Funny, to be digging through somebody’s life when they aren’t around to defend it.
Uncle Harry was kind of a myth. You never really got to know him. Your mom rolled her eyes when someone mentioned his name. Best you could suss, he was something of an oddball.
Uncle Harry was your dad’s brother – the one he never talked to. As black sheep go, he was by all accounts, one of the blackest.
Seems it wasn’t always the case – growing up as kids in Detroit, they were all tight. Maybe a little too tight.
Your Mom and Dad were high school sweethearts – back in the days when love was crammed full of forever and possibilities were endless for picket fences and two car garages. Harry was busy being an engineer at a local radio station. The guy who had a thing for capacitors and tubes in high school got his dream job the second he graduated.
When your dad got drafted and shipped off to Korea, Harry kept your mom company while Dad was busy crossing the 38th Parallel.
And then it got a little sticky. Maybe one night – maybe brewing on the back-burner for years. Your mom and Harry up and fell in love and bliss went haywire. Guilt was running laps around Royal Oak and the best thing that could happen was pretend nothing was wrong and grin with complacency. But behind closed doors . . .
Armistice – Dad gets shipped home. Mom and Harry went back to being buddies as if hot and steamy never happened in the first place. An air of “funny” was settling over the family home – funny, in the sense of “something’s wrong with this picture”, but everyone chalked it up to the War. Nobody thought for a second there was hardcore consummation going on.
Happily-ever-after. Dad hated Winter in Detroit – mom wasn’t so wild about them either. They made plans to move to California – all the commercials about oranges and gift boxes from Sunny Southern California to frozen Michigan were starting to pay off. “Mission Pack: no gift so bright – so gay – so right!” Rang receptive chimes all over the East.
Took a couple years, but the wheels were in motion. By Summer of 1956 bags were packed, a moving van was pulling out of the driveway and mom and dad were heading off to the Wild West.
Well . . .mom and dad and you. You were getting ready to become morning sickness around Tulsa Oklahoma – you hadn’t made an appearance yet. You came about as the result of “one for old times sake” on the Friday before the big move.
Nobody suspected anything until your mom started doing the math and arrived at the conclusion her breathless quip; “do you think we conceived?” had some weight, to the tune of eight pounds 10 ounces.
But things went along just like normal for a few years. Until you started standing up, walking and being curious.
You liked boxes – you liked colorful boxes – you liked finding boxes – you liked opening boxes and you liked pulling things out of boxes.
Your mom’s closet was a forest of boxes – shoe boxes – hat boxes – boxes wrapped in ribbon. It was the red ribbon that got your attention as you hauled it out, unwrapped the ribbon and let a flood of photos, envelopes and letters spill out on the floor.
As fate would have it – Mom was out stocking up on groceries at Loblaws in Windsor and Dad was busy fixing light switches in the hallway as you came tumbling out with your swag.
Dad feigned a look of aggravation and scooped up your litter, getting ready to put everything back when he caught some names on an envelope.
He thumbed through the stack, realizing they were letters from Uncle Harry to your mom. A lot of them.
And that’s around the time World War 3 started.
The fight lasted for weeks – you don’t remember much but all you heard were things breaking and a lot of yelling. Dad wound up leaving the house. Mom wound up on the phone to Harry, who was now living in Palm Desert, having ditched Detroit years earlier.
Things eventually settled down and promises were made never to bring up Harry’s name or anything about him again.
It went along that way until you got the phone call that Harry had died and could you help clean out the storage locker in Palm Springs?
People die and they often leave boxes of stuff. Nondescript stuff that only means something to them and casts a big question mark to those it doesn’t.
In Harry’s case it was paperwork – high school yearbooks – schematics – radio tubes and a box of reels of tapes from the radio station back in the day – along with the usual cadre of books; Think and Grow Rich, From Here To Eternity, Lesbian Gym and a small army of Readers Digest Condensed Books.
You scooped up the yearbooks, photos and tapes and quietly let Desert D-Clutter take care of the rest.
Now that dad was gone and mom was in assisted living, asking probing questions about the past seemed a little pointless. Your mom would have gone vacant anyway.
Instead, you drove home. Dragged out your reel-to-reel player and played the first tape.
And all of a sudden you became Morning Sickness again and started pondering all the secrets and what if’s.
After all those years he stopped being “weird Uncle Harry” and became dad.
Couldn’t quite wrap your head around that.
And while the pondering goes on, here’s an hour’s worth of WXYZ in Detroit from November 2, 1956.
