May 1, 2018

Just Saying…

By Q.C. Jones

The mother of all…

Mother’s day is just around the corner. This would be a great time for old QC Jones to go into karma collector mode and lay out mushy remembrances of Mother’s Days long past. Yes Ma’am with a flick of his arthritis infested typing fingers, yours truly could bring tears of joy, gushes of sorrow and cause nasty flow of lacrimal gland saline fluid onto the lovely publication laying before you. But, I’m not. It might spoil the picture of me in the upper left corner.

Thinking about this, the immortal words of the Okie poet, one time jail bird and country music super star, Merle Haggard, are whirling through my caffeine riddled brain. To quote an obscure line from Mr. Haggard’s My Own Kind of Hat, “There’s two kinds of mothers I’m told.” We are going to talk about the other kind of mother.

According to Wikitionary.com the colloquial phrase “mother of all” when used before a plural noun forms a
compound noun meaning: the greatest or largest of its kind. While I recall the phrase used as a kid, it was none other than mustachioed psycho killer Saddam Hussein who rejuvenated the popularity of the phrase. In 1990, he said America was about to enter into the mother of all battles. Saddam didn’t know we were about to drop the mother of all bombs on
his head.

MOAB and The mother of all hyperbolas

In an article titled “The mother of all Hyperbolas,” the author asked this question:

“On 13 April 2017, the US military dropped the largest nonnuclear bomb it’s ever deployed on an Islamic State cave complex in Afghanistan: the GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast. The bomb is better known, though, by its acronym, MOAB, which inspired the nickname the ‘Mother of All Bombs.’ The Mother of All Bombs has struck some as an odd name. What could a massive explosive have to do with our dear, beloved mums?”

The author goes on to point out that since the early ages of ‘Old English,’ the term mother has always been a loving term of endearment. Mother was a term of respect laid down on certain gentle ladies and/or associated with that which gives life; think Mother Earth. But a lot of water has flowed under London Bridge since “ðæge pro dæghwîlgêo gamol” which is the Old English version of “those days of old.” See what we mean about Merle’s catchy lyric, two kinds of
mothers? My short lived education on Old English was
certainly a mother of the second variety.

We couldst moveth f’rward a five hundr’d years and completeth this article in Shakespearean English (but we won’t). Because that would be a mother to read. Instead let’s flip our attention to yet more mothers. For instance, join me as we visit the mother lode.

Set the Dials of the Way-Back Machine to Mother Lode California 1849.

The mining term “mother lode” comes from a Spanish term “veta madre.” This is a term common in old Mexican mining lingo. Veta madre, for instance, is the name given to a 6.8 mile long silver vein discovered in 1548 in Guanajuato, Mexico. In the 1849 through the 1850s, the name was applied to the section of California nestled in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Remember the song, “Oh my Darling Clementine,” the verse containing “Dwelt a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter, Clementine.” This implies Ms. Clementine knew the Mother Lode well. We won’t dwell on her residence except to say back in 1964 “Oh my Darling Clementine” was the mother of all second grade songs.

Ancestry, the Motherland and the Mother Ship

If you happened to catch last month’s installment of QC’s twisted tales, you know we’re big on reading DNA-based ancestry stuff. Recently I saw an article which overused the term Motherland. Being either ill-informed, illiterate or a complete sexist pig, I wasn’t familiar with the term. Being a child intent on watching old WWII movies where the evil villain Nazi refers to Germany as the Fatherland; I researched it. My friends at Dictionary.com told me – Motherland and Fatherland mean roughly the same thing and Fatherland is a more patriotic version of the similar terms. Go figure on that one.

Last month’s expose’ entitled “Ancestors of Aliens in the QCA?” recounted new DNA evidence that a good many QC natives carry non-human genes. My scientific research has me convinced that red heads of the non-Clairol variety are actually descendants of space travelers who crashed
into a deep fiord in Scandinavia. These ginger’s great-great grandparents arrived via mother ship.

Finally, reminiscing of a Mother’s Days long past.

My parents celebrated Mother’s Day by sending the kids wandering through the woods in search of morel mushrooms. Where we lived, Mother’s weekend was touted as fine for finding fungi. I am not sure if this was a ploy for mom to get some quiet or a genuine tradition. We generally found the natural setting ideal for gray fungus growth. During the spring of my 11th year, I stumbled into the motherlode of morels and amongst the scores of little ones I discovered the eight inch tall mother of all mushrooms. If only I could return to those days in the Motherland of Central Illinois, I would be ready to step aboard the Mother ship for the next life.

Just saying…

Filed Under: History, Humor

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