March 16, 2006

• My ex-uncle Jack

  My maternal grandmother Eva Brooks Scott at age 44
  in 1917 with baby “Jack” aged 3 weeks.
  Jack
  was the name he preferred to be called.  I don’t know if he chose
  it for himself or if a sibling or parent tagged him with it when he was
  young.  Grandma is said to have taken his name, Forrest Vivian,
  from the hero of a novel she was reading before he was born.

  He was the baby of a big family that didn’t remain big for very
  long.  Grandma had 13 children, and died in childbirth with the
  fourteenth, who also didn’t survive.  Only seven of her children
  survived into adulthood.  Jack was the only one of them who was
  younger than my mother.

  I think I see some of his deviousness and ill-temper in this
  squinty-eyed baby, but that perception could be colored by my later
  acquaintance with him.

  Jack Scott in his twenties,
  
  with his first wife, Audrey

  Jack
  and my mother had two surviving sisters and three brothers by the time I
  was born, and a step-brother and step-sister who both were older than
  the Scott siblings. 

  All three of the “girls” got along with each other and with their
  brothers Roy and Earl Scott, their step-brother Frank Howard and step-sister Nora Howard Gavin, but my other two
  uncles, “Jack” and “Scotty” (Harrel C. Scott) didn’t seem to get along
  with anyone very well.  I remember Scotty as irascible and Jack as
  irresponsible.

  I
  didn’t even know that I had an Uncle Jack until the day he showed up at
  our little house on Fox Avenue in San Jose.  It was about 1948,
  judging by my apparent age in this photo with the twins Jack
  brought with him.

  He had their mother with him, too, but she
  wasn’t Audrey, and wasn’t Jack’s wife.  That might have been part of the problem for Mama.  At least I
  recall her mentioning their “shacking up,” not being married, so it was an issue,
  anyway.

  The chummy attitude between the twins and me indicates that this
  picture must have been taken very early in their visit.  Maybe
  Mama and Daddy took the visiting “kinfolk” for a day at the beach when
  they first came to call.  I recognize this as the “concrete boat”
  a beached vessel that had once been a gambling ship that cruised
  beyond the twelve-mile limit, but was just a beached derelict used as a fishing
  pier at Santa Cruz in my youth.

  The main problem between my parents and Jack, his paramour, and her
  blonde twin daughters, was that they moved in with us.  They just
  came and stayed.  We lived on a tight budget in a small three-room
  shotgun house.  Each room was eight feet by ten feet, and the
  bathroom was barely big enough for the toilet and shower stall and one
  person at a time.  Mama and Daddy had a double bed in the middle
  room and I slept on a roll-away bed in the front room.  When Jack
  and his girlfriend moved in, they took the roll-away and the twins and
  I had a nest of blankets on the floor.

  I don’t know how long they stayed.  It was certainly long enough
  to wear out their welcome, and then some.  The twins’ mother made
  herself at home, used Mama’s toiletries and such, and didn’t offer to
  help with chores.  Jack wasn’t working and wasn’t apparently
  looking for work.  He hung out in pool halls, Mama said.  He
  didn’t offer to buy groceries or help in any other way.  A few
  times he and his girlfriend went out in the evening and left the twins
  with us, until my parents told them that was unacceptable.

  I don’t remember anything about that day at the beach pictured above.  I have
  only two detailed memories from the time that they stayed with us, and
  many more memories from subsequent conversations overheard between my
  parents and between them and other members of the family.

  The twins were noisy, active and undisciplined, “full of mischief,” my
  mother said.  One of them climbed up and took down from a high
  shelf a little box in which I kept some small treasures.  It was a
  decorative pressed-paper box with another box, slightly smaller, which
  slid into it like a drawer, and a brass button as a drawer pull. 
  Instead of pulling the drawer open, the rowdy twin just ripped the top
  off the outer box to open it.  Mama taped it back together, but it wasn’t the
  same to me.  There were very few possessions I could call my own, and I had really treasured that one.

  My other memory from their visit was the day they left.  Mama and
  Daddy had discussed the situation and decided to confront Jack and his
  lady friend and tell them that our family simply couldn’t support their
  family, and that our little house didn’t have room for the four of
  them.  Jack’s lady friend took offense at that.  Jack became
  red-faced and started yelling at my mother.  She started crying
  and my father put his arm around her and quietly told Jack he’d better
  leave.  When my six-foot-five-inch father went quiet like that, people generally listened.

   Jack told his little blonde entourage to grab their things. 
  Then he said to my mother, “You’re no sister of mine.  I disown
  you!”  That seemed to break the tension.  Mama wiped her
  tears on her sleeve and started laughing.  That really pissed off
  my ex-uncle Jack, and he stomped out, trying to slam the screen door behind
  him, but as always it just flapped shut and bounced on its slack spring.  Daddy picked me up and with his arm around Mama’s waist and our heads together, we
  all laughed as Jack and company roared away.

  I didn’t see him after that for about twelve years.  I had left my
  first husband and was staying with my mother and her latest husband,
  Grady O’Neal, on a ranch near Redlands, California, within a few miles
  of Mama’s sister, step-sister, and their extended families.  On
  Thanksgiving, we all got together at Mama and Grady’s place, and Jack
  showed up.  He was fat and loud and drunk. 

  He started arguments with one sibling after another, and I heard one of
  my aunts ask the other one if she’d invited him.  She denied
  it.  No one seemed to know how he happened to show up at that
  little “family reunion.”  It later turned out that Scotty, who
  lived in Sacramento and was invited but didn’t attend, had told Jack
  about the party.

  The last straw for Grady was when Jack followed me into the kitchen and
  groped my butt as I was getting something out of the fridge.  I
  yelped and turned on Jack, screaming at him to keep his filthy hands
  off me.  Grady came running.  He told my ex-uncle to get the
  hell out of there, and I never saw or heard from him again.

  

  • 1:11 am
  • 5 Comments