My Uncle John and the toll booth story

My Uncle John and the toll booth story

In the passing of those in our lives we try to find some meaning in their time with us and to be profound or deep or philosophical. Which may or may not really apply to who that person was or was not in their life.

I can’t really claim to know my uncle as a man but I knew him enough to know that he cared deeply about those things he cared about. And what he cared about evolved. He evolved as we all do.

I could say lots about what a great person he was, and the drive he had to never quit. I could also say lots about less than terrific choices he made in his life. We all make a bad move here and there.

He was my father’s brother. They loved each other in their way, meaning that I don’t think they had a good role model for how to express emotion in their father. I remember meeting my great grand father as very small child, and I mean very small. I remember running around where he was and that he was there but not the man or who he was just the stories which I try to filter back to light from the teller to the truth. He wasn’t a warm fuzzy kind of guy, My father and uncle were not warm fuzzy guys but were more so than their father.

So my uncle was always a part of the family gatherings when he could be their. Another part of my not knowing him so well was that for a while we lived nearer to each other then for a long bit we did not live near each other. Thousand of miles apart.

One memory that I always think about my uncle John is that he was dead, long before he was dead. When I was younger my uncle was referred to as Sonny because he shared his first name with his father just like me but people don’t call me Sonny they call me the kid version of my name in the family. It’s fine it’s who I am in the role it shows that my father is in their minds too when they call me by the kid version of my name.

So my uncle Sonny. Sonny did this, Sonny did that, all the stories started that way. Well I was listening to a story one day and like most kids your hearing of adult conversation is much like the Charlie Brown cartoons wahwhawanWhanhwahwanwah… Sonny got shot at a toll booth …wahwhawanWhanhwahwanwah… what wait rewind please … Sonny got shot a toll booth on his way home.

Well unbeknown to me at the time my mother and father had just seen the godfather James Caan plays Santino Corleone aka Sonny, they may call him Santino once in the movie the rest of the time it’s Sonny. My mother’s family is Italian and when you’re little relatives are relatives and you don’t make the subtle distinctions as to which side is which just that family is family and Sonny was gunned down at a toll booth.

OMG Sonny was gunned down at a toll booth. So I assumed that we would go to the funeral. We did not so I tucked it away that he was dead. Meanwhile he had moved across the country so I didn’t see him anymore, he was alive my father probably called him but it would have been after I had gone to bed and never heard the conversations, We never went to Cali then. His kids came to visit without him so that sealed it in my mind he was dead.

Years go by and then at a family gathering there he is sitting there in a t-shirt, cut offs, lounging in my grandmother’s yard.

He says Hey

I say, I thought you were dead.

Everyone laughs thinking I’m being a smart ass about his life and some choices he has made … but I really believed up to that point that he had died gunned down at a toll booth.

He played it off with me saying something like not yet

It was much later that I put it all together about why I thought he was dead when I saw the Godfather myself and click the light went on.

While we weren’t close like some uncles and nephews he was family and would do what he could to help you if he could because you were family.

My family is strange in a lot of ways some bad, some good. One of the strange good ways is that my cousins are more than cousins. We had large gatherings for years

So my paternal grandmother had four children 2 boys and 2 girls in total they had 12 children 6 boys (one is me) and 6 girls we have had to date 25 children 16 boys and 9 girls

I hope we continue to be strange and that the next generation which is starting to multiply will gather together someplace and continue to have close family ties. If nothing else it makes for good stories later on… like your uncle who was gunned down at a toll booth but not really.




In other news…

Rain…

I don’t have to work on Monday

I’m pretty sure I’m still invisible

Traveling to see that large ass group of relatives this weekend because 5 of them are graduating from High School this year including Doodle. YAY for doodle and cousins.



That’s all for now other stuff tomorrow, have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,