The Turtle Continues

One holiday, my Aunt Gay fell to the floor.  Thinking her sister was having a heart attack, my mother, Mary Margaret Madden, dialed 911 in a panic.  Mom and her husband at the time (not my father by a long shot) followed the aide car to the hospital with Uncle Arnold and his two sons, Jim and Joe in the back seat.  A fist fight broke out with the force of a heavyweight chamionship title bout.  My Mother, fearful that teeth were going to fly, pulled over to the side of the road while her husband broke up the rumble in the back seat.

They arrived at the emergency room with Uncle Arnold, Jim, and Joe all looking like Rocky Balboa following his final round with Apollo Creed.  (The actor who played that part actually did play for the Oakland Raiders)   Just a side note.  They were still arguing in the hallway when they heard Aunt Gay screaming from an examining room:  "I'm not dying!  I'm drunk!"  And, certainly she was.

It was another Merry Christmas from the fighting Eagen family headed by Uncle Arnold, alias the Ruiner of Holidays, a.k.a. Mr. Turtle.

I want to make it perfectly clear that Arnold was not a blood relative.  He was married to my Mother's sister, Gay (Flaherty)  and my very first memory of him was that he was probably from the bizarro world.  I was able to determine by the age of five that he was an awful, sloppy, son-of-the-poor-unfortunate-woman-who-gave-birth-to-him, abusive jerk.  As I mentoned yesterday, in all the years I knew him, I never once saw him sober.