Graffiti the Ghost

My Uncle Stan

Ask anyone you know who's got family in the greater Chicagoland area, and chances are they have an Uncle Stan. Maybe his name isn't Stan exactly, but most likely it is. He's pretty much a carbon copy of one of the characters on the old SNL skit Bill Swerski's Super Fans . He smokes, drinks cans of Old Style, and chows polish sausage like there ain't no tomorrow. He's got a classic Chicago accent (think Dan Akroyd as Elwood Blues), tells crass, tasteless jokes, and he loves da Bears.


I had an Uncle Stan just like that. He passed away yesterday after several years of battling a failed liver. It ain't easy on a body being an Uncle Stan, my friends.


When my brother and I were kids, Uncle Stan was our favorite uncle, mainly because he always got us the best presents. What can I say, kids have their priorities. Uncle Stan never got us boring clothes or educational stuff for Christmas - he always got us awesome toys. Then, with instruction sheet in hand, he would assemble them for us on the spot. Often he would grapple with this chore until well after we'd gone to bed, and we'd find him on the couch the next morning, various toy parts scattered around him on the floor.

It wasn't until we were much older that we learned that he was usually drinking throughout the entire Christmas holiday, and when he fell asleep on the couch it was because he'd passed out drunk. Before it got really bad, his drinking was kind of just one of those Uncle Stan quirks. When we moved away from Chicago, he would mail us our presents, each enclosed in an appropriately-sized purple & gold felt Crown Royal bag to protect the gift wrap. We thought it was funny then, but looking back now as someone who enjoys a cocktail myself (to say the least), I'm astounded that a man could go through that many bottles of whisky every year. You just can't keep doing that when you're pushing 60 and not expect it to come around and bite you in the ass.


Of course that's not what I want to remember about Uncle Stan. I prefer to hold in my mind the rosy images from my childhood, when all I knew about Crown Royal was that they made purple bags. One of my favorite photos of Uncle Stan is a picture of him sleeping soundly on the sofa, my fully assembled Holly Hobbie doll high chair standing triumphantly in the foreground. He adored my brother and me, he was a great uncle, and I will remember him that way.

posted by stefbot @ 10:43 AM