2001-06-17 - 11:16 p.m.

Uncle Frank, Part 2

I remember that Uncle Frank was eventually estranged from our branch of the family. I'm trying to remember why, and all I can come up with is that my parents were displeased with the Xmas gifts he was sending us. I recollect that they got odder year by year. One year it was a selection of colored sugars in clear colored bowls. My mother didn't much care for this gift, but the blue and orange sugar came in handy while decorating Xmas cookies.

One Xmas he sent a selection of different wine vinegars, and that was essentially the last straw. For some reason this gift really seemed to irritate my mother. My family didn't have much to do with him after that.

This was actually part of a larger trend - throughout the 70s my parents gradually unplugged their social connections until my mother was a virtual hermit.

Eventually Uncle Frank retired from Bonwit Teller, and moved to San Francisco to help take care of Grandmother Iva, his father's second wife.

I just remembered one story of Uncle Frank's days at Bonwit Teller. One day in the early 50s Leo Durocher bought something at his counter. Durocher was manager of one of the big New York baseball teams from 1939 to 1955, but Uncle Frank wasn't a baseball fan so he had no idea who Durocher was.

Uncle Frank was filling out the credit slip, so he asked Durocher his name. The baseball manager was with a couple of ladies he was trying to impress, so he was not pleased that he wasn't instantly recognized.

"Leo!" was his gruff reply.

Uncle Frank still didn't get what was going on, so he asked him for his last name.

"DUROCHER!" bellowed the incredulous baseball star.

Around the time I graduated from college, one of our cousins got married in San Francisco, and I got a chance to see Uncle Frank again.

He looked quite a bit different than when I'd seen him as a kid. He was older, of course, but he'd also changed his personal style a bit. Instead of being clean-shaven (like EVERYONE was, back in the day) he had a pencil thin moustache, a la Clark Gable. He also wore suits with bow ties, which I've always thought were kind of geeky. He basically was a cute old guy.

Being older and a little more perceptive, it occurred to me that "confirmed bachelor" was a nice way of saying "gay guy." This bothered me not at all - I'd known plenty of gay people in college.

Actually, I rather liked my Uncle Frank. Of the entire crowd relatives he was the only one who talked to me like I was an adult. I always got the impression that my cousins looked down on me. Actually, he seemed to be the only one who bothered to talk to me at all.

In spite of me figuring out Uncle Frank was gay, he was about to get married himself. There was a woman he had known in school years before and the two of them were going to be married in a few months. The woman's name was Lydia, and she seemed rather mannish, but I liked her. When I saw uncle Frank again, he was still unmarried, and there was no mention of what happened to Lydia.

The next time I saw Uncle Frank was when he unexpectedly turned up in Frown Town some years later. I'm trying to remember why he was in town, and I think it was because he was finally tired of my father refusing to talk to him so he was switching brokers. Hey, this is back to where we started, isn't it?

He took me out to dinner. I'm not sure why he did that, but I think was trying to pump me for information. Why wouldn't his brother talk to him? I told him that I had no idea what Dad's problem was but I had learned long ago not to be surprised by Dad's weird behavior.

It was curiously enjoyable to go out with Uncle Frank. He had this nervous, rapid-fire way of talking, and he seemed totally self-absorbed. His health, his investments, his travels, these seemed to be his only subjects of conversation. This didn't bother me at all, in fact it was rather relaxing - there were no awkward pauses because Uncle Frank was constantly talking.

I found it terribly flattering that he wanted to go out to dinner with me. In my life I've gotten very little attention from adults older than me, and Uncle Frank was a pretty interesting conversationalist.

That year he actually gave me an Xmas present: some shares of a Mutual Fund. It's 12 years later and I still have them - they have not done much. That Xmas I gave him a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.

He showed up in town unexpectedly about four or five times after that. One time I recollect that he took Lilac and I out to dinner. But I also remember seeing him after Lilac split.

concluded, tomorrow