Nuts Mahoney


I may have given you the impression that Grandma was a saintly woman who never did a wrong thing in all her days.

So it’s necessary to bring Grandma down a peg or two so the real woman shines through, because she was no angel.

When Grandma was fifteen, she had a healthy interest in the opposite sex and she and her best friend Emma were always on the hunt for cute boys. Cute boys were starting to notice Grandma too.

But it wasn’t just boys. Grandma, who had graduated from the 8th grade was now a full-time worker in a downtown furniture store. She was the bookkeeper and showroom cleaner. Of her two responsibilities, she far enjoyed the bookkeeping over dusting all the furniture and polishing it too, if the boss said so.

The boss was a middle-aged man named Hymie Wilner who had a wife and four kids. He also had an attraction to Grandma which he didn’t particularly hide.

She says he had a way of coming up behind her as she was bent over her desk and then pointing to something in front of her, the ledger, the bill spindle or even once her lunch and just barely brushing, with his arm, her very young and tender bosom.

He frequently asked her if she had a boyfriend which would make her blush.

“Oh come on, you must have a boyfriend you’re so pretty, you must have a beau,” he’d needle.

Certainly Grandma had no intention of telling him about “Nuts” Mahoney. Nuts, as he was called, was the closest thing to a boyfriend Grandma had.

(You probably want to know how he got the nickname “Nuts” just as I did.

When I asked her, Grandma replied, “Well, his real name was Marion Mahoney and if anyone dared to call him by his real first name he’d go nuts. That’s how he got the name.)

Nuts always seemed to be hanging around Grandma’s house. Nuts once gave Grandma a candy box in the shape of a heart. Nuts once put his hand on Grandma’s knee when they were sitting on the porch swing and once Nuts kissed Grandma (half-cheek, half-mouth) then ran like hell down the street.

So far, only Nuts and Mr. Wilner had shown any courting interest in Grandma and neither of them was someone Grandma would want for a beau.

Mr. Wilner was married and very old – probably 35 at the time, Grandma said. Nuts was her own age, but way too childish for Grandma’s taste. Plus he was plagued with bad skin, bad breath and bad posture. And, if you called him by his real name he really would go nuts.

So Grandma was not only unattached but also unskilled in the ways of courting or romance --or dealing with the opposite sex in general.

But she did know one thing, she sure didn’t like old Mr. Wilner accidentally on purpose, touching her chest.

When Grandma told her mother about Mr. Wilner’s accidental “touching,” her mother told her, in no uncertain terms, “Look, you have a good job and are making good money and we need your income to keep this house going.

“So you find a way to avoid that situation and you be polite to Mr. Wilner at all costs and make sure you aren’t doing anything at all to encourage him. And I don’t want you to bring this up again -- ever.”

Grandma was in a bad spot. How was she going to let Mr. Wilner know that this touching could not go on? How could she say it in words polite enough to please her mother and what on earth could she possibly be doing to encourage him?”

Grandma thought and thought and then it came to her. The next time Mr. Wilner came near her desk she was going to cross her arms in front of her chest and then when he accidentally on purpose rubbed up against her with his arm – it would be his arm on her arm and that was okay since people touched arms all the time.

For a good two weeks, Grandma employed the arms-crossed method of self-protection and the only feel Mr. Wilner copped was a bit of arm.

It was working. Grandma was proud that she had thought of a way to keep her mother happy and herself happy without confronting the boss.

It was almost as if Mr. Wilner got the point. Almost like he knew why she had taken on this new posture of crossed arms, Grandma thought.

And then Nuts Mahoney had to go and screw it all up.

It was Valentine’s Day, 1926 and Grandma was busy working at her desk when in came Nuts carrying a bouquet of flowers, fresh from the florist, and arranged in a beautiful cut-glass vase. She could see him hand it to the floor manager, Mr. Dagney, and then run out of the store like a thief.

Mr. Dagney started to walk back to where Grandma worked to hand them to her when he was stopped by Mr. Wilner. Grandma wondered what the two men were talking about. She could see their mouths moving through the glass partition but she couldn’t hear a word.

What happened next was so shocking to Grandma, that even in her later years she would still flush at the thought.

It was Mr. Wilner who brought the flowers in to her. When he handed her the vase she reached out to grab it-- just as Mr. Wilner did the same to her breast.

He squeezed it hard and smiled a smile that made her stomach churn and also made her do something that she shouldn’t have ever done.

She took the vase, and threw it right at his head, missing his head, she was glad, but splashing water all over the front of his suit. And then she got up and ran out of the store. She was never going to go back there no matter what her mother said; no matter if they ended up in the poor house.

Grandma’s mother never knew Grandma had come home from work so early because she too was working. That evening was just like any other evening at home, except that Grandma kept wishing she was dead.

The next day, Grandma didn’t go to work. She told her mother she was sick to her stomach and she really was.

The next day she said she was still too sick to go to work. She was terrified of having to tell her mother what she did. All day she moped around the house and ate crackers and butter to see if that would help her feel better.

Then there was a knock at the door and through the curtains she could see him, the devil himself was standing on her front porch.

As much as she didn’t want to open the door, she knew she had to. Maybe he had her last paycheck with him or maybe he was there to talk to her mother and tell about how she threw a vase of flowers at him.

So she opened the door and he instantly spoke, ”I shouldn’t have done what I did and I won’t do it again. You need to come back to work, it’s piling up. I’m giving you a raise for your troubles so please come to work today, as soon as possible. We will forget this now, won’t we?”

Grandma had seen a few worms on a few hooks in her day and that’s exactly what Mr. Wilner looked like to her. He wasn’t so tough or scary after all. He was practically pleading with her to come back to work.

“Okay,” Grandma said, “I will. But if you ever touch me again I’ll do worse than I did; I’ll kick you in the you-know-whats and I swear by all that’s holy I'll tell your wife and I’ll call the police too. And I want that raise and I don’t want to do any more dusting or polishing of the furniture either.”

Mr. Wilner agreed to Grandma’s demands and she ended up working for him until she was twenty-one. He never touched her again, never asked her if she had a beau; never did a single thing that made Grandma uncomfortable after their talk.

And Grandma never dusted or polished a single piece of furniture from that day forward.

For this fact, Grandma was always beholding to Nuts Mahoney who, by the way, became Marion again, when ten years in the future he was ordained a Catholic priest.

I guess he never really had been Grandma’s beau after all.