WHO WANTS ICE CREAM?

My Mom Fact Checks the Story of Her Near Kidnapping

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the near kidnapping of my mother might have been the scariest event of 1941

Grandpa, Mom, and Nana — the lead characters in the Near Kidnapping Story, decades after the great drama of 1941 — Photo by author

Eighty years ago when she was four, my mother says she was drawing with chalk on the sidewalk in front of her house in Somerville, Massachusetts. That’s when an older “drunk” woman came up to her and asked if she wanted some ice cream. When my mom said she did, the woman said, “Come on! Let’s go to Boston.”

According to my mom, she and the old lady walked to a bus stop and while waiting, her father — my grandfather — came upon them as he was on his way home from work. When my grandfather asked, “Where are you taking my daughter?” The woman said, “She’s my granddaughter.”

Because he was Irish and knew all the cops, my grandfather immediately got one to arrest the woman and my mother was rescued.

Hell to pay at home

When my grandfather arrived home with my mom, he chewed out my nana for not looking after the child properly. Apparently, my grandmother didn’t even know my mom was gone.

At this point in her telling of the great failed kidnapping story, my mom puts her index finger…