The Last of the Italians

When I was a kid, my Uncle Pooch could do anything. Literally. Even live down the nick-name "Pooch", a name his wife tried to bury when they moved out to St. Croix, USVI, but which my mother resurrected on her first visit, only to have it spread like cancer.

There are a variety of stories behind the nickname, but the one that sticks - the one most recently told - was that it was assigned to him by Italian-American celebrity Don Ameche - you may remember him from Cocoon. You may not. I have no authority over your memories. Why should I?

My grandfather had a swing band that was moderately successful back in the Twenties and Thirties - it toured all over North and South America. The emcee for their shows was none other than Don Ameche, before he hit it big in Hollywood. While my grand dad was on tour, my Uncle George was born. Don Ameche took the call and yelled out across the practice stage to my grand dad: George - your wife gave birth last night! You got a pooch of your own, back home.

George Jr. was forever known as Pooch - back when he was travelling with his father's band as roadie; back when he contracted with a local Italian American Businessman to drive a hearse, no questions asked, daily from the hospital to the airport, where it would be unloaded quietly and quickly onto a plane by night. Pooch said they'd use the same body in the back until it "Wore out." Then they'd get a new one. Pooch joined the Marines in WWII and fought in all the major engagements. He was recalled to duty for Korea during the Dark Days of the Pusan Pocket.

The Pooch we knew became bored with life in the Allegheny Highlands of Western Pennsylvania. He built a boat and sailed to the US Virgin Islands where he lived for decades, becoming a fixture on the island. One time when I was moonlighting at the bookstore in Athens, Georgia a woman with an obvious West Indian accent came in. I asked her where she was from and, when she told me Christiansted, St. Croix, I asked her if she knew Captain George. She threw her head back and laughed a throaty, West Indian laugh. "Sure! Ev-ery-body know Cap-tan Cheorge!"

Everybody did know him. We would visit the islands when winter had Connecticut locked down, and Captain George - our own Uncle Poochie - was a celebrity at all the bars, all the restaurants, with all the cabbies and all the police officers. He was a showman with a million stories, jokes and anecdotes and everyone revelled in being in his presence. He had been a tourist boat captain, sailing the quality folk out to skin dive on Buck Island, regaling him with his mostly true stories and jokes, his olive Italian skin turning a dark, Island mahogany. He began working his way up the captain scales, taking the requisite tests until he was certified to skipper any size ship in any water. When we used to visit, he was the skipper of a US Navy research contract vessel - a huge ship that would come into dock in the late afternoons with Pooch on the flying bridge wearing nothing but shorts, brown as a monkey, his curly hair and Neptune beard white as snow but his body still young and athletic.

Pooch especially enjoyed young people - children. And all children loved Pooch. They still do. His corny jokes and ridiculous stories and affected voices are geared towards making young children laugh. He is the barstool philosopher and raconteur, with a magical instinct for talking to kids. All my life he was my hero - my brother's hero too. In fact, my brother's ambition is to be the Uncle Pooch to my kids, a role he is flourishing in. I wanted my kids to meet Pooch and so we trekked down to Crystal River Florida where he and Aunt Mickey have retired.

Pooch is in his eighties now, but has lost none of his sharpness, none of his ability to make kids laugh. That first night my youngest son was sitting in his lap, laughing at his stories. When he went to bed he told me, apropos of nothing at all, "I really love that old guy." Pooch is older now and his forearms look as if he survived a fire - evidence of massive skin cancer from exposure to the tropical sun. He's become heavier since his heart began to fail - but he still took us to the zoo where he made friends with the lady taking the tickets, the guy operating the boat, the woman giving the tour, and people sitting next to us on the trolley. We went to the post office so my cousin could mail a letter. It was crowded but Pooch said, "I'll go in with you - I have friends here." And sure enough, they were in and out.

I wanted my kids to meet my hero. I wanted them to sit across from him while he told about bomb disposal during WWII: one of us would dig a hole about a hundred yards away - the other would work on the bomb. We took turns. The one working on the bomb would keep a steady description of what they were doing through headsets to the guy in the hole. Inevitably you came down to turning that last screw. As you did it, you would inadvertly flinch and put an arm up in front of your face. I used to love that. When my partner did that I'd always say, "That's right! If it goes off, you don't want to get any in your eyes . . ."

