naked dude opens the fridge door.

Good times.

Okay, at this point, you have to click here to start up some music for the next bit of this.

Had another cousin end up in the Darwin awards for jumping into the killer whale tank at Seaworld. And yes, if you're wondering, I'm pretty sure drugs were involved.

Yet another cousin got is head stuck in some kind of coal hopper at a power plant. He shows up, I'm like "what the hell happened to your head?" because he had all these black scrapes all over his head. He was okay.

One of my uncles was in a minor car wreck when his dog drove the car down the driveway and hit a tree. If my uncle had left the dog alone and let him drive, that probably would not have happened.

Couple weeks ago me and my dad caught two of my cousins trying to hotwire...

wait for it....

a backhoe. Belonging to another of my cousins. No, the cousin who owned the backhoe was not amused when he found out.

I had an aunt that did a little jailtime for stealing money out of laundromats. I don't know the details. I should probably find out more, that makes a good story I bet.

Some of my uncles used to make moonshine. In fact, that particular pack of uncles were known to be real rounders.

My grandfather smuggled whiskey in cider vinegar jugs. My grandmother got hold of one and made salad with it. My grandfather said it was the best salad he'd eaten.

[MnR]

I do have a few of these... all before my time though.

Back in the days of prohibition, my great grandmother used to make whiskey and sell it to the borders that lived in her house. She would hide the jug under her long skirt while she was sitting at the table playing cards with the fellas. One night, the police raided her house and they arrested my great-grandfather for bootlegging. He had nothing to do with it! My great grandma had to go bail him out of jail. My great-grams was a cardshark and a bootlegger!

In the 60's, shortly after my parents were married, they, and two of my aunts were out crusing around Lake Erie. They were having a few laughs, drinking a few *read a lot* of drinks. Well, a summer storm blew up over the lake and began to toss the boat around a bit, and they wound up smacking into a breaker wall. My godmother/aunt was three sheets to the wind and crawled up onto the breaker wall and began waving a tiny white hankerchief and calling out for the coast guard while my dad used the CB and acutally REACHED the coast guard.

Onto the 70's. My rents, and another couple were vacationing in Chicago and decided to go out for a few drinks. They wound up at a club and ordered a round, and sat down to drink. Then my mom noticed something strange, they were the only hetrosexual couples in the club! She pointed this out to the rest of the group, and after finishing up their drink they decided to find another club. My dad, who apparently had a funny bone at one point, grabbed his buddy and they danced their way out of the club, while my mom and the other woman just faceplamed after them.

Now the 80's. My paternal grandparents had a summer trailer on Lake Erie that the family went to a lot during the summer. One of the grounchy people who lived there complained that somebody, meaning a person, had shit in their yard. He suspected my father and his buddies. Now, my father refuses to tell me who acutally did shit in the guys yard, but he said later that night, after a few drinks, he jumped in his golf cart with a few of his buddies, and drove down the streets in the little community with flashlights and a roll of toilet paper streaming behind them, looking for the "Phantom Shitter"

And one kinda creepy story. Back in the 60's, my Uncle Mike died. He was drunkely walking home from the bar and was hit by a train. At the funeral, his brother said he was going to die the same way. Everyone just shook their heads and brushed it off. Well 18 months later, he was riding a train and he fell off it, and died. I don't know how he fell off, but I suspect liquor was involved.

[AriGriffin]

