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.