Mox Nix.

 By S.E. Schaible

My mother’s family hailed from Pennsylvania Dutch country in the Lehigh Valley. For this essay (and in the interest of your being correct moving forward), when you read “Pennsylvania Dutch,” what you should take it to mean is Pennsylvania German. Just trust me here. There is no need to look into it.

My mother’s parents, my Nana and Pop Pop Rex, spoke an equal mix of English and German, at least when I was around them. I never asked if they conversed mostly in German when my parents and brothers weren’t around, but I am certain the answer was ja. The egg man never spoke any English when he came to their door on Tuesdays. Same with the beverage delivery guy who would drop cases of Yeungling Lager and A-Treat Cream and Orange Sodas and take back the wooden crates of empties. A-Treat was the best cream soda I ever tasted, and it was the only brand I can recall that was red in color instead of amber.

My grandparents made a funny pair. They loved each other, and they were tough. He worked at Bethlehem Steel for over 40 years, and she was a lunch lady at the local junior high school just down the road from their place. They had little episodes and quarrels about trivial things, and predictably Luther – my Pop Pop – would act butthurt or take things a little too far. One time Nana baked a shoe-fly pie that maybe spent a minute too long in the oven for his liking, and you would have thought she served him uncooked pork, He’d hem and haw about it every time he had a slice until it was gone. “Jesus, Mother! The crumbs are dark on top. You weren’t watching.” But Florence – that was Nana’s name – had the perfect way of drawing his needling to a close. When he wouldn’t drop something, in whatever language, she would unfold her wrinkled hands, shrug her shoulders with her palms upwards and say, “Mox Nix.”

I don’t recall ever asking or being told what it meant. It hardly needed any explanation. The context made it as clear as her jade green eyes: “It doesn’t matter.” It meant, no worries. It meant, let’s talk about something else. It was a light and lively way to let the entire table know that everyone heard her husband the fourth time he repeated it. GIs stationed in Germany in World War 2 apparently picked up and modified Mox Nix from the original Macht Nichts. It was a simple way to call bullshit or declare indifference.

I use it in place of my default New Jersey vernacular, aka Fuhgeddaboudit. While very real, the Jersey version is little more than a cliché today. It’s old news; banal gangster movie shlock circa 1981. I left the 201-area code 32 years ago. I would sound like a complete dork if I rolled that out today.

Mox Nix. Give it a test drive. Start with something easy, like a nearly victimless crime. Perhaps some hack walks off with your coffee from the mobile order table. Maybe you thought that guy walking out the door seemed a bit off as you were entering. Rather than jogging down the block to have a low-percentage confrontation that could backfire, keep that powder dry for some time when you have concrete proof of shenanigans. Say Mox Nix and enjoy the fresh cup that the barista has been trained to provide when this inevitably happens.