LMF14

Valentine's Day would have been their wedding anniversary.  Uncle Louie and Auntie Maffie's.  (See my "Cookie" post last month.) 

As an adult, Uncle Louie was the first person that I loved with all my heart and soul that I lost.  It slayed me.  It slayed all our family.  Losing him made me realize that my family was not going to be around forever.  It scared me breathless. 

Uncle Louie was a huge man.  Massive hands.  The broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen (not in a football uniform).  But when he smiled and laughed, he suddenly was the gentlest thing I’d ever seen. He’d laugh so hard and his eyes would get all squinty and his whole body would shake.  He sort of laughed like a muppet – either Bert or Ernie, I can’t think of which one – and it made me laugh just to hear him.

Uncle introduced us to the Cape.  Enough said.

Uncle Louie taught me how to swim.  We would go out to the Big Rock on our beach.  He’d hold me and, even though I was scared, I knew he’d keep me safe.  I’d hold on to his shoulders and he never let go.  Until the day he did. And I swam away.

Uncle Louie made THE most delicious meat you’ll ever taste. He never told us what he put in the rub (little bugger) but it was to die for.  He’d put the venison on huge skewers and then cook them in a barrel in his backyard.  As a skewer was done, he’d put the meat in a silver bowl on the table and then go outside to check the rest of the meat.  Before he got to the barrel, the meat that he’d just brought in was gone and we were waiting for more.

Uncle Louie played the organ.  He's the first person I remember seeing play live music.  I'm not sure if watching him is what sparked my interest in the piano but I am sure that I was always amazed at how his huge fingers could play the keys with such accuracy. 

Uncle Louie's red and white polka-dot hat that he wore for quahogging still hangs in the house at the Cape.  I can see him in the water, digging for quahogs.  He’d bring them home and open them for us non-stop.  He made it look so easy.  We’d eat them raw with vinegar or tabasco like they were candy.

Uncle Louie taught me how to blow a bubble.  I remember sitting in the back seat of their car.  (Well, really it was “his” car because Auntie Maffie never got her license).  I was so afraid that I was going to spit the gum out at them.  We were laughing so hard, I thought we were going to run off the road.  He told me that we would not get out of the car until I learned to blow a bubble.  I did.

Every time there was an election in Franklin, I’d go to Ma Glockner’s with Uncle Louie and Auntie Maffie. It was our tradition.  He always ordered me a Shirley Temple.  I never liked them, but I never told him so.

He was very proud of his country.  If you helped him take the flag off of the flagpole, you’d better do it right or not at all.

He had a teeny tiny radio on the mantel down the cape that played swing music constantly.  I cannot listen to swing music without thinking of him. 

Uncle Louie got up at the crack of dawn.  When we slept over down the cape, and he thought it was time for us to be up, he’d take a broom handle and whack it on the ceiling of the livingroom which was right below where we slept.  Suddenly, we were up and ready for the day too!

Because he got up so early, he’d fall asleep on the couch in the middle of the day, throughout the day, like nobody’s business.  He’d snore so loudly that he’d wake himself up.  If I may say so myself, I imitate him freakishly well.  Sometimes G asks me to imitate Uncle Louie snoring because it’s so funny.  (There are apparently no end to my talents.)

It occurred to me this morning while running that he always wore converse-like sneakers in the water.  Hmmm....maybe it's from him that I get my obsession.

One time when I was quite young, I stayed down the cape without my parents.  I apparently forgot to pack my belt.  He went out to his shed and came back with a piece of thick rope that he thought I might use to hold up my pants.  I was horrified.  I didn't want to hurt his feelings so I wore the damn rope all weekend.  He knew that I so embarrassed and it cracked him up. He teased me about it for years.  When G and I got married, Auntie Maffie and Uncle Louie gave us a great butcherblock for our kitchen.  Inside the drawer, he put a piece of thick rope.

In September, 1997, I was sitting at their kitchen table down the cape when he told me that he had just gotten back from the doctor's. He had cancer. He didn't know how bad it was. I wasn't the least bit concerned.  This was Uncle Louie we were talking about.  Are you kidding me?  He can beat this.  G and I got married a month later.  Uncle Louie was already starting to decline by that point, but there was no way he was going to miss our wedding.  Our photograher took a Pecci Family Picture that was taken at the reception and it is one of my favorite things in this world.  It's the last photo I have of him. 

Uncle Louie passed away two days before Christmas, 1997.  I am so sad that he never got to know H and M.  Man, would he love them.