Missing Person Not Reported

[Doug Mathewson]

In our family everybody was a comedian, even when we prayed we told God a joke and hoped he liked it enough to listen to the rest.

A few time I asked my Mother why I had never meet my Grandfather (my Grandmother has a small photo of as a young man with crazy smile holding his upturned Panama hat full of fire-crackers, obviously my kind of guy) but the question made her angry, angry and sad.

She snapped back, “he’s a ventriloquist on the radio, his work keeps him away”, she hit me when I asked what time and station

Years later when I was in college some Great Aunt I never heard of contacted us with sad news, my Grandfather had died of cancer in Phoenix.

He’d been living out there she said since this release from prison some years earlier having served out his full sentence on Federal mail-fraud charges.

Too bad, I thought as the pieces now fell into place, wish I could have hear him tell the story of what happened, probably would have been pretty funny.


by-Doug Mathewson

[Doug Mathewson]

Thanks Sal. You going 06.06.09? Looking forward to it.

[Salvatore Buttaci]

Is "He's a ventriloquist" a euphemism for "He didn't do it but he's serving time for it"? A great piece you've written that hooked me from sentence1 to 6!

[Doug Mathewson]

Really! Good Point, Absolutely*. I mean, say he hits his thumb with a hammer, does he yell
"oh me-damn it" Food for thought -

[Doug Mathewson]

.... ask him how he's doing? what new? hope you have a good day. Anything you need a hand with?
- few things I could use some help with. Meta-fuzzy did you say??

[Jolie Green]

"In our family everybody was a comedian, even when we prayed we told God a joke and hoped he liked it enough to listen to the rest."

Now that's the God to believe in! God with no humor has to be impossible, just look out the window...there's humor in everything...laughter is grace.

[Doug Mathewson]

Thank you Nurry. Perhaps I should write a story about him. I don't write about my family very much,
except for a sister I made up as I am an only child. Thanks!

[Nurry]

As soon as i read about hyoru grandfather it hit me that he would have been like you, full of love for life....nicely done...wish we could all have heard the story from your g/father too... what comes to my mind is that he was so kind that he must have done something about the christmas mail...to make the children happy?????naive? lol!

[Cita]

BRAVO Doug. Very well done.

[Jeanette Cheezum]

I'm ROFL.

[Doug Mathewson]

Thank you dear freinds one and all. Radio Ventriloquist credit goes to Woody Allen, his joke not mine.
It was my Grandfather who had a hat full of fire-crackers.
Never meet the man, He was aaahhhh "indisposed."