Those garish colors of the coat of arms is a dead give away as to what that is. Back in the late 50s through the mid 70s one could buy a copy of one’s family’s "official heraldric" coat of arms for some ridiculously low amount of money and for escalating prices buy various suitable for hanging framed versions of your researched and certified family coat-of-ams. They’d even provide you with a floridly written description of the meaning of the symbology on the coat’d armes. For several hundred dollars, they’d even sell you an authentic shield and sword with your family symbol painted on it. . . And for a couple grand, you could add a full set of plate armor, suitable for the next time someone threw down the gauntlet and challenged you to a joust.
My mom thought it hilarious. So she requested a lowest priced coat-of-arms for. $14.95 . . . for a cat we had at tha time named after a mistaken name on a statue in a New Orleans Catholic mission church, which was receiving gifts of furniture and particularly saint’s icon statues from other churches when it was being constructed in the early nineteenth century.
One particular statue arrived minus its base where the saint’s identifying name is usually carved. . . But the French speaking monks who were building the sanctuary knew which saint this was—out of several hundred possibilities—because his name was painted on the crate the statue was shipped in. The monks carefully carved a new base for the very beautiful painted saint’s statue and installed it in the left rear corner niche of the sanctuary with its racks of votive candles for parishones to light when they ask "St. Fragilé" to intercede for them. Saint Fragilé is still there.
In any case, the company, owned by a company which would also sell you a diploma suitable for framing from any college or university of your choice, dutifully "researched" and located the coat-of-arms for Le Chat de Sainte Fragilé. We put it on the wall above his cat box. He got his name because of a penchant for finding fragile objects on shelves and "converting" them to rubble.
We had a Japanese friend named Yamaguchi, who somehow had a European branch of the Yamaguchi family with a coat-of-arms, according to this bogus operation, which they sold him. Both the cat’s and Yamaguchi-san’s coats-of-arms were in the same garish colors, with the same name banner below as Mr. Ramos’ has. Ergo, Ramos bought this from them. It’s a vanity fake.
I think they moved on to naming stars for people at $50 a pop, and selling real estate on Mars.
Great story!! ThankQ!
That’s Hilarious and reminds me of a story my mother told me back in the 60’s. She was listening to a local radio broadcast and they were having a contest to see who could come up with a better name for sour cream as it just sounds so...crass.
The winning submission...bovine passé. It seems everything sounds more sophisticated in French. We laughed about it for decades. She’s been gone for over twenty years. Thanks for triggering the memory.
LOL!!!!!
LOL!
LOVE THAT !!!
St Fragile Cat!
:) Le Chat de Sainte Fragilé.