#748: We Called Him Uncle Meany

Jerry was wild and funny,
had a tremendously devious
laugh, joyful, playful, but for
some reason we all called him
Uncle Meany. He was Dad’s uncle,
really, but only a year or two
older, so there was nothing
second or great uncle about him,
and there seemed to be
nothing mean about him either.
In the summer he’d take us
out on his boat for fishing or
crabbing and he camped with
us almost every year, and often
shirtless, we saw the scar that
spanned his stomach, almost
all the way across. We asked
him about it. Hey Uncle Meany,
where’d you get that scar?
He said he’d been grazed
by a spear thrown at him as
he was trying to escape a group
of Africans. We took him at
his word and of course the stereotype
was lost on us kids in 1970-something.
I’ve thought about it a lot since
then, decades moving forward,
even after he died. I have vivid
memories of him, but this story,
this fabrication, sticks with me.
I don’t know how long it took
me to realize it was a lie–but
by then it was too late to seek
the truth, having lost touch with
him as I became a man and he
got divorced and moved away
and got old. I still want to know.
Did he get himself into a bar fight?
Is that why we call him Meany?
Was he wounded in one of the wars?
Like my father, he was a vet
of at least one of those mid 20th
century imbroglios. He could have
been grazed by a bullet. But for
some reason, I made up a story
that he crash-landed a plane
and was either injured in the crash
or by enemy combatants.
I don’t know what’s true. Often,
with our parents and relatives,
especially those from that generation,
it’s hard to know reality from fantasy,
often just odd snippets and fragments
are revealed, and everybody who knew
the truth either forgets or dies.
Questions remain unasked and unanswered.
We make up stories to fill in the gaps:
Uncle Meany crashed his plane in the war
and across his gut was a massive scar.