My Mom’s Dad, Elmer, was born in the summer of 1930 near the town of Comanche, Oklahoma. He was born in a tent. His birth certificate read ‘Baby (Last name)’ until he changed it as an adult. He lived in Oklahoma for around seventeen years before he lied about his age and joined the Army. Grandpa’s family were share-croppers and at one point his father owned a grocery store. Growing up, there was only one bicycle and the kids were not allowed to ride it because it was their dad’s way to work. At meal times, the men would eat first, then the kids, and finally the women. One time, one of the boys (I can’t remember if it was Grandpa’s brother or a cousin), decided he wanted to eat with the men, and situated himself at the table. Great-Grandma tied his butt to the post on the front porch and he stayed there until everyone else had eaten dinner. Grandpa didn’t have a bed to sleep in. He slept wherever he could and most of the time that was on the floor or out on the porch. For Christmas one year, all Elmer received was a single tennis ball that he had to share with his siblings. Elmer did odd jobs to raise money to help his parents out- one of his earliest jobs was a pearl diver. That’s a dish washer if you didn’t know. He also ran errands; sold newspapers, scrap metal, and other junk; and even bought a malnourished horse, fattened it up, trained it, and then sold it. Elmer told me about asking his father for money to go to the movies- ten cents a ticket- and his father yelling at him about how it was too expensive. Elmer and one of his younger brothers, Shelby, would go to the movies whenever they had enough money.

Last time I talked to him, he told me about the time his family and the neighbors got together to hunt rabbits. It was during the summer and the rabbits were eating the crops. Everyone got in a line and started shooting. Grandpa said they didn’t eat the rabbits due to ‘wolves’- some kind of parasite or worm (as he said, don’t eat a wild rabbit until after the first snowfall or there is a “R” in the month). They left the dead for the vultures and any young found were kept in a hutch and fed vegetable scraps until winter.

After joining the Army, Elmer worked in the mess hall and worked his way up until he was in charge of one. One time, they got in a shipment of spoiled meat. Elmer refused to accept it, but another person in charge of a different mess hall did and the people that ate there got sick. The only times I can remember Grandpa cooking while I was a kid was for special occasions involving a grill. At one time, Elmer worked with nuclear weaponry. During his time in the Army, Elmer was stationed in South East Asia; Soest, Germany; Fort Hood, Texas; Baltimore, Maryland; and Fayetteville, NC. After retiring from the Army, Elmer worked odd jobs again- from being an electrician to selling recreational vehicles. One job didn’t work out because his boss insisted that Elmer charge women for unneeded work or products and he refused to do it.

My grandma’s mother forced her to marry Elmer, saying that he and Grandma had slept together (Grandma insisted it wasn’t true and that she and Elmer had never been alone- her brothers and sisters had always been with them and that she thought Elmer was interested in one of her older sisters). They had four children- Chris, Christine, Mom, and Deborah. Mom and Deborah are eight years apart and they were expecting Deborah to be a boy. Grandma passed away in October of 1997 and Elmer remarried a year later.

Elmer still keeps busy, helping out his step-son selling old cars, renting out houses, and helping his second wife at her alteration shop. He is very active for an eighty-year-old. His second wife is even older than he is and she is as active as she can be.

[Mishi]

All of my grandpa's family was in the armed forces during WWII, he was the youngest of 5 boys. The first three got in easily, the fourth was in a reserved occupation but still wiggled into the airforce after convincing his uncle to get him in. My grandpa tried to talk his uncle 'round, but failed. He finally got into a volunteer unit and spent 3 days in training before the paperwork caught up with him and he was sent home.

One of my grandpa's cousins was in a bomber that managed to land on-deck after having a (friendly) bomb dropped through the wing, luckily with no casualties.

Grandpa was a typesetter and had a habit of juggling hot lead from hand to hand, shaping it as it cooled. One of the apprentices saw him and said something along the lines of "That's so easy... see? ARRRRGHGHH!!!" Unfortunately for the apprentice, he had failed to notice that my grandpa had greased his palms BEFORE tipping the lead onto them.

My great-great-grandmother was the best known midwife in the area and had her own laying-in home. As my grandpa tells me, he often overheard his childhood classmates ask their parents - "For our next baby, can we please buy one of Granny Wilson's? They don't cry like everyone elses!"

[protege]

Let's see now...here's one about my late grandmother...

