GoodlyMcNight!

Soon after Mom and Dad got married I discovered that Daddy had a language of his own. Each night he would tell me "GoodlyMcNight." I would ask "are you Irish?" and he would answer, "No, I'm Polish."

When we cooked chicken we used the whole chicken, so we were always finding chicken bits - livers, hearts, etc. in with our wings and drumsticks. But with Daddy around most of those chicken bits were "gilberts," with the exception of kidleys (kidneys). He had a thing for replacing "n's" with "l's". Disneyland was Disleylant.

I think he liked to play with the sounds of words. He was a jazz musician, and he had a gift for languages. I believe he knew German, and some Polish and French. In his later years he tried to pick up Spanish by watching Telemundo. Since he said he was Polish I would cook him Kielbasa, or smoked pork hock & beer stew. The German part of him loved German sausages - a highlight in my teen and young adult years was going with him to Berghoff's in Chicago. French cuisine was introduced in the form of escargot. As an adult I've never eaten it, but as a teen I would try some at the White Horse Inn before our lobster entree.

We lived in the San Fernando Valley, which had its own amusement park in those days. Busch Gardens opened in Van Nuys at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in 1966. Mom and Dad married in 1969 and we took many trips to "Birdland," as my dad called it. We would take the monorail ride through a building which demonstrated how beer was made, and into the park. The smell of hops and beer imprinted on me... however I never did develop a taste for beer (not even when I went off to college!) My sister and I would put up with the boring part of the ride in order to get to the wonders inside... beautiful gardens, birds everywhere, and a handful of rides. Amazingly enough, "Birdland" had free admission, although I suspect that the main reason we visited often was the free beer. I learned that Daddy's favorite beer was the premium brand, Michelob. He preferred Busch to Budweiser. Barbara and I were thrilled when Busch Gardens opened a log ride. That made waiting on our parents outside the beer pavilions all the more worthwhile. Log rides are still my favorite kind of amusement park ride - if you're going to go shooting downhill, let's have some water to land in.
Besides the free beer, Busch Gardens was best known for its collection of birds. Mom and Dad's car (I'm not sure if it was the Mustang or the Cougar XR7) developed a high-pitched screech when they first turned it on. Daddy would say, "ah, Birdland." To this day, when I hear a car make that noise I think "Birdland."

Dust or tiny bits of paper or other debris on the tables were "bits of pih." He would often brush "pih" off a table or his clothes.

He had nicknames for everybody. Babies and kids in general were "ick-mick" Somehow Rhiannon was "the Princess" and Calvin was "the Punk". That hardly seemed fair!

Early on he started calling me "Moldy." I have no idea why. I have thought about it in later years and wondered where it came from, and whether it was positive or negative. However, I was never bothered by it because he always sounded affectionate when he said Moldy. The name stuck into my adult years, because when I got married we became "the Marty and Moldy Show."

Daddy said my sister was "toinky-boinky." At the time I thought it meant she was cute, pretty, and not quite as much into school as her big sister. Later I thought toinky-boinky was kind of mean-spirited, like he was putting Barbara into a certain role. She put herself through college to get a degree in physics, became an optical engineer, worked with astronauts on space shuttle projects, and has been very successfully homeschooling her daughters. No "toinky-boinky" in her!

Most of the funny words and names that Daddy came up with left a positive impression. I still cannot look at chicken parts without thinking "gilberts." They are a part of our family culture. I would be curious to know whether my mom, sisters, or kids remember any other "Aceisms" Daddy had in his unique vocabulary. We should come up with an Ace Glossary! Are any of his words being used by the kids? Will they become part of the next generation?

Goodlymcnight!