Heavens to Murgatroyd

 Waning Crescent Moon

One of the many odd things about growing older is the peculiar way one's memory comes and goes. I think the human brain must be similar to my recently retired Smartyphone. It held a maximum of 16 gigabytes. When its storage approached that number, the phone still worked, but it gave off little protest signals that indicated I should start deleting apps and/or dumping some photos, that sort of thing. Annoying. I got a new phone a few days ago, cheaper than the old one was, that has a max of 138 gigabytes. Progress.

Anyway, I think my 1951 brain has about maxed out however many gigabytes of storage it came with and it's acting a little goofy. For example, every time I am getting ready to leave for a walk or to go to the store, I have to go back inside to retrieve something I needed to take with me - most frequently a list of stuff I intended to do while I was out. Very annoying.

Just as annoying, but a little more fun, is the equal but opposite reaction - my brain retrieves the clearest images of things that happened 60 or more years ago. Out of the blue yesterday, I spoke out loud the childhood phone number of the one and only Kirby Coe Kennedy, my greatest of friends whom I have known since elementary school (it's probably not a very good idea to transcribe something like that on the worldwicked web, so I will save sharing the number for the next time I talk to him). 

How does that work though? Repetition maybe? I dunno.

The day before yesterday, also out of the blue, as I completed an out and back hike on the local segment of the Juan Bautista De Anza National Historic Trail, I spoke out loud the words "Heavens to Murgatroyd." That phrase was from some Saturday morning cartoon character from long ago. I couldn't recall which character it was, but what puzzled me more was that in almost seventy years, never have I known what or who "Murgatroyd" was, much less what "Heavens to Murgatroyd" meant. It was just this little auditory/visual signal attached to a miniature pogo stick hopping around amidst my tired old brain cells.

How oh how could I be enlightened? Dr. Googlie to the rescue. I typed the phrase into the Googlie search box and presto, there was Snagglepuss in all his or her glory, spraying, not saying, "Heavens to Murgatroyd" in apparent frustration over something that was encroaching upon her or his happiness. What was the meaning behind these mysterious words? 

I quickly found out. Who knows how Dr. Googlie finds time to learn all these things, but there it was, all laid out in a tidy, little, bloggy article. I will share the link I found, along with some of the highlights. That way, even if you are much younger than me and never watched any Snagglepuss cartoons in your jammies on Saturday morning on black and white TV, you still stand a slim chance of having pointless junk memories pop up in your consciousness when you are old. You're welcome.

Who or what was or is Murgatroyd, you ask? And what does Heavens to Murgatroyd mean for pity's sake? Let's answer the second part first. I am afraid the answer is not very exciting, even if it is informative.

Heavens to Murgatroyd is a cry of surprise. The American exclamation Heavens to Murgatroyd was made popular by Snagglepuss, a cartoon pink mountain lion created by Hanna-Barbera in 1959. Snagglepuss’ voice was patterned on the voice of actor Bert Lahr. Heavens to Murgatroyd carries no further meaning than similar expressions such as Heavens to Betsy and Holy Cow.

Kind of dull, right? The selling point of the phrase, which distinguishes it from merely saying "Holy Cow" is the Burt Lahr voice. If you don't know who Burt Lahr is, my God, did you grow up in a cave? The Burt Lahr voice is most likely what jammed the whole thing so deeply inside a backseat fold of my cerebellum. 

So who or what the heck is "Murgatroyd?" I found this answer to be super-annoying.

Murgatroyd is a surname from old English aristocracy, the first use of the name is Johanus de Morgateroyde, a constable in Yorkshire, in 1371. Morgateroyde literally means the district leading to the moor. Several characters in Gilbert and Sullivan’s light opera, Ruddigore, are named Murgatroyd.

You can look up Ruddigore all you want, friends, but I'm not (yawn) gonna. I can only guess that the district leading to the 1371-ish moor was rather unpleasant, perhaps the antithesis of paradise, even. And if a person has the misfortune of being named Murgatroyd, he or she is probably either inherently evil or at least horridly misshapen. So if you, and by you I mean a cartoon, possibly cowardly, pink mountain lion with a Burt Lahr-like voice, should come upon anything or anyone Murgatroyd-ish, you might cry out in surprise, hoping to be saved by the Almighty or at least by the writers at Hanna-Barbera.

Peace, Love, and Great Horny Toads,

Jim