As long as I'd known her, Grandma loved her coffee. She always had the coffeepot going, and would consume several cups per day. I don't know if it was a holdover from when her family ran a farm, or what. Anyway, she continued the 'multiple cups of coffee' with meals until she moved into the nursing home. That's where it stopped. Why? Well, she'd fill up on coffee, and then wouldn't eat very much at meals. Mom put a stop to that. But, it didn't stop my grandmother from scheming for coffee--even with her failing mind, she thought she could con my brother into getting a cup for himself...and that he'd give it to her! Didn't work though

...and now a sad one from dad's side of the family...

The last years of my grandfather's life were hard ones. His mind was failing, and things were becoming difficult. Keep in mind that he was a guy...whose job it was, during WWII to disarm enemy bombs, and to blow shit up. Smart cookie, who was very technical minded. He did major remodeling projects to his house, spent hours in the gardens, etc. but all of that stopped when his mind started going... most of the last 2 years was spent either on the couch watching TV, or in bed But, what I do remember...involves a model train locomotive, and a sheep-shaped wooden cutting board.

Awhile back, my grandmother had ordered that cutting board. When it arrived, it was broken. She didn't want to pay to ship it back, so it was put downstairs, and forgotten. That is, until I saw it, took it home, and fixed it. Nobody thought about it again, until we were over at her house for some reason. Grandpa was going around telling everyone that he'd fixed it. Grandma tried to correct him, but I put a stop to that. As soon as he was out of the room, I told her "You know I fixed it, I know I fixed it. If it makes him happy, I'm not going to rain on his parade." He was dying by then, and I wasn't about to add to his pain.

Several months after that, he was in a nursing home. By then, he had cancer...and it was spreading. Grandma could no longer take care of him. Constant pain meant he was usually heavily sedated, and confined to a bed. The last time that I saw him, I took along one of my locomotives. One, that he'd given me many years before. This one, was painted up for Johnson Wax...and was given to him while he worked for that company. When he saw that, he smiled, and said that he remembered working there...and that the locomotive was part of a set that the company had given to their salesmen. Sadly, that was the last time I saw him alive--the cancer had spread to his lungs, and he was dead less than a week later

[Frantic Freddie]

My grandmother was a waitress for most of her life & once she waited on a politician & his entourage.They ran her ragged,complained about everything & as they left,the politician flipped a nickel onto the table saying "That's all she deserves".

Grandmother said "That SOB,I'll never vote for him & if he wins he'll do something illegal,he's a goddam crook,you watch"

The politician was Richard Nixon.

[KellyHabersham]

This story is from when my dad was little and his family lived on a farm in Missouri - I forget what time of day this happened, but he and his siblings (and perhaps some of their friends or cousins) decided to dress up a dummy in old clothes, put it in the road, and hide in the bushes to see what would happen when a car came along. The next car happened to be policemen, who apparently took the dummy for someone who'd passed out drunk, and failing to realize that this was NOT a live person, hauled it off to jail.

[Victory Sabre]

A story about my paternal grandfather.

Back, around 1930, he was married with 2 kids. He was working road construction in southern Minnesota. Well, he got done with work early one day, and decided to go home. When he got home, he got one hell of a surprise: his wife was in bed with his boss!

Yeah, that marriage ended, quickly. My grandpa never knew that his first kid also wasn't his. She was a total bitch, and my aunt (her daughter) confirmed that fact. In fact she stated that my grandmother was more of a mother to her than her biological mother.

[AdminAssistant]

My paternal grandfather grew up in the Ozarks, had something like 5 brothers and 3 sisters. Growing up, they used to cut down trees and cut them up into railroad ties to sell. (We still have his old two-person saw.) During the Dust Bowl/Great Depression, he used to escort families moving north. Back then, it was common for families to hire single men to ride with them for protection. We also know that he hoboed around Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri. Dad still wonders if he might have some half-siblings out in the world somewhere. He was also part of that lucky generation that was too young for WWI and too old for WWII.

