“Hey Slug” my dad would say as he faked a punch to the gut
of my Uncle Ted… “How the hell are you?”
My dad always seemed to greet my Uncle Ted the same way when
my aunt Helen (my dad’s younger Sister) and my uncle would come over to the house.
Then he’d usually follow it up with the same question… “What are you having…the
usual?” That was always a double bourbon and water on the rocks in a tall glass…and
in all the time I was growing up and they’d come over to our home in West Los
Angeles (or host us over at their home in Long Beach), I never recall any of
them having more than two drinks. For that matter, I don’t really ever recall
my dad having more than one.
My aunt and uncle were always impeccably dressed. They both
passed away a couple of years apart about 10 or 15 years or so ago, but in all
the time I knew them I never saw them wearing anything that didn’t look like
they’d just stepped out of a Bloomingdales catalog. My fiery red-headed aunt
always had on a high-end dress and usually some kind of mink (especially in the
winter months…where the wind chill in southern California can dip into the 60s
with a stiff Pacific breeze) and my uncle Ted always wore pressed slacks and a
nice sports coat. He’d usually have on a tie too…but I remember he gave that up
on most visits sometime in the mid-seventies…times were a changing for sure.
After my dad would mix the drinks they’d usually move out by
the pool on the back patio. Though it’s at least 25 years since I saw them
there, I can vividly picture my dad and uncle sitting on the patio, knocking
back some bourbon and seeing the glow of their cigarettes as they each took
drags on their respective Lucky Strikes. I never knew my father to smoke…but he’d
always bum a cigarette or two to share with my uncle Ted…and he always looked
like he’d stepped off the silver screen when he did it too…so it was pretty obvious
he’d had some practice when I wasn’t around. Frank and Dean probably had something
on these guys, but it wasn’t much. They were pretty cool.
At some point early on, my uncle Ted would invariably and
modestly mention that he’d just got a new car, and without fail, my dad would
leap up from the lounge chair and enthusiastically walk down the side driveway
to check out the new rig. We’d buy a car about every 8 years in my family…and
we always only ever had one. My uncle however, who was a devoted Ford man,
would trade them out every year or so…sometimes more often than that…so it was
always exciting to see his latest purchase.
He always drove these huge sedans…but then again, seems like
everybody did. He was particularly fond of LTDs…and I remember he’d purchased a
couple that had this kind of dark avocado paint job with a dark vinyl roof. My
father, who only had a high school education, was an absolute a Dale Carnegie
master of making my uncle feel like a big shot. He’d walk around the car a
couple of times, demand my uncle pop the hood, stand and marvel at the engine a
bit before checking out the interior and commenting on how beautiful it was.
Just as a side note, my uncle used to wipe down the engine and carburetor top
of his vehicle several times of week. When he would pop the hood, the actual
engine looked every bit as good as it did on the showroom floor. That was under
the hood mind you…I’ll let you imagine how the rest of the car looked.
Both my dad and uncle served in the U.S. Navy, and that’s
where they had met when my uncle started courting my dad’s sister. As noted
here before, my father served on a couple of big ships including the Battleship
Mississippi and the carrier Ticonderoga (the one that was later used to pick up
the Apollo astronauts). My uncle was in Pearl Harbor on December 7th,
1941…and though I’d have to pry them out of them both…they had their share of
stories. My uncle could provide a blow-by-blow eyewitness description of that Sunday morning in Hawaii…and I’d give a
lot right now just to hear him recount that day just one more time. Those guys
both endured so much…and it never dawned on me for a second at that young age
that they wouldn’t be here forever.
What’s the point of all this? Well, if you’d been following
this blog for any length of time you know there isn’t one. Just following the
number one rule on this site, and writing down the first thing that comes to my
mind on a Friday morning at 4am. So happens that this Veterans’ Day week, I was
thinking about these two guys and the legions of other men and women that have
served sacrificed so that I could worry about my big problems like whether the
gardener shows up on Monday to pick up these damn leaves or about getting the
hood ornament replaced that was stolen on my luxury sedan.
Anchors Aweigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment