My Uncle Frank

I dreamt of my uncle Frank last night…

My uncle died a little over a year ago. He was my dad’s best friend and one of my closest relatives growing up. At the funeral my dad’s younger brother, (my uncle Xavier) and I were chatting and he said: “Your dad and Frank-O almost made you a killer didn’t they?” I laughed and nodded “almost indeed”… 

I have no memory of my uncle Frank being a wild party animal but the stories my aunts and uncles tell about him in the late 60’s and early 70’s are tails of debauchery and rowdiness that remind me a lot of my friends and I. My earliest memories of Frank are of a very short man with his faded jeans rolled up exposing the zipper on his combat boots and a white single chest pocket T-shirt. Sort of James Dean now that I think about it, and never without a bottle of Coke in his hand, he drank 4 or 5 Cokes a day, that was his replacement for booze by that time. And he smoked like it was his job. Camel Non-Filters and a stubby soft pack was always tucked in the chest pocket of his white T-Shirt.  He wore a mesh-back camouflage hat with the top folded into a military style concave, which gave it a slightly more formal look, and it sat every so fragile on the very top of his balding head, leaving room for his small grey pony tail to emerge out the back just below the size adjusting clasps. Pictures of me exist from this time period where I’m also wearing what we now call a Trucker Hat that my uncle gifted me in his image and I look awkward as hell in them. The hats huge rim jutting out from my forehead like a platypus beak and the back claps set to the smallest it would go with the last possible union of knob and hole clinging together to hold my curly black hair from spilling out in all directions like so many worms escaping their tin can prison before they become fish bait.

He drove a huge brown and yellow late model station wagon, the kind that had an ash tray and electric cigarette lighter in every arm rest. 15 people could independently light and cultivate the cherry of their cigarette in that rolling tobacco fortress. My spot was the direct center of the backseat where I sat unbelted on the unfurled folding arm rest which I referred to as “The Bump”. That spot gave me an extra 3 inches to see out the windows more clearly. This may be a surprise to people but I've always been a shorty, even when i was 8. My uncle’s car was littered with empty Coke bottles, McDonald’s wrappers and smashed Camel packs. The ‘way-back’ as I called it, was a tangle of fishing poles, pool sticks, sharp and dangerous looking tools, and boxes of rifle shells for the various guns that lay hidden in their soft cases depending on the season. I remember thinking that messy pop and junk food and cigarette cars where what lifelong unmarried guys like my uncle do all day without question and I couldn’t wait to become one. Sometimes I’d climb into the front and sit directly facing the giant center console.  Everyone’s fingers were larger in the 1970’s when this car was made so all the buttons and knobs where huge. The ash tray was crammed to standing room only with hundreds of cigarette butts poking out. Some of them had lipstick stains on them. He smoked the Non-filters and they were alluring to me because they looked like the joints I’d seen my neighborhood friend Dan’s older brother smoke in his room when we were in there listening to Black Sabbath. I wasn’t really sure what either would be like but I knew I wanted to try them as soon as I could. The radio was an old fashioned AM/FM stereo high-fi where you’d push a rectangular button that was the width of a stick of gum like a cashier slams her cash drawer shut at a gas station after giving your change. The satisfying “Ka-chunk” would send the tiny orange bar inside the horizontal dial on an analog jump from 1480 to 960 and ZZ Top would fade in with a crackle that no one born after the year 2000 will ever understand non-ironically.  

No one called my Uncle Frank ‘Frank’. He was known as Franky or Frank-O or Chapparro, which is Spanish for “Shorty”. My dad called him The American though which always made me laugh. My dad has ridiculous names for every person I’ve ever known that he has met. His naming convention defies definition but it hovers somewhere around the British penchant for rhyming off-kilter words mixed with a touch of 60’s pop culture. Frank became Frank-O which became Frank-O-American (the American food company that manufactured Spaghetti-O’s before Campbell’s bought them out) to just American or The American. My dad would simply say: “The Americans coming over tomorrow, we’re getting up at 5 to get those squirrelies boy…” 

Frank bought me my first bike. I lead-heavy Schwinn with mud guards, and reflectors, and number plates, and training wheels, and maybe even sissy tassels sprouting out of the hand grips I can’t remember. It was really nice but horribly uncool compared to the feather-lite Mongoose dirt bikes with red or blue tires the other kids had. Mine was basically a starter bike that had made a deal with gravity without consulting me rendering it impossible to pop wheelies or attain any air off makeshift ramps of plywood and cinder block; there-by furthering my uncoolness. But more importantly Frank bought me my first shot gun. A Winchester 20 gauge 5-shot pump action. I was too little to even shoot it for at least a year if I remember correctly. I think my mom might have used that fact to try and get me to eat more vegetables which I viewed as my mortal enemies at that time. But what I lacked in 2-wheeled bravado I more than made up for in firepower and all the neighborhood kids enjoyed gawking and rubber necking my arsenal of firearms.

I spent a great deal of my early years in the woods with my dad and my uncle shooting various woodland creatures. My dad and uncle were both amazingly good marksmen and they taught me how to shoot with great accuracy. That accuracy came in handy with the neighborhood kids when we contested our sniper abilities. Today the only creatures that bear the wrath of that training are an occasional Chicago alley-rat as I’ve giving up hunting for sport. My uncle and dad said that if I hadn’t discovered girls at about the age of 14 I’d have surely turned into a woodsmen like them. Or a ‘killer’ like my uncle Xavier put it. I think they're right.

The last time I saw him, I walked into the hospital bedroom in front of my dad and he looked over at me, his body frail and weak. I’d guess him to be about 95 pounds or less at that time, but his huge hazel eyes were bright and alive as ever. He said: “Hey there Jay-Bird, what da ya say?” I spoke quieter than normal, I think most people do in hospitals: “Oh you know… hanging in there, how are you?” he replied instantly with a stern: “I’m ready to get the fuck outta here, dying sucks”.   

It was nice visiting those memories last night. Nice to see my uncle again in the health we all want to be remembered in.

It was good seeing you again Uncle Frank…