Tag Archives: memoir

Cousins, Part Two.

16 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in alcoholism, Health Issues, Sexual Identity

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When our story left off, Annette had just come out as a Lesbian to me and my wife. This revelation would fall under the heading of Confirming Our Suspicions.  Nevertheless, it was a huge deal to come out in the mid to late Eighties.  We came to understand that her sexual orientation was just one aspect of who Annette was a person. What Annette never had was an enduring relationship. She had attractions, dalliances, affairs.  We never met her lovers.

She was a loving and caring aunt, but a realistic, observant and feisty one.  She rapidly discerned that her surrogate parenting job entailed damage control around her brother’s marital and familial escapades.  She once confided in me that Leroy had an eye for “White Trash”.  He would get married, with all the accompanying optimism.  Then the drinking and the late hours at the Safeway would erode the foundation of family life.  Finally  the once-blissful bride would depart, to “find herself”, leaving Annette with the job of taking care of her niece, then a nephew, whilst Leroy was at the store. It actually worked out fairly well, because Annette had both a sense of  responsibility but also fun. There was the pool at Aunt Lois’s for summer days.  In its quirky, near dysfunctional way, the children received nurturing and parenting.

Meanwhile, Aunt Ruby’s health was declining, in a predictable descent; diabetes, impaired circulation, nerve damage, gangrene, amputation, and heart disease.  Ruby passed, leaving Annette and Leroy in the bedlam.

The niece and the nephew, children of different mothers, grew up. Annette’s health spiraled downward, so that the house she inherited from Aunt Ruby fell into disrepair. An opossum moved into the attic through an open vent. My brother named him “Maurice The Marsupial”. Her obesity had rendered her disabled. She moved in with Aunt Lois.  Things were good at first. Aunt and niece would go to farmers’ markets, and cook for the family gatherings that occurred at the holidays.

Annette lived her lesbian life vicariously, through the internet, The Advocate, and lesbian-themed DVD’s. It was no kind of life for anybody to live. Soon the wheelchair was a necessity and the wheelchair ramp became part of the architecture of the postwar bungalow Lois and Annette called home.

Annette became Lois’s reason to live.  She took her to dialysis, the numerous other doctors’ appointments, and in January 2006, to the Medical College Hospital, where Annette lapsed into a coma, and died of renal failure.  There is a reason why they call it Morbid Obesity.

Leroy was the last of the family, Uncle Jim, Aunt Ruby, Annette were gone. About a decade before, Safeway pulled out of the Richmond market. Leroy then went back to school, and became a computer nerd, earning a good enough living to afford his own house with a swimming pool, private school for his son, and Austin Nichols Wild Turkey Whiskey.

His alcoholism captured him, isolating him from the family.  He surfaced for the principal family events, which were now funerals.  My brother, through a circuitous system, involving Magic Jack, would contact him of the passings,  Aunt Lois in May 2011, my Dad in August 2011, Cousin  Bailey in January 2012. He and his son would show up at the funerals.

One day, in March 2012, my siblings, my elder son, and another cousin  were cleaning out the house where Pop, Grandma, Aunt Lois, and finally, Annette had all lived, preparing it to sell and settle Lois’s estate. We were interrupted by a call from Leroy. He had fallen and cracked a vertebrae in his neck.  He was in the hospital.  The neck fracture came from bones weakened by metastatic cancer of the lung.  Leroy was still smoking the Marlboro Reds in the box, just like he did in High School. His son was joined by his daughter,  now an Army wife, who had flown in from Germany. His ex-wives came back as he now lay in hospice.  Within two weeks of that phone call, Leroy was dead.

After Leroy died, we learned his biological father had not died as we were told. Ruby had divorced him. The family was a family of secrets.  There were emotions, numbed by food, turned raw by alcohol.  Were Leroy and Annette ever happy? Probably not.

Cousins, Part One.

09 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in cooking, Health Issues, Sexual Identity

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They were born on 21 August ten years apart, he in 1949, she in 1959. We’ll call him Leroy, her Annette. Daddy’s brother, Uncle Jim, married their mother Ruby all of sudden.  One week, he was single, living with my grandparents, the next week he was married. He was in his early thirties, a WW II veteran, a CPA.  Ruby, they said, was a widow with a child, Leroy.  That is what we were told. Being children, not investigative reporters, that was a perfectly good explanation.  I remember playing at their house in Highland Park, a North Richmond neighborhood.  Then they moved to Lakeside, in a house near my grandparents with a gate allowing passage between the two houses.

Uncle Jim was hard of hearing. He was in the Navy during The War.  My mother told me he was based in Australia. He was a sonar man.  That was all I knew of his war service until my brother told me he was awarded the Purple Heart when he burned himself with his soldering iron while his submarine was being depth-charged.  It is fairly easy to conclude his hearing loss was attributable, in part,  to the depth-charging.   Imagine, for a while, being in a long steel cylinder, under 60+ feet of water, and people on the surface are dropping explosives on or near that cylinder with the intention of killing you..  Do you think you might be a little crazy after that experience?

So, all of a sudden Bachelor Uncle marries Aunt Ruby and adopts Leroy.  They live near Pop, Grandma and my Aunt Lois, who still lives with her parents.  We visit my grandparents nearly every week.  So we see them a lot. Sometime after 1957, they get a dog, which they name Sputnik, after the Russian satellite.  Leroy likes Elvis and The Mickey Mouse Club. Life rolls along, and they next thing we know Aunt Ruby has a baby. Everybody is surprised. I mean she had a weight problem, but hiding, not talking about a pregnancy with a family that’s pretty damn close is weird. We children were hip to the whole Women Having Babies And Being Mothers Thing. Why they would hide it from us because of some sexual inhibition wasn’t an issue.  I remember seeing my new cousin at the hospital and learning they named her Annette at the urging of Leroy.  To you youngsters out there, Annette Funicello was one of the Mouseketeers on  The Mickey Mouse Club. In the prepubescent world of 1950’s sexuality, she was the hot one to the boys.

