IT’S GUEST BLOGGER FRIDAY! TODAY’S QUESTION WILL BE ANSWERED BY ME AND ONE OF MY VERY GOOD FRIENDS, MIKE McGUIRK, ONE OF THE MOST GENUINELY “IRISH” — AND THE ONLY “SOUTHIE” — PEOPLE I KNOW (AND A WELL KNOWN MUSIC WRITER; SEVERAL OF HIS PIECES WERE ANTHOLOGIZED IN THE DA CAPO’S BEST MUSIC WRITING). ALSO, I THINK IT’S IMPORTANT THAT YOU KNOW THAT ALL OF MIKE’S ANSWER IS TRUE. NONE OF IT IS MADE UP FOR COMEDIC EFFECT. (AS IF ANY OF IT’S FUNNY. READING THIS SHIT IS KILLING ME.)

My grandfather on my mother’s side was a foul-mouthed bigot whose racism was actually something to behold. Not only did he despise the usual — coons, kikes, japs, pawhta rikkens — Grampa Neily hated his own people, the Irish (“goddamn drunks”), my grandmother’s people (“lousy guineas”), rich bastids, the poor, Jesus freaks, goddamn hippies … the air — and, inexplicable to me, at 7-years-old — because I’d never seen one — Canadians, whom he referred to as “hockey pucks,” as in “goddamn hockey pucks don’t know how to drive a goddamn car.” He also left my maternal grandmother (who killed herself) for a woman who was legally blind and whose unintelligible speech (or warbling) was the result of a hair lip.

My other grandfather was this old homeless guy with a broken arm that would show up at our house when I was 5 or 6 and stay for a few weeks (perpetually drunk the whole time) until my father would physically toss him out the front door some night after they started arguing, or the Red Sox lost. I learned when I was 10 that this person I’d been instructed to call “Hughie,” but was referred to by my cousins as “puppa,” was, in fact, my grandfather. You have to understand that anytime children in my house asked a question of any kind the answer was some form of the phrase “none of your business.” So, a silent hobo at the kitchen table going unidentified the two times I saw him before I was 12 is not totally unbelievable.

So Grampa Neily — assuming he wasn’t gonna die — I would toss him down the stairs for $1,000,000 in a second. That guy was a dick and probably deserved it, so it’s not even a question of morality. Plus there isn’t much I wouldn’t do for a million dollars, short of kill someone. But Hobo Hughie, I couldn’t. He was actually a pretty good guy, even if the only thing I remember him ever saying to me was, “Who are you?”

- Mike M

Um…no, I would not. But I might push Mike’s grampa down the stairs.

- Kali