Some stories about Daddy Dunne and the family:

Guns:  Daddy has 8 guns in the house—including a “300-Savage Elephant Rifle,” a shotgun, a 22-caliber rifle, an ancient 7-shot revolver that looked like a Derringer, a 32-calibre Colt, a 38-calibre Colt, and another 38-calibre Colt in a 45-caliber frame. I can still smell the “Hoppie’s Number Nine” gun oil.  And he often said, “Every gun is loaded”—meaning never point any gun, play or otherwise, at anybody. 

Very late one night, there was a guy crouching by the accelerator on our ’48 Ford as if trying to get it started. Daddy heard the commotion, got out of bed, put on his fedora (but still in boxer shorts and a wife-beater T-shirt), picked up a pistol, and confronted the guy. He marched the guy into our dining room and gave him hell. Turns out he was a very drunk doctor who lived nearby. Daddy got him back home OK. (Ooops! I said “hell”—a word heard rarely and only by Daddy in our house!  A house, as I recall it, where shouting was not permitted.)

Another time, when Munner (Mum’s mother) was staying with us, Marion got bumped to sleeping on the living room couch. She woke up very early when she realized there was a man standing by her bed.  She started to get up, and the man just escaped out the front door. So Marion went upstairs. Mum and Daddy were still asleep, so she curled up by the large window of their bedroom. Eventually they woke up and  As Marion describes it, Daddy was furious because Marion didn’t wake him up so he could use one of his many guns.

Smuggling: I recall several times when Daddy would invite Mum to meet him at the Essex Country Club for dinner. They came back in separate cars (I recall the Dodge “Lead Lamb” and a ’54 Ford). The next morning Daddy would go behind the back seat of Mum’s car to retrieve his booze. Mike recalls it as Bushmills Irish Whiskey.

Poaching: I remember driving with Daddy to Cheboygan, and as we approached the town, he looked over at the Cheboygan County Sheriff’s office on the right, and there was a row boat for sale on the lawn. It was our rowboat! Turns out that the night before, he and Bill Howell were in the boat in White Goose Bay, just beyond the boathouse at Greenman’s point. They were shining for pike, with spears in hand. Then the sheriff’s boat appeared, and guys on board were about to arrest them. But Bill and Daddy jumped overboard and waded into the swamp area, making their way back home. I don’t know what exactly Daddy said when he saw our rowboat for sale the next morning. But I suspect is started with, “Judas Priest!...”

Being an attorney, Daddy taught us a healthy disrespect for the law. 

Oh, speaking of shining, I also remember Bill Edwards and a friend were out one night shining deer on East Burt Lake Road toward Cheboygan. At Hogsback road they turned right and before long, headlights came on from a car back along Hogsback and was fast approaching. Bill and friend, knowing they were about to get busted, made a plan. Bill told his friend, “Take the bolt out of the gun. I’ll wait until they come beside us to pull us over, then I’ll come to a stop very slowly. As I do, throw the bolt out the right window into the woods.” 

The plan seemed to work. They got pulled over, the sheriff saw the gun in the car and told them they were under arrest. But they told the sheriff that they just wanted to see some deer, not shoot any. For proof, they showed him the gun without its bolt. The sheriff realized the ploy. He ordered them not to leave the county. Next morning, two sheriff’s cars come roaring into the driveway, with the sheriff triumphantly holding the bolt they found in the woods. “Got you now, Edwards. We found the bolt!”  

“The bolt to what?” Bill said. (Since the sheriff didn’t confiscate the gun the night before, Bill just asked Bill Howell—who else!—to hide it in his shed for a few days.)

Mum: That’s what we called her—probably from Daddy’s Canadian roots where “Mum” is still heard often. She was a princess in exile. Very modest, always dressed. I can remember my first—and only—parental sex talk. I recall the entire talk verbatim. I was cutting through the kitchen and Mum said, “Tad, do you know what those Kotex are for upstairs?” I said “Yes.” She said, “OK. I just wanted to be sure you respected things like that.”  

(I said Yes because my Sicilian buddy Toto Ruggirello had described it all to me.)

One other Mum memory. When, as a Jesuit, I was stationed at University of Detroit, Mum and I would sometimes go to Detroit Art Museum together. When we go there, she always wanted to split up. She said, “Don’t stop to look at paintings, walk until a painting stops you.” (Very wise advice!)  Then we’d meet for lunch, tell each other what we liked best, and then walk back to see her favorite and mine that day.

-Tad