My maternal grandfather...well, I'll just say this. He abandoned his first family. When the government caught up with him, they threw him in the army and sent all of his checks to his first wife. He spent WWII in England. That's about the time he met my grandmother, although I really don't know what she saw in him. By all accounts he was an ass. After my grandma passed in 1975, he married 3 more times. One wife would die, and he'd find another. He also died on my 3rd birthday, which meant that Mom was out at the hospital with him. There are pictures from that 'party' (just a few family members and friends at our house), and I look totally pissed in every one of them. "Where. Is. My. Mother?!?!"

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

My dad used to live on a farm with his large-ish farm family. One day one of his brothers, and one of my uncles, found an egg lying around someplace and was wandering around the barnyard wondering what to do with it. Finally he decided to just pitch it over the barn and let it splot on the ground.

And so he did toss it over the barn. On the way down the egg hit my dad right in the face.

Oh, and the egg just happened to be rotten.

Yeah, dad was pretty pissed, but to this day the two of them tell the story and always wind up laughing until they have tears streaming down their faces.

As for my mom, the only thing that really sticks out is the time she got locked alone in a storage closet for an hour at school because she forgot to mention "and sometimes Y" when naming the vowels. That's good old Catholic discipline for you.

Then there's the fact my sister is, to this day, completely convinced she saw a leprechaun on the jungle gym at school. She told us "It winked at me!"

[TheSHAD0W]

Only thing that comes to mind is the night my little brother came home with a fish hook embedded in his foot. It wasn't just any fish hook either; it was a large, three-pronged hook for ocean fishing, something like this one:



Yeah. Ow.

I didn't have any cutter that was strong enough to snip off the barbed end and still get in between the barb and the hook's central shaft.

I finally found a pair of lineman's pliers that fit just right, letting the central shaft pass through the pliers while the cutting blades could be applied to the barb. My brother was rather relieved.

[Jester]

There is actually a sports memorabilia book that has a pic of Pete Rose standing in the dugout looking VERY confused, shaking the hand of my unkempt, drunken uncle.

Try as I might, my google fu failed me when I attempted to find said picture.

I'm mainly thinking of funny stories about crazy stuff your family has done, like stories told through the generations.

Honestly, there is not enough space here nor enough time in my day for me to tell all the crazy stories from my screwy family. But here are some highlights:

-->My grandfather's brother, who disappeared decades ago, and no one is really sure what happened to him. (They suspect he took off, rather than any kind of foul play.)

-->My mom's cousin, who is now in his eighties, made an interesting career choice. Despite coming from a family of New York Jews, he moved out to Utah to studay at Utah State in order to become a dairy farmer. Shit like this just can't be made up!

-->My father, who died 30 years ago on March 5, was the funniest man I ever met. As many fathers do, he would tell his 3 children bedtime stories. Unlike the vast majority of fathers, he would make these stories up. Most of them centered around the pet giraffe he had as a child, that they kept on the fire escape, since they were "too poor" to keep him anywhere else. Keep in mind, my father grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey. Not exactly the ideal spot for a pet giraffe! (For those who missed it, no, there really was no pet giraffe.) It wasn't until just a few years ago that I realized that the giraffe's name was Dad's father's middle name. (I had never known Grandpa's middle name, and never actually met the guy, as he died five years before I was born. I was, however, named after him, both first and middle names.)

Shortly after Dad died, I heard Mom talking on the phone to the tombstone engraver. Although I never actually heard his side of the conversation, I pretty extrapolated it from Mom's side. It went something like this.

MOM: "Do you have any images of giraffes?
ENGRAVER: "Giraffes? Say what? Are you serio...oh, wait. We have two."

And so, on my father's tombstone, there is a giraffe's head. And to us, as short a family as we are, it makes total sense.

-->My mother grew up in the New York/New Jersey area. Because of this, a lot of the segregation going on in other parts of the country didn't really make an impact on her mind. One time, a few years after my parents were married, they took a road trip down the Eastern Seaboard. At some place in the Deep South, my mother saw a laundromat with a large sign reading "WHITES ONLY." Completely serious, she turned to my father and asked, "Well where do they wash their colors?"

