My Italian uncle Lou had a large collection of guns and rifles. I say had not because he doesn’t still have the guns — he might — but because he isn’t my uncle anymore, not technically. He and my aunt divorced well more than a decade ago. When I was growing up, they lived in the apartment above ours in the three-family house that they co-owned with my parents in Bayside, Queens.

Lou went on a hunting trip every year. He managed to kill something only once, that I can remember, a deer. At the Christmas party that year, the calamari, baked ziti, and sausage and peppers were joined by venison parmigiana. To warn squeamish guests, I drew a picture of Rudolph with his nose so bright and wrote Bambi Parmigiana on a small piece of oak tag. Perhaps not in good taste. I was a kid.

When the party was winding down and most of the friends had cleared out, or at the end of other family gatherings, my older cousins would ask Lou to show them his guns. He always obliged. In the basement was a gun safe, and I watched as everyone admired the silver 357 Magnum and the semi-automatic M-14, which Lou assured us could be converted to automatic should the need arise. He had a few handguns and hunting rifles and Rambo knives. Lou didn’t lock all of the guns in the safe. He always kept at least a handgun in the apartment, sometimes wore it in a holster while eating dinner. I think he slept with it under his pillow. I can’t imagine that bullets were ever far away.

Lou hadn’t gone to Vietnam. He was a drop young for that. But he was from that generation, and rode a motorcycle and sported MIA and POW decals on his car and patches on his green army jacket. I got the sense that in a weird way he wished he’d gone. Probably not. This was the mid ’80s. He used to say that when they came over the bridge, he’d be ready. I’m not sure who they were or what bridge he was talking about. Maybe the Throgs Neck. He liked to joke. Lou was the uncle who would tickle you until you peed.

One night, our friend Adam was hanging out with my brother late, in our apartment, and didn’t know that the front door downstairs was double-locked and required a key from the inside. He’s hearing impaired, so when he went to leave, he didn’t realize just how much noise he was making trying to get the door open in the dark. Lou thought someone was breaking in, went down there with a shotgun. It was a good thing that he practiced gun control. No one got killed.

The next summer, two of my brother’s friends — fellow lifeguards at the pool club — were in the habit of driving by at one in the morning and screaming his name. Well, not his name, exactly. My brother, Jason, shared the first name with a character from Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School — Jason Melon. My brother’s friends thought it was hilarious to call him Melon. At the end of the movie, someone shouts, “Melon, get your suit on, we need you!” This is what was shouted — in a genius bit of lifeguard humor — right outside our bedroom window at one in the morning. It was also shouted outside Lou’s bedroom window. Lou knew the kids — everyone knew everyone else at the pool. So when he saw them once at the pool he told them to cut out that shit in the middle of the night. It didn’t work. The next time Lou was at the pool, he chased one of them into the men’s locker-room with his butterfly knife that he kept on his belt. It was all in good fun.

They came by a few nights later, and shouted again, “Melon, get your suit on, we need you!” Lou was up waiting. He had removed the screen from his bedroom window, and when they stopped their car and shouted, he leaned out the window with a big hunting rifle with a scope. They couldn’t miss him. Lou’s third-floor bedroom faced the busy street. I assume that the rifle wasn’t loaded. Lou was only messing with them, not trying to kill anyone. But they never again stopped by to shout anything in the middle of the night.

Another time, when I was maybe 13, it wasn’t all in good fun. I was home alone and heard a crash coming from the front door downstairs. Then another crash, and another. After assuring myself that it wasn’t nothing, I called upstairs. My aunt answered. I asked her to put Lou on the phone. He was watching TV and wouldn’t pick up, or she didn’t want to bother him. I should have said, “Someone’s breaking in!” He would’ve picked up the phone if I had. But I didn’t. I don’t know why. Someone was breaking into our house, and for some crazy reason, I didn’t even push to get Lou on the phone. I should have insisted, asserted myself, but I had a timid streak, I guess. It was one of those moments that remains a mystery to the adult me. I just hung up and watched out the window as a man limped away from the house.

My parents returned later to discover that the front door had been bashed in. Lou yelled at my aunt for not putting him on the phone with me. They all wanted to know why I hadn’t said why I was calling. I didn’t answer. They didn’t blame me for it — Lou should’ve picked up the phone. But I couldn’t absolve myself. If something bad had happened, if the guy had broken in to rob us, or worse, and had succeeded, it would have been my fault. I didn’t feel very much like a man.

My seeing the guy with the limp proved valuable, though. He had left a threatening note under the apartment door of our first floor tenant, who owed him money. My eyewitness account was enough to identify him and get the limping man’s father to pay for the repair of the door, to avoid legal complications for his son. Since both my father and Lou were locksmiths, they were able to repair the door themselves and pocket the money. All in all, it was a far less messy outcome, and more profitable, than Lou blowing away the guy in the foyer with a shotgun.

Tweet  Print This Post

Tags: family & parenting, reflections & recollections by Scott Stein // 8 Comments »