Uncle Buff

I promised a story or two about the Holland family's infamous Uncle Buff. Uncle Buff was born William Holland in Boston, MA, sometime in the 1880's. He was my Grandpa Holland's bachelor brother who had a real taste for the sauce and spent most of his adult life in a state of inebriation (totally toasted!). Most summers his home away from home was the "town tomb". For all you youngsters born after the invention of the backhoe, most towns maintained an above-ground tomb for people who died during the winter when the ground was frozen solid. When the earth thawed in spring, they planted the wintertime dead. Well, that's where Buff slept in the warm weather.

To earn money, Buff was employed as a laborer by a Watertown funeral home (which shall remain nameless to protect this very classy establishment still in business today). In those days people were taken to a funeral home after they died. They were embalmed and dressed in their Sunday best, and then were returned to their home where the wake and funeral would be held. Buff and another gentleman were called to remove a body from a house. As they carried the dear departed down two flights of stairs, the corpse "broke wind". Uncle Buff stopped, stared at the body, and announced, "If he can fart, he can walk." He then dropped his end and left the house.

My father told me about the time one cold winter when a city plow was doing its snow clearing duties. The fellow riding shotgun saw something in the dim light of evening that was rolling in front of the plow as the truck moved forward. Lo and behold, it was Uncle Buff! He had fallen asleep in a snow bank (being the depths of winter, the tomb probably had tenants) and had been scooped up by the plow blade along with the snow bank. God only knows how long he'd been traveling in front of the plow.

Of course Buff went on the wagon periodically. He cast aside his former drinking companions ("Those bums!") and turned over a new leaf. Buff would go to his sister-in-law (my Nana) who had a soft heart. She would outfit him in some of Grandpa's clothes--suit, shirts, undies, hat, and shoes. Of course Grandpa had a fit when he saw Buff sporting HIS clothers--"For God's sake, Peg, my brand new bowler hat?!!" Grandpa would get him a job and for a many a long month Buff would walk the straight and narrow. During one of these sober periods, Grandpa got Buff a job as a police officer in Watertown (Grandpa was a selectman and the owner of a hardware store in East Watertown). All went along swimmingly until one day Buff lurched into Grandpa's hardware store while proudly wearing his policeman's uniform. He had fallen off the wagon with a great crash. Grandpa watched him approach the counter with horror. "Give me that uniform! And the hat and the nightstick! And for the love of God, give me that !&+# pistol!!"

Where and when Buff died is a mystery. Dad said he was buried "in Boston somewhere". It's characters like Buff whose stories bring life to a family history and brighten the happy remembrances at reunions. Peace to you, Uncle Buff.

My friend Mary

My friend Mary worked her last day as a nurse today. She has retired after working diligently for over 11 years, the last two as the charge nurse during the day (she has a much "fancier" job title which escapes me, but I'm sure she'll let me know what it is so I can fix this) and pretty much kept all three shifts moving in the same direction. We have great continuity of care for our patients that depends on having the same nurses on duty every week. In report we pass on what we know about each of our residents -- how they're doing, any new orders, any bumps or bruises, changes in diet, family involvement, who's going to the hair dresser, who's going out for a doctor's appointment, who's feeling blue, etc. I could always count on Mary coming through for the patients, managing always to accomplish tasks that couldn't be done on my night shift. She was so patient with our residents and was unfailingly polite and kind-hearted to both them and to us, her coworkers. Our facility will be a poorer place for her going.

Mary is going to spend time with her sister, her children, grandchildren, and flying around the New England skies with her son in his plane. Hopefully she'll spare us a kind thought from time to time while she's so enjoying her new life.

I'm working tonight. Tomorrow morning will be an emptier one since I won't hear, "Hey, kid! Come on over here and give me a big hug!" The place just isn't going to be the same.

Bullies and Bad Manners

I'm sure we've all met mean-spirited, ignorant people who live to make others more miserable than themselves.
They are in our private lives, our professional lives, and heck, some of us are even related to them. You wonder what motivates them to behave in such a way. Was it their upbringing? Is it in their DNA? Did they come by it from the company they keep? Is meanness contagious? Such questions haunt the cosmos.

