Moby Shag: A Tale of The Great White Carpet

Allow me to spend a few minutes taking you back to the days of yesteryear, a time when a portion of my life was ruled by Moby Shag, The Great White Carpet. First, we must set the scene.

The era: the early, early 1960's. The place: high in the foothills of Mount Olympus, just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. The occasion: the building of a new house by my father and step-mother.

When my parents decided to build a house, my step-mother (we'll call her Ruth) announced that she wanted the living room and dining room to have a white carpet. White. Whiter than white. Blinding white. Why she would want a white carpet with two teen-aged boys in the house is way beyond me, but there it was: Moby Shag, The Great White Carpet.

Well, we (the kids and the carpet) lived in peace and harmony for awhile, and we (the kids) were as respectful as teen-agers can be. We took off our shoes before treading into its territory, we were careful with food and drink, and everything was hunky-dory until the day of TGFF. TGFF, otherwise known as The Great Food Fight, took place on a day when the folks were gone, and my brother and I were alone with the Moby.

Before we get into the TGFF, you need to know about the parents feelings about Moby. Moby was sacred...no one messed with the Moby. In this house, there was a fireplace in the living room, but the back of the fireplace was not on an outside wall. It was in the dining room. Once, there was a fire in the chimney, and when the firefighters arrived, they were not allowed in until plastic sheeting was obtained for them to walk on. The place might burn down, but The Great White Carpet was not going to have dirty footprints on it.

I have absolutely no problem with blaming what happened entirely on my brother. I honestly don't remember how it started, but I'm sure it had to be his fault. Besides, he's been gone for 42 years, so I don't think he'll object.

TGFF took place in the kitchen, which had a tile floor, and no sign of Moby. The fight lasted for about 5 or 10 minutes, and all evidence was carefully cleaned up. We thought.

I forgot to mention the weaponry used in this battle. Sandwiches were the weapon of choice: my brother opted for peanut butter (chunky...this is important), and I went with peanut butter (creamy)...oh, and both had grape jelly on them as well. When the fight was over, and the damage repaired, I went to my friends house down the block, where I stayed for an hour or so. Pete went into his room.

It should be mentioned that at the far end of the kitchen, which we weren't thinking about, there was a door into the dining room, a place where Moby lurked quietly. Apparently, if an object (say, a sandwich) is thrown with the right speed, trajectory and angle, it will actually go through that door, and into the domain of you know who. And that, apparently, is what happened.

When I returned from my friends house, I found my father standing by that door, watching his wife attempt to remove grape jelly from her beloved Moby. Pete was standing by also. Now, Pete had had some time for explanations, and while I never knew what he said, I could assume the worst, because I was entirely blamed for the incident and the mess, even though the step-mother was cleaning jelly and CHUNKY peanut butter off the carpet and walls.

Pete was totally exonerated for the affair, and I was told "Hell will freeze over before you ever set foot in my house again." All right, I was a kid, I was a rebel, I was a smart-ass...in other words, I was a typical teenager, and from my lofty perch of teen know-it-all, I politely informed my father that Hell was a small town in Northern Michigan, and it pretty much froze over every year. This did not go over well. He couldn't kick me out then; I had to finish the school year, but the same day that school let out, I was on a train to Las Vegas to live with my mother...and I never saw Moby again.

I did return to Salt Lake 2 1/2 years later, but that was for a different reason (different blog), and it was the only time in the next twenty years that my father and I spoke (actually, there were 2 short phone conversations, but they weren't pleasant enough to remember). We finally "made up", as it were, but there was never a father-son bond there as there should have been, and this I regret, and always will.