According to my dictionary, the word uncle derives from avunculus, an affectionate diminutive of the Latin avus, literally translated as "little grandfather". I never knew my big grandfathers, a Massachusetts brewery worker and an Indiana juvenile judge, but I seemingly had a quartet of little ones growing up: namely Uncles Johnny, Buddy, Matt and Charles, writes Anthony Glavin
Uncle Johnny was easily my favourite when I was a small boy, as he always gave me a half-dollar coin the few times a year we saw him. Buddy was a lovely guy too, a chain-smoker who worked non-stop for the disabled, and has a stretch of Route 9 in Massachusetts named after him. And Matt, who was knocked off a bridge by a Japanese mortar in the second World War, then rescued by a fellow US Marine, once handed me the keys to his MG on a late-night visit when I was 17, endearing me to him big-time.
Uncle Charles, meanwhile, was probably just waiting, I think, for me to grow up enough to appreciate his gifts - in particular stories from his own life. I must have got thereabouts somewhere in my twenties, for that's when the stories began. I'd known the basics: how Charles, who hailed from Atlanta, Georgia, as a Kennedy Democrat who had worked for years as an architect with the then US Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
What I hadn't known, until he told me, was that he had sailed the globe twice before he was 20, shipping out in summertime with the merchant marine on cargo ships while still at university. A gifted storyteller, Charles regaled me with yarns of Hawaii, Singapore, Tokyo, and Shanghai in the late 1920s, of shore patrols, dockside brawls, and the bosun on one ship who told him not to worry when, chipping paint, his chisel poked through the bottom of a lifeboat. He sounded, or so I thought, like a latter-day Conrad.
There were also more recent yarns; for example, his account of a decidedly avant-garde wedding he attended in New York city in the late 1950s. The ceremony itself was a simple affair in somebody's garden. The music was provided by a young woman with long black hair and considerable presence who, attired in a white peasant's dress and leather-thonged sandals, accompanied herself on a guitar. At the reception, Uncle Charles found himself seated on a sofa next to the chanteuse, who searched excitedly in her shoulder bag for lyrics scribbled on an envelope by a young poet and songwriter of genius whom she'd met only days before.
The singer was a young Joan Baez, as Charles explained, and her recent acquaintance none other than Bob Dylan.
Later, in the 1970s, Charles called on the son of a colleague in California, who took him on a motorcycle up into the Californian hills, directly above a massive gathering in a valley below. Dismounting, the pair of them sat down to take in what turned out to be the Altamount concert by the Rolling Stones - a performance which occasioned both a feature film and no small controversy.
Such serendipity had me convinced that Uncle Charles functioned very much like a seed crystal which, when introduced into a solution, precipitates remarkable configurations on all sides. So I was anticipating all kinds of wonderful adventures when, in 1980, he wrote that he was coming to Ireland, only to be sorely disappointed when a second letter arrived a week later, saying he wouldn't be coming after all.
I was living in a Wicklow cottage above Powerscourt at the time, and set off on foot the following day for Enniskerry to get some groceries. On the road I met a friend in a car who was heading for the Powerscourt waterfall, where, as she excitedly explained, the BBC were filming the Boomtown Rats. I declined an invitation to join her, but on my return several hours later, I thought of Uncle Charles and turned into the roadway to the waterfall.
Walking to within sight of its cascade, I saw in the distance three limousines, like long black beetles, headed my way. Apparently filming was over, and if I were to meet the Rats, I'd need to thumb a lift. Throwing my provisions over my shoulders I stuck out my thumb, and sure enough the last of the three stretch-Mercs braked gently to a halt. As I opened the back door, a voice intoned, "In the front, man." Hopping within, I thanked the chauffeur, then turned to see musicians Bob Geldof and Simon Crowe. We chatted pleasantly, of writing songs and writing fiction, until I hopped out at the gate-lodge to take my groceries up the hill and home.
A week later the Rats performed triumphantly at Leixlip Castle, ending weeks of controversy that had followed the cancellation, from fears of violence, of a previously scheduled concert at Leopardstown racecourse. The following day I clipped the front-page coverage of that gig and, acknowledging my own responsibilities as an uncle, posted the cuttings, along with an account of my Powerscourt encounter, to my own nephews back in Ohio and New Hampshire, all of them adolescents and very much, as the saying goes, "into the music".
I also wrote to Uncle Charles, thanking him for his visit - in spirit anyhow - to the Wicklow Mountains. The wedding singer, Joan Baez, played in Dublin just last year, but Uncle Charles passed away in 1998. I have, however, those stories of his yet: all diamonds, no rust.