We keep seeing our grandparents, aunts, uncle, cousins. We now notice that Annette has a weight problem just like Aunt Ruby and Uncle Jim.  We start to call them The Tank Family.  Cooking  was Aunt Ruby’s passion.  She was good at it and she expected that you eat! Having plenty of food was an obsession of Depression survivors of my parents generation. Annette’s problem morphed into obesity.

Our nuclear family moves in our own specific areas of interest. We see the Tank Family less and less frequently. They move to a subdivision called West End Manor into a typical tri-level. Uncle Jim gets active in the American Legion; Aunt Ruby participates in the Auxiliary. Leroy graduates from high school, gets a job at the Safeway. Daddy gets him in the Marine Reserve and away from service in Vietnam.  Leroy marries someone named Alice whom I never met. The constant is Annette’s weight.  Annette is home, going to high school. She isn’t much interested in boys.

The other constant is Leroy’s inability to form a stable relationship with a woman. He divorces Alice, finds some woman named Myrtle, marries her. I never meet her either. Leroy liked women. Women liked him. He also liked to drink.

After my grandparents die, Aunt Lois inherits the house.  She has a successful career as a civil servant, with a high-powered job with the Defense Supply Agency.  In the early 1980’s she puts in a nice in-ground pool..  The family reconnects at my Aunt’s, like in the days when we were young children.  My sons get to know my cousins’ sons and daughters. (It’s a rarity these days when second cousins are close.)  The next tragedy is the death from a heart attack of Uncle Jim, in 1985, at age 60.  We get even closer as an extended family.

We see Annette more and more frequently. Her obesity spins off into diabetes.   Around this time, Annette comes out to my then wife and me. I had known gay and lesbian people before this, but never had I known one to come out.  All of a sudden, a distant issue becomes very immediate.

 

Wrasslin’- Joe Murnick

14 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by in Sport

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I’m continually amazed at how memories surface. I was thinking about the Donald Trump presidential bid and, in my mind,  I compared Trump to professional wrestler Ric Flair.  I guess because both are flamboyant blowhards who lack the gravitas to be anything other than TV personalities. The memory process, like Proust and his madeleine, brought me back to childhood, when I first began watching professional wrestling or wrasslin’, to use the idiom.

Wrasslin’ showed up on my TV when I was 10 or 11. The stark Good vs. Evil metaphor took command in my head, stayed there for years til I figured out it was all fake.  There were real “characters” parading around in ugly nylon briefs, snug around blocky, bulging torsos, or long spandex tights going to mid-calf. The Good Guys, circa 1962, wore the ugly briefs, the Bad Guys, the more flamboyant get-ups.  The  Good Guys had names like George or Johnny, the Bad Guys were Kurt and Karl, Lars and Gene. Sometimes the Bad guys wore masks and came from “Parts Unknown”. It seemed so real  to my prepubescent mind and sense of justice. The protagonists would have their TV match. The Bad Guys would win through some obvious skulduggery. Between TV bouts, the host, a guy named Bob Caudle would interview the wrestlers. The Bad Guys always seemed  to be yelling, threatening to get the Good Guys at the next fight, which would be announced as taking place at  the Atlantic Rural Exposition Grounds on such and such a Friday night. That was the Fairgrounds, here in Richmond, on Laburnum Avenue. Next, the ring announcer, a man named Joe Murnick, would introduce the, uh, “competitors” for the next bout. The second bout was more of the same, but who cared?

Fast forward seven years. I am 18, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School, member of the Key Club (affiliated with the service organization Kiwanis International), and participant in the “Little Buddy” program. Now our “Little Buddies” had nothing to do with Gilligan and The Skipper, The Skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.) constantly referring to Gilligan (Bob Denver) as “Little Buddy”. Rather, it was a program, where we would mentor under-privileged children from the poor white neighborhood of Oregon Hill.  We would constantly be having activities with the boys, getting  to know them, hopefully doing some good. One day, somehow, we Key Clubbers got to talking about professional wrestling and Donald B said he could get tickets to the matches from his uncle, Joe Murnick.  It turned out Joe was the promoter behind Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling that was based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Richmond was one stop on the circuit. Sure enough, Donald came through with tickets, we picked up our Little Buddies, and drove off to the Fairgrounds. They held the matches in the same building where they judged the livestock at the Fair. This livestock, however, came on two legs, rather than four. There were bleachers set up, and we fans sat and watched the bouts. I don’t remember who the wrestlers were that night. What I do remember is that our little 10 year old charges went nuts over the event, while we super-sophisticated 17 and 18 year old Big Buddies saw through the goings on.  So much for inculcating Middle Class values.

Wrestling went dormant about fifteen years til Vince McMahon cobbled together the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), now World Wrestling Entertainment.  Then Captain Lou Albano, Mr Fuji, Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, Jesse Ventura, and Hulk Hogan took center stage and  wrestling went Big Time.  My cousin Kenny was an avid follower. He could tell you any and everything you ever wanted to know about the sport. I could say, “You know Dusty Rhodes really is The American Dream.”  “Oh he is!” Kenny would enthusiastically concur. Kenny had an inexhaustible sense of fun, true joy.

Now over thirty years has passed. Our much-beloved cousin Kenny succumbed to cancer on his 62nd birthday in 2012. The Fairgrounds were purchased by NASCAR  and the State Fair moved to a new site up  I-95 near Doswell. The WWE, if it still comes to town, is at The Richmond Coliseum, a forty year-old senescent building, home now for an occasional college basketball game, tractor pull, Disney on Ice and The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.