Mutchie: Cool Grandmother, Dismal Mother

She desperately wanted to be gorgeous, craved the high socialite life and was, according to Mom, disenchanted if not downright embittered by motherhood, often telling Mom she wished she'd never birthed her. That helped earn her the cellar position in our Ranking of Parents.

Later, after wealth-erasing unrest in Turkey and emigration here, her elite lifestyle ground to a halt. She often drove Mom up the wall but still, Mom loved her dearly and much valued her as a last link to her old life and home.

Mom's memories of her were often unsavory. Hiding her motherhood, she would insist young Mom stay silent and out of sight when she brought men home. Adverse to accountability, if challenged or called out for bad behavior, she would have a fit, even throwing herself on the ground and screaming. Every one of her husbands was rendered miserable before they fled to greener pastures.

Scammer
In 1966, the family was roading from CA to TX. Mutchie had insisted she was broke, so Dad had to pick the tab for everyone. Things were very tight.

Right after leaving a diner, Mutchie freaked out and yelped that they had to turn around - she left her purse behind. As they raced back, Dad found her overwrought exclamations that she would go inside to recover the purse and everybody else should stay in the car to be, well, odd.

For starters, Mutchie wasn't the type to volunteer to do things; she preferred having things done for her. Plus, she was greatly belaboring the point. Color Dad suspicious.

When they arrived, Dad was out of the car and in the door long before Mutchie, in the back seat between the two kids, could get moving. She was still yelling, “NO, Charlie, I'll get it!” as he entered the building.

The server recognized him and pointed him to a corridor to the manager's office where he was given the purse. Peeking inside, he saw it was PACKED with envelopes of cash. He heard Mutchie making a ruckus and returned to the dining area. Mutchie snatched the purse and dashed into the shitter.

Dad was down to their last $20 upon reaching their destination. He told Mom about the cash, but they never let on to Mutchie that they knew she scammed them. That's not how I would have handled it, for damn sure.

After they settled in Dallas, Mutchie bought a house a couple miles away from Mom and Dad. She visited regularly and talked with Mom daily, arguing often and almost constantly hatchet-jobbing Reagan. There were many unresolved issues between them that would follow both to their graves.

Scammer. Shopper. Hoarder.
Mutchie became a compulsive mail-order (and brick-and-mortar) shopper in the 1970s, filling her house with crap to where navigating it became a challenge. Her kitchen and fridge were especially horrifying.

In 1980, claiming she was broke and going to freeze to death, she milked a substantial amount of money from Mom, then gave it to Reagan.

No, not our Reagan - he'd get to clean out her camp later. We're talking Ronald Reagan, a man Mom despised and Mutchie adored to obsession. Her hefty donations earned her a spot in his Super Golden VIP Super Platinum Hi-Ho Silver Inner Circle or some shit. She insisted, overjoyed, that her framed, wall-hung collection of mass-produced form letters were personally signed by the Nuclear B-Actor himself and that he knew explicitly of her and treasured her support.

Degenerationate
Mutchie always adored and pampered Neila while brushing John away (and making fun of his junk), and as Neila went through teenhood, she turned up the heat. As Mom tried to teach Neila responsibility, Mutchie indulged her to the bone. As Mom tried to teach Neila accountability, Mutchie offered unconditional safe haven from the tribulations of developing into a proper adult.

I don't recall Neila having a job in high school, yet she drove new cars - first a Pontiac Grand Prix, then a Chevy Malibu Classic - and enjoyed a constant stream of clothes from Northpark Mall. Neila would leave her dirty clothes on the floor to pile up and Mutchie would just replace them with new ones.

As a result, Mutchie became Neila's de facto mother and a generation was skipped in a process I coined degeneration. This would hold until the end when The Flozberks took all of Mutchie's estate and Mom was not acknowledged in any way, inflicting upon her the worst heartbreak she ever knew.

As a result, Mutchie became Neila's de facto mother and a generation was skipped in a process I coined degeneration. This would hold until the end when The Flozberks took all of Mutchie's estate and Mom was not acknowledged in any way, inflicting upon her the worst heartbreak she ever knew.

The Porn Granny
My experience with Mutchie as her grandson was heavily positive. Weird, but positive. She was very fond of me, boasting with much pride that I was a "GIN-yuss" and taking me out monthly or so to one of two iconic restaurants in the Lakewood area of Dallas - the Cuellar family's El Chico or Nick Stefano's killer Seven Seas Greek-themed seafood paradise. The staff at both became like family.

