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From: James_Linn@nortel.com (James Linn)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Stolen granny redux
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 08:58:01 -0400

In article <3325e69f.9979158@news.zetnet.co.uk>, amroth@zetnet.co.uk.NOJUNK (Phil Edwards) wrote:

> Plot seen this evening on _Brookside_ (a soap):
>
> Man is arranging son's funeral [1]; due to lack of money, picks up
> body, in coffin, in friend's unmarked van. Stops at betting shop[2] to
> place a bet on a horse called "My Son"[3]; leaves friend to mind van
> and coffin. Friend is freaked out by this & joins him inside; both
> watch race on overhead TVs. "My Son" wins. They go outside and...
>
> ...but you were there already (probably round about "unmarked van").
>
> I have a certain fondness for the 'granny on roof rack' UL, it being
> the first one I can remember hearing & (later) recognising as a
> legend[4], but I never thought I'd see it turning up as a soap plot.
>
> Phil "soap is thinner than fiction" Edwards
>
> [1] Long, sad but unrelated[5] story
> [2] Legal, public, occasionally the subject of earnest debate about
> how they can attract more customers. TWIAVBP.
> [3] Not quite as facile a plot point as it sounds, but it's not really
> worth explaining why here.
> [4] While I'm doing footnotes... this would have been 1975 or '76.
> [5] Not by me anyway.
> --
>

Here one for the FAQ!

I don't know who started the Stoeln granyn thread but they have amazing timing.

If you like the granny on the roofrack story, you'll be glad to hear of the story which hit Toronto newspapers and news yesterday. Toronto Sun and Star Front page. March 12, 1997

A Son's 4,000-km drive with dead dad: 'He wanted to go

home. I wanted to take him'

                        By THANE BURNETT and TRISH TERVIT
                                 Toronto Sun

Peter Bashucky did all the talking as he drove 4,000 km to Metro from California. His dad Nicholas was stretched out on a back bed in their R.V. -- packed in ice.
After Nicholas died of an apparent stroke while on a visit to Los Angeles last Friday, Peter arrived with his father back in Metro early yesterday -- granting his pop's last wish to be brought home again.  While the living and the dead had no problems passing through customs, Peter wished his dad could have seen the sights along the way.  "I know he would have loved the trip. He would have loved the sights," Peter, 46, said of his 78-year-old father, a war vet from Winnipeg who lived through military service in North Africa -- only to take his last trip tucked in bags of ice bought at gas stations along the way.  Not that there was much time to stop, Peter explained from his Etobicoke home last night: "Ihad to go quick. The Midwest gets warm and the body would ... have ... you know."
Chatting to his widower father during the ride, Peter recalled: "In the mountains, I couldn't even turn on the heater." The son paused, then added of the trip: "I think my father would have laughed at it all." Peter and Nicholas' incredible journey really began in January, when the two ventured south to get a letter from Nicholas's brother in California. An L.A. medical doctor, his paperwork might have cleared up nagging problems with the elder Bashucky's veteran's benefits. And while they got the letter, it came too late for Nicholas, a former freight handler who suffered a stroke last Thursday night. The year before, he had had three others, but Peter
couldn't take him to a hospital in L.A. Thursday, explaining: "We didn't have the money."  On Friday, his dad suffered a fifth and final stroke. He died while lying on the bed of the camper. His son decided there and then he wasn't going to leave him in a strange land: "He wanted to go home. I wanted to take him," Peter said. So he wrapped the father of seven up in a comforter and packed plastic bags of ice all around him. "I just left him where he died and headed home," he said. Peter, who left California on Friday, said he drove for endless hours, and slept when he just couldn't go on. Whenever he took a break, he would find more ice and then bed down on the couch next to dad's corpse, explaining: "I was comfortable."  He wasn't even daunted by a phone call to a veterans' affairs official during the trek. The stunned official told him he was out to lunch. "I got hell for it," Peter said.  About the only time Peter felt nervous was when he approached the U.S.-Canada border. While he did have a letter from his physician uncle explaining why his driving companion inthe Coachmen motorhome was dead, he didn't know whether he'd be stopped.I didn't know where to cross. I just wanted to get back home," he said. Finally he crossed at Niagara Falls. While he was asked about smokes and booze, no one
mentioned dead bodies. "I wasn't asked and I didn't volunteer," he said.  He contacted the rest of his family when he got to the Canadian side. "I'm still in shock," said his brother Mike.  Asked what his father would have thought about the bizarre trip, Mike said: "My father wouldhave thought he was a Bashucky."
 Once back in Canada, Peter drove straight to the Turner & Porter Funeral Home at Bloor and Jane Sts. where his father had a pre-arranged funeral.  Once there, police and ambulance crews were called as well as the coroner to legally declare the man deceased.  He was then taken inside the funeral home while two attendants went into the vehicle and removed the remaining ice .
 Police said they aren't planning to lay charges against the son since there wasn't any criminal intent in his actions.  Cases of people driving dead loved ones over the border are virtually unknown, customs spokesman Duncan Smith said yesterday.  "It's rare if not completely odd to bring (a body) back in a Winnebago," Smith said.  Canada Customs' policy on shipping human remains is that a death certificate must be shown proving that the person died of natural causes and that they were not carrying a communicable disease.
 "We just want to make sure they don't have a knife stuck in their back," he said.

         -- With files from Moira MacDonald, Bill Sandford and Greig Reekie
                           

--
James Linn