By George!, Or: When Louise Called Butch

The Gentlemanly Farmer has led an interesting life. As a result, I have often felt like the nice big American comedian Jerry Seinfeld in my own life, the straight man surrounded by all manner of craziness, lucky to just be a part of it all. An incident occurred recently that drove this point home quite forcefully (and perhaps even literally).

As a semi-retired non-professional I have often found myself loitering in my nice big American home. It was on just such an occasion that the phone rang. Since I was deep in thought, ruminating about the philosophical complexities of semi-retired life, I neglected to answer it.

My nice big American wife returned from her hard day of work, and her being the kind of efficient person one would expect nice big American wives to be, she immediately listened to the message on our answering machine.

As soon as I heard a presumably dotty old Englishwoman enquiring about someone named Butch, I knew that I was dealing with something that should not be dealt with, and made a move to delete this message and to expunge all record of its existence from our lives.

However, my nice big American wife is (as Americans tend to be) a nice big American person, and thought that it a simple matter of courtesy to call PDOE back and inform her that she had the wrong number. Perhaps I was getting softer in my old age, perhaps as a semi-retiree I had empathy for a full-on retiree, or perhaps I knew that I did not possess the requisite intellectual capacity to win an argument with my nice big American wife, in the end I acquiesced (knowing full well that I had no actual acquiescing power).

So, my nice big American wife called PDOE to inform her that she would need to continue her quest to find this Butch because this Butch did not live in our nice big American house. PDOE was touched by this display of uncommon courtesy and proceeded to converse with my wife.

And this is when things became interesting.

PDOE was in reality a kind old Englishwoman named Louise. She was looking for Butch because she wanted to invite him to her birthday party. She had missed two numbers when he left her his phone number and was now calling the different extrapolations hoping to find Butch. Thanks to my nice big American wife, she would be able to find Butch after all.

And they carried on conversing.

Louise, our KOE, was Louise Harrison. There are a lot of Harrisons in this world, there are fewer English Harrisons, and fewer still are the Harrisons of George.

You see, she was George Harrison’s sister.

Yes, that George, as in The Beatles!

There are many Butchs in this world. There are fewer Butchs of Patrick.

You see, the Butch in question was Butch Patrick. Yes, that Butch Patrick, the one who played Eddie Munster on the classic TV show The Munsters.

Therefore, ipso facto, QED, net-net, bottom-line, at the end of the day: George Harrison’s sister called my house looking for Eddie Munster.

I mean, seriously, I don’t think I could make up my life even if I tried!