Bullying people damage and maim souls. They inflict pain on anyone who is unfortunate enough to be in the area when ignorant egos flare and inflate. I had an uncle, long since dead, who was one of these folks. He was arrogant, nasty, and very unkind to people he felt were beneath him (which was just about everyone.) He was also quite wealthy and I think this is why people let him get away with his atrocious behavior. Perhaps they worried about the influences he could bring down on them. I think he was just an intimidating bully. God got him in the end, tho'. He dropped dead in a California hotel room while he was there on a business trip. I think he was 52 or 53 at the time: his siblings lived decades longer. I truly believe his personality poisoned him. You know that old New England saying--"What goes around, comes around." Ain't that the truth?

Daddy-O

Today is my Dad's birthday. He'd be celebrating his 90th birthday today with us, but a couple of years ago he decided to spend his birthdays with my mother in Heaven. Dad was born in Boston in 1917, the youngest of six children born to a beautiful young Irish immigrant girl and a handsome first generation Irish American man. He was brought up in Watertown, MA and lived there until he was 68 years old, when he came up to NH to be closer to my mother who was in a local nursing home.

His stories about his childhood always fascinated me. He grew up during the Depression and his entire life was changed because of that dreadful decade. Dad spoke of spending all day Saturday cleaning strangers' cellars, earning a munificent 50 cents for his trouble, and then having to give the entire amount to his mother to help out the family. He spoke of the fields and pastures in Watertown (!!!) and of the wooden horse-drawn plows that would go up and down Mt. Auburn St. during snowstorms. The family lived in an early 19th century house that had originally belonged to the Stearns family of R.H. Stearns & Company. R.H. Stearns was a department store on the same scale as Jordan Marsh and Filenes. The house was gorgeous and had a circular staircase that spiraled from the ground floor to the third floor, like the inside of a nautilus shell. His dad had made the old mansion into two very large apartments and rented the bottom of the house to the Hoffmann family--mom, dad, bunch of kids and Grandpa Hoffmann. Dad said he came out one day and found Grandpa Hoffman planting flowers in such a way that they spelled out "H H H H". Dad asked the obvious question, to which Grampa Hoffman replied, "Holland-Hoffmann Hell House". I can well imagine it was!! :-)

The Hollands have always been known for their love of animals, their good natured personalities, and their sometimes off-beat sense of humor. You had to be tough to be a Holland. When my Dad was about 7 or 8, he desperately wanted a pony for Christmas. He begged, pleaded, and prayed to Santa Claus and the Virgin Mary. Well, he got up Christmas morning, ran downstairs to see if the pony was there. There was no pony, but his Uncle Buff stood by the tree. "Leo", he said, "you got up too late! As you see, the pony was here, but he ran away back to the farm!" And there, under the tree, was a steaming pile of horse buns. My father spent the rest of Christmas Day running all over Watertown looking for his pony. Uncle Buff was a genuine "character" who will get a blog entry all his own quite soon. If he'd pulled this stunt nowadays, Dr. Phil would lock him up!

Daddy had terrible eczema as a kid and he and his mother used to take the trolley to Mass General outpatient department every Saturday for treatments. Even after he grew, the palms of his hands, the soles of his feet, and all his nails were thick and coarse for the remainder of his life. He told me that in grammar school they had to line up two by two and hold hands before entering the school. Daddy said no one would hold his hand except for a young Chinese boy who didn't care. He told me about the hand-holding business shortly before he died and it suddenly became clear to me why he never had an unkind word to say to me, who was a fat and homely child and a fat and homely adult. I was fair game for everyone's remarks, but I always felt safe and loved with the old man.

Dad spent 2 + years in the submarine service in the Pacific during WWII. Let me tell you, he really learned how to pack a sea bag! Because of him, I can get more stuff into a suitcase and have it come out unwrinkled better than anyone else I know. He had severe osteoporosis (they never found the cause) that flattened his vertebrae, rotted out one hip, and caused him immeasureable pain over his life. He started out at 5 feet, 9 inches--he died at 5 feet, 4 inches. He never complained--got roaring drunk--but never complained. He's a tough act to follow.

My mother was told she would never have any more children after my brother was born in 1940. However, a small miracle occurred, and I was born in 1947. My father was the first one to see me after I was born (mothers were unconscious during birth back then). The day I was brought home from the hospital, my mother tucked me into my bassinette. A short while later she came back to check on me and I wasn't where she left me. She anxiously began to search the house when she heard Bing Crosby's voice crooning from the parlor radio. She looked in, and there was my father, dancing with his baby daughter in his arms. I'll love that man until the day I die.

Happy birthday, Daddy! I miss you more than words can tell. Don't forget to keep a light in the window for me.