I loved to see him pull out the coins and work the old tricks, or show the back of his hand where a rattle snake bit him, or the places where the barracuda got him when he was skin diving off the reefs of Buck Island.

Later, when we came  home, my oldest son asked me how I felt seeing him old like that, using a walker to get around. "Sad, I guess - but he's eighty. What a life!"

My Aunt Rose is in her nineties and she still works with the elderly, taking care of people twenty years younger than she is. She's my grandmother's sister, the last of her generation - the last of the first generation Americans and, though she is American all the way through, still her voice inflections are foreign, vaguely Italian. She totters through the house and puts her hands on both your cheeks and peers at you through her glasses, one lens noticeably thicker than the other. I told my kids - who never got to meet my mother - your great-great Aunt Rose is as close to my mother as you'll ever know.

On the Nature of Vacuums

The Following is paid for by the Mad Dog Moderate Party:

Did it ever occur to you that nature abhors a vacuum? Nowhere is this more true than in politics. Remove one political mass from the equation and that space will quickly be filled by another mass of equal density, etc. Remember, it must be an equal mass in order to fill the space left behind. There can be no amorphous, matter-less thing floating around in that newly empty space.

I'm always piqued by the idea that Right Wingers want to reduce the size of the Federal Government. By the laws of politics, which have been valid since God first made judgement on Cain and Abel, vis-a-vis political entities, if you reduce the size of Federal Governement you then leave a vacuum that will quickly be filled with a mass of equal density. In the case of American History, as well as most history in general, the Yin to government's Yang is Big Business. When we shrink the power of the Government, the new power is Big Business. That's all.There is no third thing that can exist between these two colliding beasts.

Someone might argue that I am being extreme, that Free Market Forces will fill the vacuum and that's a good thing. I would argue that the Free Market, without governemental regulation, creates a paradigm where the Biggest Hugest and Richest devour the middle and the weak, creating a vast amount of power at the head, with virtually nothing left behind. This has been true since - well, forever. The Medieval Period of Europe offers us the best idea of what happens when the Few have the power, only slightly controlled - and that infentestimal control coming from within - and the Many exist to prop them up. I believe that the end of Feudalism as practiced in Europe led to two of the bloodiest revolutions in European history: the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution.

Our own history has seen  a steady and intelligent encroachment on the unmitigated power of industry since the time of the robber barrons and child labor and sweat shops. It's when we remove these controls that Banks run amok and Stock Barons run amok and the economy crashes. The more we deregulate, the further our economy teeters at the abyss . . .

You take a think like Economics and The Free Market - each of these two things is motivated by one singular goal: the creation of wealth. Money, a thing which has rightly been called The Root of All Evil. How can we expect Restraint and Goodness and Empathy to arise out of something that is motivated by the lowest of all human cravings? Can we expect Romance and Beauty to arise from XXX Porn? The pursuit of money mines deeply the lowest of all human emotions and desires. It devours and destroys; it is insatiable and creates victims far in extreme of its benefits.

At the very least, Government is far more accountable to the people than Corporations are. At its best, Government exists to benefit all people equally. Corporations cannot be made accountable to the people without Government control. Corporations, unbound by regulation, exist to make a select few wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone else. Corporations devour those smaller businesses that can't compete, can't match prices, can't defend themselves. Those smaller businesses and farms disappear, swelling the size of the Devourer until it meets something it can't devour. Then those five or six massive entities exist uneasily alongside each other, agreeing to maintain their own power while crushing those beneath them.

It's also a curious fact one of the largest facets of Big Government is The Military. Twenty percent of the budget goes there. What facet of the Government is larger? Yet this Huge, money burning, completely wasteful government entity is the only one that the Right Wing doesn't want to see reduced. In fact, according to several of their loudest voices - Sarah Palin - is should be increased.

There are no vacuums in human politics. Pick your poison. Which do you feel is more accountable?

 The Mad Dog Moderate Party would like to formerly request that Sarah Palin shut the fuck up.

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