In loving memory of Mary Jean Golden Mayer

Mary Jean Golden was a great storyteller and had amazing wit. Here are a few of her quotes and memories she shared on Facebook.
"LOL. I can remember as child, when my sister and I were putting little brother's baby bonnets on the cat and putting her in our toy buggy. If I tried to do that to my big old Wallcat, he would surely disembowel me"
"My mom, the grammar cop, used to tell us that we would never get rich unless we used the proper word in the choice between "I" and "me"...and it's NOT THAT HARD, for gawdssakes. .(And my dad used to say, "Don't ever be sad that we are poor because if we were rich, you would have to worry about being kidnapped)." Anyhow, if anybody watches RHOC, it becomes clear that forgetting the word "me' works very well for most of the housewives. Must stop watching all of those Real Housewives shows...they only good reason is to remind oneself that she knows nobody who behaves the way these people do."
"My mom once apologized to me for not being able to provide as many toys as other kids had when I was growing up. My response to her was, "Don't worry about. You gave me everything I needed. I didn't miss what I never had."
"When I was a kid, we used to get brightly dyed chicks and ducklings for Easter. I hope to god they don't do that anymore. Most of them would just croak in a week or two, and we thought of them as seasonal Easter toys...they would disappear that quickly and quietly not unlike the goldfish did. . Mom must have just sneaked them out of the house (the way Bob's mother told him that his dog had "gone to a farm")....., but there was a duck that my little brother named "Shattuck" (not after the military school in St. Paul, but because that is what it said). It lived in the house over the next winter until Mom put her foot down and we took it to the duck pond at the Como Park Zoo. My friends had ducklings for their kids, and one lived to grow up, and it was IMPRINTED on the husband and would follow him around and try to pull down his socks! Cheese sounds great........all I have in the fridge is Swiss, but that will do."
"My dad's bachelor brothers had a farm in SW MN, and we lived with them for a while before my dad found a job in Minneapolis. They taught us to be afraid of the pigs, but they would bring in the runts of the litter and put them in the oven to warm them up, and I didn't eat pork for a while. The German name for pork sounds like 'Swine flesh." And it's not easy to eat that when one hears it called that name. Or any meat. We learn not to think of meat as dead animals, but still shudder when we see a fur coat. "
"I think to a certain extent, we make our own luck, but it doesn't work perfectly. My dad got killed in an accident at age 52 when he went to his family's home farm to sign a paper that kept his bachelor farmer brothers from having to sell the farm to divide the proceeds among the family. And it was really hard for Mom because he had worked nights and was there with her during most of every day. So the loss was striking and immediate. And somehow she recovered and went on with her life. which included a boyfriend that she refused to marry because he would have been intolerant of her grandchildren."
"November 26, 2010 ·
"Happy Birthday to my beautiful sister, the ever-young Marjie."
I grew up in Northeast Mpls. (near Lowry and Central) and we kids went to the Arion Theater every Saturday and Sunday afternoon for 11, then 12c. We always stayed for two showings, even if we didn't like the movie (in which case we spit sunflower seeds on the floor). Once in a while we would walk to the Hollywood Theater up the big hill to Johnson street (it was there that I saw 'American in Paris" ...still one of my favorite movies), or to the Heights that was way up Central Avenue. When we hit maybe 14, once a month or so, we were rewarded for good behavior by being allowed to take a streetcar downtown. There we went to Radio City (where there almost always seemed to be some crazy old guy who hung around the crows' nest and exposed himself to little girls, so we pretty much avoided the climb to the top that was so much fun at first) and then to the old public library, the one with the Egyptian mummies and the wonderful old wrought iron open elevator doors. Thanks for reminding me Come to think of it, there were also crazy guys exposing themselves at the door to the apartment above Schmidler's butcher shop the other way up Central Avenue, and at the viewing place for Minnehaha Falls,..oh, and on E. Hennepin Avenue where kids from NE waited to transfer from the downtown bus. We kind of took the presence of these old clowns for granted, never mentioned their presence to our parents, but we were always kind of glad when January blew around and drove them back indoors."
To my aunt Mary Jean, I thank you for being a smart tough wity funny person who's intelligence and wit was admired by so many.
God bless you