I was nine years old in 1956 when I attended my first wake. I recall Uncle Mike’s snowy white hair as he lay in a half open coffin at Obrien’s Funeral Home. He was a mischievous uncle, capable I thought, of sitting up and grabbing me at any moment. Uncle Mike loved holding me with one hand and tickling me with the other. I knew that getting attention from an adult was a gift so I didn’t entirely discourage it at first, although my struggle to escape his grip became a genuine concern. I learned to take a wide path around my seated Uncle when he had a certain look in his eye.

I knew Uncle Mike near the end of his life, when he was living alone in an inter-city housing project on Wyllys Street in Hartford, Connecticut. Dutch Point was comprised of identical, closely packed, two story brick buildings that formed a square around a large asphalt playground. It seemed a tired and shabby place. The playground was usually filled with older kids and I was discouraged from hanging around there. Most of my memories of my uncle were formed from the time I spent inside his small second floor apartment.

My uncle lived on tomato soup; you could smell it as you walked up the steep narrow staircase. His Melmac soup bowls were indelibly encrusted with a dark orange rim as proof of his affinity for it. When you entered his apartment, you noticed dozens of empty Chianti bottles clamped inside form fitting baskets hanging from the ceiling. It was the coolest decorating idea I ever saw. His adult daughter Anna Mae, who lived with him for a while was the interior decorator. For years I was smitten with Anna Mae Ryan.

A huge wooden television console with a tiny nine inch screen embedded in the center dominated the living room. Uncle Mike, my father and I, spent a few dimly lit Friday nights watching tiny prizefighters going at it on The Gillette Cavalcade Of Sports. My uncle would yell ‘Cripes’ to articulate his displeasure with the performance of a pugilist or to show his disfavor with just about anything. The expletive seemed a great way of swearing without getting in trouble.

My uncle’s life, like that of most of his brothers and his sister, had a a Vaudevillian ring. He would regale me with Irish poems about drunken men on bar room floors or entertain me by placing a double edge razor blade on the tip of his finger and swirling it around the inside of an emoty water glass. I didn’t realize at the time that this dangerous blade spectacle was an exercise in frugality by sharpening the blade for reuse.

Uncle Mike had been a champion Irish step dancer and was an accomplished fiddle player although I never had a chance to see him dance nor do I remember his playing. My only reference to a violin was when he gave me an old violin bow for my fifth or sixth birthday. I didn’t mind that the hair along the bow was frayed and that it had a wooden piece missing on one end; it was heavy and real, it was a great gift.

Uncle Mike had a bit of the rascal in him. He got me in a fine mess when he had me commit this great lyric poem to memory and recite it at a family gathering when I was six or seven.

Listen, listen, the cat is pissin
Where, where, under the chair
Run, run, get the gun
O shit, it’s all done

Cripes!

Despite my Uncle’s propensity for over-tickling and lurid poetry or perhaps because of it, I remember him fondly. Over the years I've heard amazing stories about his life. Perhaps someday I'll write about the man, but for now, I just want to remember him for who he was to me.

DUTCH POINT - Picture taken May 2005