The Squirrels In Our Family Tree

When I was a little girl, my grandmother wrote a book about the whack jobs in my family. The title of the book was 'The Squirrels In Our Family Tree'. Keeping up with this rich history, I went on to marry a man whose last name literally translates into "nut tree".

In the usual chaos that composes my morning, my very favorite story about the horrid little man that was my Great Grandfather made it's way into the forefront of my mind. Moe was little, drunk and mean. He was a scrappy, spiteful man with a wicked back hand who was as bitter as the day is long.

Moe and his wife, Dotty, were raising my Grandmother in St. Louis, back in the days when you could send your kid down the street with a bucket and she'd come home with it filled with beer. I imagine that was handy. Mostly because Moe was a painter and like most every painter I've ever met he was a drinker.

Moe had been contracted to paint the interior of the neighborhood funeral parlor. On this day, he had been instructed to paint a particular room and in the middle of that room was the body of a dead man on a slab. Evidently, the funeral director didn't feel it was necessary to move the body or to instruct my intoxicated Great Grandfather on what to do with the body.

Undaunted, Moe set about his work, giving the room a fresh coat of white paint. As the day wore on and the room was finished, he then turned to look at the body in the middle of the refreshed room. Noticing that he has splattered the poor, dead, African-American man with white paint, he did the only thing that seemed logical to him...

He painted the man white.

His entire body got a nice coat of interior paint.

I never did hear what became of that man, but I can only imagine the looks on the faces of his family when they showed up to view his body.