-->When my parents first had my older sister, they were living in a small apartment, and for whatever reason, her first few weeks or months of life, she slept in a dresser drawer that they cleared out for that purpose. Perhaps this impacted her, as it was not her last odd sleeping quarters: in college, at one point her "bedroom" was a closet cleared out to make room for her mattress, which just barely fit in it.

-->I've told this one before, as it relates to CS.com and restaurants, but it's worth repeating (I think). My uncle was one of those tough old birds that would wear slacks and an undershirt outside. In January. In Boston. Yeah, like I said...tough old bird. Anyway, Uncle H had a very simple philosophy about tipping servers: he always tipped either 20% (for a good job) or 10% (for inadequacy). He never bothered with the more common 15%. Well, one day, he was out with my aunt and some other people, and after they paid the check, Uncle H left 10% for the tip, being rather unimpressed with the service. As the party was leaving the restaurant, the server came up to my uncle, very angrily waving the tip in his hand. "Is this all I get?" Uncle H very calmly took the bills from the server's hand, looked at them, looked at the server, and asked, "You are not happy with this?" The server, still pissed, said "Absolutely not!" And Uncle H, still calm as can be, said, "Then you get nothing," put the bills in his pocket, and walked the fuck out. Leaving the waiter utterly speechless. While I have spent my adult life working in the restaurant industry, I love this story. Why? Because it shows that not only should you do your job, but never, EVER, question a tip left by someone to their face. No good can come of it. (I've seen people fired for this shit.)

-->Years ago my mother's sister swindled several thousand dollars from my mother and grandmother. While Grandma and Mom eventually forgave her, I never did. Not just because some of that money was my college money (and would have some bearing on where I ended up going to school, actually), but just on the principle of the thing. (No, she never returned the money, as she herself got taken by her partner in crime, as I recall.) I will still talk to her civilly and politely if I have to (if I answer my mother's phone, for example), but overall, I avoid talking to her, and have never forgiven her for this awful transgression.

-->One of my father's cousins, who has done much family tree research, was thoroughly and utterly convinced that we were distant relations of a very famous Hollywood family. I did some research of my own and discovered that he was mistaken. But it was an easy mistake to make. Both families came from the same area, had the same name, and had that name Anglicized remarkably similarly. Both family trees had a lot of the same names at the same times. But as it turns out, it was not an exact match, and it was just a bunch of coincidences, involving some common names for that time and that place. Which means, as far as I know, I am still one of the most famous people in my family (as opposed to being the fourth most famous at best if we were, in fact, related to that family).

-->My Stepfather served in the Army in Korea, in the Corps of Engineers. His Engineering unit was based right next to the medical unit that "M*A*S*H" was based on.

-->My father once sat next to Rod Serling (of Twilight Zone fame) on an airplane. Said he's never seen anyone look sicker or greener on a plane.

-->My parents, who both grew up in only 1 or 2 homes, seemed to have a penchant for moving. I was in my fourth State (and fifth home) by my fourth birthday. This continued even after Dad died, as Mom and Stepdad have moved to Arizona four times. Just since they retired, Mom and Stepdad have moved from Arizona to California to Arizona to New Jersey to Arizona. And they are thinking of moving again, despite their ages (75 & 79). And to make matters worse, they don't rent their homes....they keep buying them. And of course selling them. Why? I assume it's because they're insane. Hell, they've only turned a profit on one of those houses! I often joke that my parents are the only people I know that get Christmas cards from moving companies. (Though it wouldn't even vaguely surprise me if they actually did.) And it seems to have become a trend with my sisters and myself. The Witch is in her fifth State total, third as an adult. I am in my sixth total, second as an adult. And Lil Sis is in her second country. Not counting temporary residences (or rather, residences that I knew ahead of time would be temporary), hospital stays, or vacations, I have tallied 26 different residences in my life. Oddly enough, at 11 years in Key West, I have been in the same place longer than my parents, both sisters, and both stepsiblings. (And yes, I still plan to move back to Phoenix at some point...damn economy needs to improve!)