Uncle Mac

Growing up during the cold war of the late fifties and sixties, our next door neighbor's house was the place everyone came to gather. I called them Aunt Jo and Uncle Ralph and most of the people who came there became Aunt this, or Uncle that. Looking back I realize they must have been pretty amazing people, because through them I met people a child takes for granted, the governor, Gene Autrey, you know, the usual celebrities! In the summertime, their back patio became the gathering place for people from all walks of life from politicians, actors and actresses, to family and friends, but the one who was always special to me was Uncle Mac.

Uncle Mac had laughing blue eyes, white hair and the pinkest skin. I fell in love with him before I turned six and on the occasions when he would suddenly turn up at Aunt Jo's, I was his little shadow. I would lean against him when he sat smoking, sit on his lap while he watched television, and as I grew older it turned into the biggest crush any little girl probably ever had on a man who appeared and disappeared like the Gray Ghost. John Mosby style, not Batman. He always promised he would take me to dinner and dancing when I turned twelve, and he did.

Sometimes Uncle Mac disappeared for years, which always seemed a little strange for a coke machine salesman, but children are very accepting. I only have one picture of him. It is in a corner at a table in the background, at my wedding, which was the last time I ever saw him. He gave me his mother's silverware as a wedding gift, hugged me, kissed me on the forehead and took off for parts unknown. He was retired then, of course. No one ever saw him again after that.

Who he was when working I will never know. He was evidently a very worldly man, well traveled for a coke machine salesman, having been all over Europe and the Soviet Union. He told my neighbors, his home away from home, that if he ever disappeared he would be buried in Pontiac, Illinois. After he retired he reconnected with his daughter out in California who, it turns out, was kidnapped about the time I was married and held as a hostage. He went underground to get her and never resurfaced. He is not buried in Pontiac. I checked once, when I lived near there. It wasn't until years later I learned that he worked for the CIA, not the Coca Cola Bottling Company.

How, or when Aunt Jo and Uncle Ralph knew this I will never know either, but it often reminds me that people are not always who they seem to be.