My Uncle Juan
Nov 29, 2022 7:33:55 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 29, 2022 7:33:55 GMT -5
My Uncle Juan
by Radrook
There are extended family members whom we remember in a negative ways and there are those whom we recall with affection. I will always remember my uncle Juan, the oldest of my father’s siblings, for various unusual reasons but mainly for the great kindness that he showed me when at age eleven we visited Puerto Rico. Prior to that, I had only been told stories about how he lived all alone on a hill located in Las Flores Puerto Rico on my grandfather’s property and how he had once been married to this hunchbacked cross-eyed woman and had four kids by her.
Also, I was told how my grandmother, his mom, had constantly criticized her ugliness and physical deformity and how he had persisted in loving her regardless despite having the frequent heated arguments and how she would always patiently dismantle part of the house roof material that she had contributed and always took it with her whenever she would leave. Once they reconciled, and they always did, they could be seen trudging back up the hill with parts of the roof in tow.
Despite all the bickering, Uncle Juan never remarried when she died, but chose to remain single and secluded in that small country house on that hill all alone. When I finally met him at age 11, he had fallen into alcoholism, perhaps in an effort to drown the pain of the loss, and was always recounting terrifying supernatural tales. One involved his arriving home one night and finding a horse casually sitting on his rocking chair while dressed in human clothing and smoking a pipe and how he kept seeing shadows flitting everywhere inside the house, and which he identified with his dead wife.
When during this conversation my father glibly suggested he find himself another woman to replace her so he wouldn’t be so alone, uncle Juan was greatly offended. He later told my mom that it had been very inappropriate for my father to have suggested such a thing in such a casual manner.
I also recall how our trip to visit Uncle Juan involved crossing this fenced-in grassy pasture where my grandfather’s cattle were calmly grazing in the evening darkness . As soon as I saw them I was terrified and could not keep my eyes off their horns and cringed and trembled in fear whenever one of them, just a few feet away, stopped grazing and just gazed at me with one of those big, brown, bovine eyes.
You see, I imagined myself getting savagely gored at any moment. Strangely, to me at least, everyone else, my mom and dad and his sister, were all walking through that field casually conversing as if there had been no danger at all. Noticing my extreme panic, my father began berating me for being fearful. But my fear should have been easily understandable. After all, they had grown up among farm animals and perhaps knew that such cattle were not disposed to gore people , while I in contrast, I was a city kid raised in New York city till age eight and from age nine to 11 in Newark New Jersey and the only grasses I had ever crossed were those of city lawns, the Christopher Columbus Housing Projects, and those of Branchbrook Park where no such potentially dangerous large animals were roaming around free.
Neither did our camping trips involve the danger of getting gored. The only horned- animal I had seen during those trips was a deer that had crossed our camping site early one morning and kept going. The only dangerous animals I ever been that near to had been in cages at the New York Zoo..
I was also familiar with rodeos on TV where cowboys were always attacked by frenzied bovines and the cowboys barely escaped with their lives. I remembered how some cowboys had been permanently mangled after being head-butted, gored or trampled. I had also watched comedy shows, such as the Three Stooges, where they were frantically running away from charging bulls. Or else I had watched some film where bullfighting was featured and a matador had been savagely gored. In short, to me cattle horns were for goring and I felt as if I was stupidly waving a red cape and signaling for them to charge. So at the least, for my sake, they should have taken the longer rout to spare me the emotional trauma. Once we finally reached Uncle Juan's house he immediately stared with his ghost stories. Exactly what I needed after that experience.
In any case, what I remember most about my uncle Juan is that during a family reunion, I childishly interrupted the conversation among adults and was severely reprimanded. Their conversation came to a complete halt and was followed by very stern silence and an intense reprimanding stare. Feeling deeply ashamed, humiliated, abused, I attempted to run from the situation and uncle Juan reached out and caught and detained me and said words of comfort which attempted to restore my childish dignity.
They, in turn, were all astonished that he had shown that kind of deep compassion towards me. As if it were inconceivable that anyone should. My father never had. So to me that show of affection was unique. I also certainly could not understand it since I didn’t feel that I was a likable kid since all I ever received from my parents had been constant criticism. So I did greatly appreciate the gesture and remember him mainly for it.
The last time I saw uncle Juan, was when I visited the island as a grown man approx. ten years later at age twenty. He was still living alone in that same house on the hill, and I encountered him as he was proudly riding this female donkey towards this country tavern. We didn’t converse much. Maybe he just wasn’t the conversing type? Then nine years later, when I last visited my father, I learned that uncle Juan had died in the conflagration when his house had caught fire and that his smoldering skull had been placed at my fathers feet in the car transporting his remains. Glad I wasn't there to see that one.