Her raging mail-order shopping addiction MASSIVELY influenced my path. She somehow stumbled into having subscriptions to Playboy, Penthouse, and Oui despite not being particularly interested in their subject matter. Thanks to that, plus a huge erotica donation from Reagan, when I got to high school, I was astutely book-smart regarding female sexuality. That led to many great, great early interpersonal results as my peers fumbled and bumbled.

Yeah, I read the magazines, too.

Amid our run of hanging out, age 11, I arrived hungry for oysters and lobster. She warmly greeted me with my "mail," which included an especially fetching Penthouse Pet and an 8-track tape of fellows I was already familiar with, having seen a set of theirs when I got to tag along with the older kids to a gig.

*- VH -*
Van Halen, Women and Children First. It was the Columbia Record and Tape Club selection of the month, and Mutchie was a distinguished member.

Seconds into the first track - "And the Cradle Will Rock" - I was sold. It was a sound and attitude unlike anything I knew. By the end of the album, I was floored. The guitar player was amazing. Singer was soulful and ballsy. This changes everything.

That night, I scanned the radio station listings in the paper and discovered AOR - album-oriented rock. That immediately displaced the buttercup adult contemporary fluff Neila and Reagan favored and the disco and pop shit John loved. KNUS and KVIL ("anus and evil" to local rockers) were out, KZEW "The Zoo" and KTXQ "Q102" were in.

On night one as a listener, a commercial for the Van Halen show that September spun my head and the next morning I rode my bike to Sears and their Rainbow Ticketmaster outlet. I'd already been to four gigs, but as a tag-along. This was my first concert I pursued on my own. Now, hundreds of shows later, the life-defining odyssey continues.

For another year or two, the friendly mail carrier would deliver a steady stream of porn and music to Mutchie's for me. It was bad ass.

The Eternal Victim
That's what Mom called her, complaining that nothing was ever her fault, a platform again and again across Flozberk history. Especially vexing to Mom was Mutchie's iconclad devotion to Me Too.

No, not that one - it didn't exist yet.

When Mom would complain to Mutchie about any ailment, she said Mutchie would always say she had it, too. Funny thing was that I don't recall her ever being in the hospital, or even any stories about her being in the hospital. We joked that she was the most profoundly-ailed, least-hospitalized person in modern history.

De Agony of De Feets
One place where she did have Mom trumped in the annals of sickliness was below the ankles. Mutchie's feet were obliterated by, according to Mom, her refusal to stop wearing danger slut sexpot shoes on bad, bad feet. The result was badly-malformed toes she loved showing to people.

There's a story or two there.

OH. MY. GOD!!!
As the 1980s-90s rolled by, Mutchie spent much of her time, believe it or not, caring for children, both in her clan for free and for others as a paying gig.

Upon remembering that, I could only exclaim the header to this section. I'd forgotten she had a mini unlicensed day care center.

John and Neila exploited her for child care for the 4 unit basket of crotchfruit they, uh, separately, brought to the world in 1980-87. Pondering that exploitation, the repressed memory of Mutchie's Day Care crashed back into awareness.

To be fair, she clearly was doing some stuff right, for the children survived. I expect they were treated lovingly. But, she was just so kooky and unsanitary that...well, let's just say that I wouldn't have left my young kids with her unless it was an emergency, and definitely not habitually.

As for the hoarding and dirtiness, Dad and I intervened and tackled the fridge and kitchen in what was a harrowing experience, then The Flozzies jumped in and before long the problems were mitigated. I'll never forget walking in there one day and actually seeing her dining room, as opposed to walls, floor, and ceiling holding a museum of junk.

So, after a sort of feral period in the 70s and 80s, a degree of civilization was thrust upon Camp Mutchie and her suitability for caring for children certainly went up. That means, however, that it went from a fuckin' holocaust to merely rather sketchy.

Demeanor
The description so far could easily bring to mind a quite noxious soul, but in truth her personality was heavily pleasant and very interesting. She was very saccharine, like Neila, but much more sincere and with much better manners. Much unlike Neila, she was just kind of cool and was often hilarious, though much of the time it was not intentional.

Greeting cards from her would be flooded with ornate script, often extending to both sides and the back, exploding with rambling, repetitive declarations of her intensely bombastic adoration for us. Never have I seen anything like it. It was nice, but very strange. She'd leave similarly-structured communication on answering machines, which at times was less nice and more strange.

Bottom line - she was a trip.

Overall, we got along very well. Under that sweetness, though, was a sometimes-sinister character who was a conniving con artist and vicious, backstabbing gossiper that I think even threw Dad under the bus at least once.

Mutchie aged, kept driving Mom nuts, milked her for more money, and died just short of age 90 amid some quite troubling behavior from The Flozberks.

I could write a book of remarkable things about my alleged maternal grandmother. Find some of them in Appendices and scattered about elsewhere here.

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