A less-than-good son gave mother some tales to tell

It’s a wonder my mother never threw me out of her house. It’s a good thing that my uncles, her brothers, were far worse than I ever was.

First there was that fire thing. Every kid worth his salt in West Roxbury was a firebug. People tell me now that it was repressed sexuality, but I think we were much too young for that, plus there was that whole Catholic thing.

When we were bored, we would set the woods on fire, then play with the fire engines. Talk about great toys! An older arsonist taught me how to take a wooden clothespin, the ones with spring on them, reverse the spring, use a length of black tape and make a match-shooting contraption.

Then we could walk down the street and shoot a flaming match into the grass, without even turning our heads.

Some of the more demented boys took their proclivities inside and set their rubbish barrel on fire. Or the curtains. One kid (I still remember the house) burned off three floors of porches. That wasn’t me.

Fire seemed to be a recurring theme. Once, when I actually was going to mow the lawn without threats to my person, I dutifully filled the mower with gasoline, apparently spilling some in the process. When I pulled the starter the whole thing went up in flames – in the garage. I pushed the fireball out into the driveway, where it burned to a crisp. The wheels were burned right off.

My poor mother.

Then there was the time when the head of the juvenile court in Boston (he lived only two doors away, unfortunately) promised my mother I would end up “in Walpole.” Something about beating up his son.

All right. I was a lousy son.

She already knew she had a live one, when, at age 6 or 8 (family lore differs), I found a loaded .45 Colt pistol and brought it out when the S.S. Pierce truck delivered the groceries.

“Stick ’em up,” I said in my best cowboy voice, holding up the heavy gun with both hands while my Aunt Jean (she was baby-sitting) fainted dead away. She never offered to baby-sit again, if memory serves.

I think the Pierce driver changed his route.

The police came to the door only twice, which I thought was below average for the Twomey family. Once when I stole the family car and visited a neighboring high school with my posse. We actually went to a few classes. School and police officials took a dim view of our effort at diplomacy.

Then there was the time that I had to go to the dump on the way to a hot date in the city. When I found that the dump was closed, I just went down a dirt road and dumped the rubbish in “the woods.” There wasn’t time to go all the way back to the house and still make the date.

You should have seen the look on my poor mother’s face when some Sharon cop knocked on the door and asked her “if someone from this house dumped rubbish on someone’s lawn.”

As she was rising to her full indignation (something to see), I stepped out with the cop and closed the door and confessed. “The woods” I chose was in fact, someone’s front lawn. I was a city kid. What did I know?

It wasn’t a tough case to crack, since there were about 30 letters with my parents’ names and address on it. I got to pick the rubbish up. In the rain. Out of thorn bushes.

That was some sort of record. The police were at my house twice within the first two months of moving to a new town.

My poor mother.

Then there was the time that my old pal David Walsh had a fight with his father and ran away – in his father’s brand-new dump truck. Naturally I went with him – all the way to Washington, D.C., where I told my uncle that we were on school vacation even though it was still early September. He never saw the humor in that – or the dump truck.

All in all, I was a pretty poor son. Thank God the Twomey uncles were far, far worse. How my mother lived to age 93 is beyond me. Before she died five years ago, I was successful in smuggling nips of whiskey into her nursing home. I wasn’t all bad.

Happy Mother’s Day, Julia. At least I never went to state prison.

Not yet.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.