Writing Life

My mother’s brother Alec died last Friday. He was sixty-eight and died from a combination of colon and liver problems. He was a teenager when I was born. In his youth he was heavily influenced by the 1950s ethos of the leather-clad bikers epitomized by Marlon Brando and James Dean. In the late 60s, when the conventional way to look counter-cultural was to wear long hair, a headband, and a tie-died shirt, Uncle Alec was totally retro, a throwback to the days when Elvis was still the pinnacle of cool. When I was young my Uncle Alec reminded me of both Elvis Presley and James Dean. Well into his 30s, he was still driving a Porsche sports car and wearing leather jackets.

One of my first memories of him was overhearing my mother tell a friend of hers about a single-vehicle auto accident that nearly claimed Alec’s life. He had just gotten his Porsche back from an auto shop where he’d had new tires put on it. Apparently the mechanics at the shop hadn’t fully tightened the lug nuts on one of the tires. As Alec was driving over one of the bridges that span the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, the tire came loose, separated from the car, and leapt over the guardrail. Naturally the Porsche came to an abrupt and dangerous halt, causing several other cars to nearly T-bone it. When the wheel came off, Alec had just driven up onto the bridge and wasn’t out over the water yet. As my mother told the story, he jumped out of his wrecked car and ran to the guardrail to make sure that the tire hadn’t fallen onto and killed someone on the ground below the bridge. I always thought that was pretty cool of him. I’d have been worried about my own safety. But, in an extremely dangerous situation himself, Uncle Alec’s first thought was to look out for the people below him

Uncle Alec didn’t drop in for a lot of visits with my mother, so most of my memories of him, like the tire incident, are second-hand. About ten years ago, when my grandmother (Alec’s mother) was preparing to move out of the house she had occupied since the 1930s, my mother and I stopped by for a visit with her. I hadn’t been inside my grandmother’s house for a couple of decades and my mother thought I might like to take a last look around. While my mother and grandmother chatted, I wandered through the house. Eventually I made my way down into the basement, which looked as if it were Hollywood’s notion of the quintessential 1950s basement. My grandfather had been a fisherman, a boating enthusiast, and a talented handyman. There were engine parts all over the place. There were tools hanging on just about every inch of wall space. There were jars of screws and nails and bolts and nuts and every other imaginable type of hardware sitting on row upon row of homemade shelves. The place looked like a Smithsonian museum display called: The Home Handyman’s Basement Workshop, circa 1955. Only one thing distinguished it from every other well-stocked handyman’s basement. There were trophies everywhere. There were literally hundreds of trophies stockpiled all over the basement. They congregated on the surfaces of workbenches, sawhorses, tool chests, storage shelves, old seaman’s chests, and empty wooden appliance boxes. And every trophy had a small reproduction of some motorized vehicle on it. Most of them had speedboats on them. But some had little go-carts or motorbikes on them. Most of them had been won by my Uncle Alec when he was boy. Some of them had been earned by his own two sons, my cousins Bobby and Sean, when they were kids. Having won exactly two trophies in my life (one in a youth chess tournament; the other in the Pinewood Derby when I was a Cub Scout) I thought those shiny golden trophies were the coolest things I’d ever seen. If I had earned them myself they would currently reside in a trophy case I would have had custom-built specifically for the purpose of showing them off. Some were big first-place trophies, some were for second or third place, some just acknowledged Alec’s participation in an event. But the sheer number of them astounded me. When I went back upstairs I asked my grandmother, “What’s with all those trophies in the basement? Why doesn’t Uncle Alec have them in his house somewhere?” But my grandmother just laughed and told me that Alec hadn’t ever really cared about the trophies. All he cared about was the racing. He loved speed. He loved motorized vehicles. He didn’t give a damn about a boat, a car, or a motorcycle if it merely sat immobile atop a little wooden pedestal.

Uncle Alec lived an unconventional life. He married young and got divorced about ten years and three children later. His ex-wife died a few years after the divorce. At her funeral he renewed his acquaintance with his former sister-in-law, his late wife’s identical twin sister. Eventually they got married, but that didn’t last either. Alec’s penchant for pairing off with his own in-laws didn’t end there. At the wedding of his daughter Danette, Alec became enamored of Danette’s new mother-in-law. Shortly thereafter he and the mother-in-law were living together. The mother-in-law owned a huge piece of property in southern Washington State with several residences on it. Danette and her husband lived in one residence while Alec and the mother-in-law lived in another on the same parcel (got that straight?). The mother-in-law was wealthy and was able to support herself and Alec in high style. So that he could indulge his love of fast cars, Alec’s new mate built a five-car garage for him, in which he began to collect and restore classic automobiles. Life worked out pretty well for him. He had a kind and attentive new soul mate and all the creature comforts a man could ask for. What’s more, his daughter and his grandchildren were just a stone’s throw away, which meant that he could see them whenever he wanted.

About ten or fifteen years ago, Danette began holding family reunions every summer at the family compound in southern Washington. The last time I saw Alec was when I attended one of these reunions, about five years ago. He struck me as about the most contented person I have ever known, very much at peace with himself. Late in the afternoon, he asked me if I’d like to drive up and take a look at his collection of classic cars. The property was so big that we actually drove from one house to another. Inside his massive garage, Alec showed me each of his cars and explained in detail its history, the specifics of its design, and so forth. I have never been mechanically inclined and don’t know the difference between a hubcap and a carburetor. But Uncle Alec’s own enthusiasm for classic American automobiles was so infectious I found myself spellbound by his every word, even though, three hours later, I couldn’t have told you the make or model of a single one of the cars he had so lovingly introduced me to. But even now I remember how much fun it was to watch and listen as he expounded on each vehicle’s unique personality.

He was checked into a Vancouver, Washington, hospital in the middle of this month, having been laid low by some mysterious physical problems that he didn’t believe were life threatening. He was there for ten days. My mother and father were at his bedside shortly before he died last Friday. When I talked to my mother earlier today, she told me, “Even up to the very end, he believed he was getting better. He told me they would soon be moving him to another part of the hospital, where they kept the less seriously ill patients.” According to my mother, his last words were, “Pretty soon, I’ll be going to another place,” and perhaps he has. I don’t know if there is a heaven, but if there is I imagine he is on his way there now, with a screaming jetpack strapped to his back. The man always did love speed.