Uncle Vincent Read online

that our first baby, Sophie, had flipped into a breech position just before the delivery date.

  He lived his life as he wanted and with little interference from others. If he felt like sleeping in, he slept in. If he wanted to travel he traveled. If he felt like getting up in the middle of the night to watch TV he did it. He didn't let his health or family concerns bother him enough to change his lifestyle or attitude. He called it a “quintessential bachelor’s life” and it suited him well.

  I always wondered why he never got married or had a girlfriend. Christine was convinced that it was because no sane woman could tolerate being around him for very long. It was rumored that he was engaged for a few months during his early thirties but he abruptly ended it and the notion never crossed his mind again.

  Vincent moved in with Christine's family after getting laid off from his job at Singer during the late 1970's. He lived with them in their childhood home that Chris' dad inherited after their father died. Vincent took over the household when Armand, his older brother (and my father in law), was killed in a car accident. Mom gave the property to Vincent and moved to Arizona to be closer to her in-laws Ute(Armand’s sister), Marshall(Ute’s husband) and their family. Chris and her sister, Mary, were attending college out of state at the time but were still welcome and chose to continue living there Summers, between semesters and on holidays.

  Over the next few years the girls graduated and started down their own life paths, spending less time at the family estate. Vincent insisted on keeping the place and continued living there for part of the year, despite just purchasing a condo near Miami, Florida. He didn't want to sell, leave the house unattended for more than a few months at a time or rent it out to strangers.

  He told everyone that he liked the idea of being a “snowbird.” I also think that he believed that one of his nieces or nephews might want to live there at some point in their lives. Unfortunately, no one but Christine shared the same level of sentimentality about the place as he did. To most in the family the property was just an old eyesore that needed to be sold.

  Vincent didn't maintain the place as much as he should have and spent more time away than he initially planned. My wife and I ended up taking care of the place more than he did in the long run and that could only be done properly when Vincent was traveling or at his Florida residence. All we could do while he was home was basic cleaning and yard work. If we tried anything more extensive like painting a room or repairing a leaky faucet he'd just get in the way. Driving us batty with stories on how during the Depression his parents drew water from a well in the back yard and that they didn't have electricity installed in the house until 1942 because his father didn't trust it.

  What we didn't tell him during those long drawn out discourses, because he probably wouldn't have listened, was that lots of work had been done to the house while he was not there. The entire electrical service was upgraded the year Chris and I got married. Chris was using a coffee pot when the appliance’s plug sparked and melted soon after it was turned on. The electrician we hired to fix the problem found a number of receptacles throughout the house where small fires had started from faulty wiring. He said that if we didn’t replace everything it would have been just a matter of time before the entire house would have burned down. Also three years ago we bought a new water heater. It was so nice to be able to wash the dishes AND take a long hot shower in the morning after dealing with an unreliable, jerry-rigged, vintage model from the 1950's.

  After the electric problems were fixed Vincent would ponder out loud that he had no idea why his monthly utility bill went down so much but was afraid to ask anyone why. He thought that the power company made a mistake but didn't want to question the discrepancy too much. He didn't want to pay them back or have a defective meter replaced. He justified the predicament by stating that he needed the money more than the power company did.

  The house was an analogy with his life. He hated change and had a tendency to let the little things go until it was too late to simply fix them. Instead of giving up cigar smoking and taking his medication Vincent continued to do as he pleased and eventually lost a lung to emphysema. Rather than waterproofing the front porch and calling an exterminator to get rid of some termites we had to have the whole thing torn down and rebuilt after a mailman fell through and threatened to sue Vincent for negligence.

  Vincent claimed that he never had any true ambitions in life. He never knew what he wanted to be. His immigrant parents provided him with everything he needed and never pressed him to be more than he wanted to be. They even offered to pay his tuition to the college of his choice.

  He attended college for a couple of years after graduating in 1949 from Bainbridge High School about 40 miles north of Binghamton, New York. Despite claiming he had no true aptitudes or driving interests he earned an Associates degree in Drafting from Broome County Technical College simply because that was what he thought he was supposed to do.

  He then enlisted and spent four years in the army. Vincent frequently stated that he was not just a soldier in The Korean Conflict but also The Cold War. He was stationed in Korea, The Philippine Islands and Germany during his service. As in his civilian life he was assigned a number a jobs but never mastered or kept any of them for very long.

  Uncle Vincent drove a supply truck, answered phones for an officer, guarded prisoners and was a German translator. He eventually earned the rank of sergeant because he followed orders well, showed up for work on time and kept his mouth shut. He always said he should have stayed and made a career of it.

  Uncle Vincent definitely liked his booze. Manhattans were his drink of choice when dining out. I never saw Vincent drunk but it was never unusual to see him with a glass filled part way with some sort of spirit or wine, but strangely enough, never beer.

  Even now in death as I write this piece his ashes are in the basement sitting on his favorite wooden rocking chair in a Royal Crown Whiskey box from his condo in Florida. The only boxes he ever had, according to Chris were from liquor stores.

  Vincent used to send his extended family members refund checks from the many alcohol purchases he made. Since he was restricted by the one refund per household rule associated with most rebates he simply had the checks sent to one of us instead.

  Chris thinks he picked the habit up when in the Army and was careful to hide his drinking vice until after his parents died. Afterward he was less secretive about doing it in front of his siblings and their children.

  Vincent never really had a stable longstanding job besides his quality assurance position at Singer (where they shipped him back and forth across the country every couple of years). A college friend got Vincent a good drafting job at Gleason Works in Rochester after he was discharged from the army but he quit after working there only a few months.

  A group of his army pals sporadically talked him into leaving the job and hitchhiking across the country. His parents were very embarrassed by his irresponsibility but kept their opinions to themselves. His siblings chastised him for them instead. Uncle Vincent called this his Beatnik stage of life and insisted that it was one of the best decisions he ever made.

  He left with a dollar fifty in his pocket, some clothes, a toothbrush, his army issued duffel bag and a book of popular short novels. He returned home three years later with a handlebar mustache and goatee, a travel chest filled with remembrances, two hundred and forty dollars, lots of stories about his adventures and a job offer from The Haloid Photographic Company. Throughout his entire trip he went out of his way to send his parents a postcard from every town he visited, letting them know the weather and what he ate for his last meal.

  Vince also had a business selling Amway products out of his garage after getting laid off from Singer but never put much effort into it. He liked being self-employed because it allowed him plenty of time to dawdle and hide in the garage, doing as little as possible. Vincent liked his space and not getting hassled
too much. Despite his wishes he was frequently pressure by his brother and sister to be more aggressive.

  Uncle Vincent frequently talked about how his parents moved to Bainbridge, NY from Switzerland to work for the Bendex Corporation located in Sidney, NY a town about five miles from Bainbridge. The company had Swiss roots and was recruiting employees from its owners’ home country.

  His father, Peter, was an Engineer for the company and his mother , Inge, was a homemaker. Vincent would occasionally bring up that he wished he'd asked his parents what exactly drew them to first move to South Africa then back to Switzerland before settling permanently in Bainbridge, NY. They lived in Johannesburg for just two years and rarely talked about their stay.

  Vincent was proud of his Swiss heritage. He hung a Swiss flag along side the American one every morning. He told neighbors to check in on him if the flag was not hung early in the day.

  Uncle Vincent lived up to his Swiss heritage right up to the end. He was always un-judgmental and almost too patient with