The Canonical Penguin: Characters of 215th Street - Witchy Poo and Mo-Mo

As mentioned in many previous entries, I grew up on 215^th Street in Bayside, Queens, a commuter suburb of NYC. In those days each area, each block almost was a neighborhood. There were plenty of kids to play with, short walks to the stores and parks and movies and other entertainment. And there were characters. I told you about Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Perkins here. Today I tell you about our neighbors across the street, Witchy Poo and Mo-Mo.

First the names. That’s what we called them, probably came from my sister Jo, but I have no idea about the history of the names. Yes, the old woman had a “witch” like appearance to her, like the Halloween decoration, without the hat but her son, called Mo-Mo and I have no idea why.

They lived in the townhouses across the street from out home. They we in the first floor apartment, above a single car garage although they did not have a car. I’m sure it was used for storage, I

remember them often coming out of the side door, carrying a shovel, broom or pushing a lawnmower. And it was the lawn that was the battleground.

There was a tiny patch of grass at the sidewalk/curb area and a small rectangle of grass close to the house. We played in the street all matters of games with balls and they sometimes went down the driveway or made it to one of the patches of grasses. While we played, often we would see one of the pair staring out the window at us to seemingly make sure we did not “hurt” their grass. If we got too close, one of them would come out with a broom to sweep the sidewalk or driveway or just watch us. Spooky.

I am sure, our ball playing did not hurt their grass. We did no damage to their house, did not hurt their concrete sidewalk or steps. They just disliked us and we them. This is why there was the plastic bead incident. That image is one I will never forget.

By the way, this is a modern picture of that house and except for the car in the driveway and the tree and bush in the small patches of grass, it is exactly as I remember. Witchy and Mo don’t live there anymore but the neighborhood has changed so much over the last twenty years and life has changed so much over the past 30 years, I doubt there are any kids around to run on the lawn anyway…

(These are stories about things that actually happened with plenty of witnesses. It has passed from the apocryphal to canonical in nature. Wiki says of canon – “material that is considered to be "genuine", "something that actually happened", or can be directly referenced as material produced by the original author or creator.”)