This is a short story related to "Whence One Comes," the story of one of my great-grandfathers, which can be found at
http://www.conservativeca...ex.php/topic,19396.0.html
although it is in no way nearly as long--no way--as the original story.the worthless uncle. The aunts and uncles, when children growing up in the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, recall their Uncle Andrei as a small, solitary man as seen across the street, slowly and awkwardly making his way up the hill, towards his own home on the other side.
Their uncle, my own great-uncle Andrei, the ninth of the fourteen children of my great-grandfather, had been born with a withered leg, which was all but useless. At times, he managed to walk without the use of a crutch, but as he got older, he had to use some sort of support more and more. It was the left leg that was lame, but for some reason, Uncle Andrei propped himself on the right side, not the crippled side.
The aunts and uncles were not unfriendly towards him; as children, they had been taught to respect their elders, and besides, they had encountered this uncle up close at family gatherings, because there existed financial and legal reasons for the adults to at least be formally polite with each other.
But since their parents demonstrated an active hostility towards this brother of theirs, their children left relations across the street, from which they waved to their uncle, and he responded in kind, nothing more than that.
Uncle Andrei was given to quoting medieval peasant Slovak adages, the most common to the children being, "God give you humility, so that you may prosper," much in the same sense one says "Hello how are you have a nice day" today.
On all other things, especially after some sort of failure, or what was actually a success interpreted as a failure, Uncle Andrei invariably said, again mouthing the words of his distant ancestral Slovak peasants, "One does what one can, the best one can, with what one has, and God judges."
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Uncle Andrei was born in the coal regions in 1892, and lived there until he died, in 1959, the first of the fourteen children of his parents to die. This being the case, he was too early for myself to have known him, although as a child and teenager, I met, and got to know, nearly all of his brothers and sisters.
These other great-aunts and great-uncles were of course ancient by the time I knew them, and because of my sheer youth, I only ever managed to collect scraps of comments about their brother, before they too passed on.
Of all the children, he most resembled his father, being the shortest of them. My great-grandfather, his father, was a dwarf, but Uncle Andrei, not quite so; short, but not that short. My great-grandfather must have derived at least some comfort from having a son who did not tower over him, as the others did; while the two of them could not see eye-to-eye, at least it was eye-to-chest.
The significant difference however was that while my great-grandfather was powerfully strong and agile, this particular child of his was not, because of that withered leg.
Uncle Andrei clearly admired his father, and sought to emulate him, but such was difficult, given that obstacle. Like his father, he wished to mine coal, and while he did, he was not near as good at it. Like his father, he wished to be a master carpenter, and while he carpentered, his feats were nothing like those of his father. Like his father, he wished to be a proficient gardener, but that alas too was difficult.
This is not to say he failed; it is only to say that, because of his lameness, while he got a great many things done, he did not get them done as quickly and efficiently as his father, and his brothers. Adequately, but no great shakes.
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For some reason now long ago lost in the mists of history, Uncle Andrei had always been the butt of jokes, the source of contempt, an object of ridicule and mockery, of his own brothers and sisters. One gets the impression that as the brothers and sisters married, the in-laws joined in the condemnation, and in time became even more vociferous than those related to Uncle Andrei by blood.
Uncle Andrei was generally considered a fool and a ne'er-do-well.
This great-uncle had no significant character flaws, but for decades never a kind word about him uttered forth from the lips of the siblings and in-laws. And even on things innocuous, such as the color of the sky or the speed of the wind, his own observations were angrily challenged; the point being not so much to exchange observations, but merely to shout that Uncle Andrei was wrong. He was wrong about anything and everything.
Nothing this great-uncle did was "right;" if he did something remarkable or impressive, that was minimized or ignored altogether, and if he made the slightest little mistake, it was magnified into a Great Catastrophe. His nieces and nephews were taught that he was no good, that he didn't count, that he was pretty worthless even though he always paid his own way through life, dependent upon no one.
Uncle Andrei was criticized the way he couldn't hold a job, criticized for the ways in which he was raising his two daughters, criticized because he managed to scrape through life but did no better than that, and as time went on, most peculiarly, criticized for being "distant" from his family.
In the memories of my own aunts and uncles, Uncle Andrei was reasonably nondescript, no controversy about him at all. He remained well within the moral and social boundaries of the time and place. He liked the bottle a bit much, but then and again, so did every other male around. But unlike every other male, he was a diligent churchgoer, so as to provide an example for his daughters. But rather than attending the family church, the Slovakian church, the three of them went to the Polish church.
Which provided yet more fodder for condemnation of him; "Look at the fool clown Andrushka; he's too good to attend with us, his own family. Who does he think he is, better than we are?"
I have always been mystified as to why this attitude, especially since as a child, I had found the ancients--the brothers and sisters of Uncle Andrei--to be very nice and caring people. And so it flummoxed me, why such nice and caring people would at the same time harbor what was obviously a bitter resentment towards one of their own.
Because of his bum leg, one might suppose the defect was the object of their derision, but given the time and place, where cripples were ubiquitous and accepted as a normal part of the environment, probably not.
I suppose it was the envy of the oft defeated for the never vanquished.
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One of the most singular accomplishments of Uncle Andrei was when, as a young adult, he sued the Irish grocer over a matter of real estate. He had paid the money, but not gotten the land. He wanted either his $179 back, or the land, but preferred to have the land.
The coal regions had been dominated by a corrupt Irish political machine since the 1870s, about fifty years before the suit. Given the origins of both suer and suee, there was no chance of Uncle Andrei winning, a mismatch between a well-educated, articulate aesthetic Irishman and a small dark crippled Slav for whom his English was tenuous at best, non-existent at worst.
And this, in front of an Irish judge.
In what could later been seen as a cataclysmic turn of events, a fissure occuring in the granite base of the political machine, Uncle Andrei won the case, and got the land.
It was far too early to see the "big picture," the dust not settling for some years, but this foretold the crumbling of that Irish political machine that for two generations had suppressed the larger number of Slovaks, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Austrians, Serbs, Greeks, Italians, &c., &c., &c., of the area.
But for the moment, Uncle Andrei had become the toast of these other groups, having fought and bested what had heretofore been considered an eternal machine that not even God could usurp.
A remarkable accomplishment, which his brothers and sisters and in-laws contemptuously dismissed; "Andrushka the fool was stupid to get involved with this in the first place," as if nothing good had come of it. "If he suffered any injustice, it was his own fault."
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During the 1920s, Uncle Andrei became enamoured of an Irish woman who liked pretty things. To keep her, he worked his rear end off so she could have fancy things. He kept her up very well, but her demands were never satisfied. Then, after two daughters, she fell for some Irish guy, and ran away with him, taking the cashbox of a local fraternal lodge, for which Uncle Andrei was the treasurer.
For some peculiar reason, the relatives always insisted it was Uncle Andrei's fault; they thought his wife a nice woman, and so he was stupid and had screwed up something.
He disavowed his wife, and paid back the lodge, which was an accomplishment, considering this was the Depression, and she had disappeared with a great lot of money. But it all was Uncle Andrei's fault, for being so stupid.
About two years after his wife (he had merely disavowed, not divorced, her) had left, she returned to town, alone and broke, her Irish paramour having spent all the stolen funds and then evaporated.
Uncle Andrei wished to have nothing to do with her, but because Uncle Andrei was always wrong, the siblings and in-laws accepted her back into the fold, as if she had done no injury at all. She was even enthusiastically included in the family gatherings, and it was a mystery to them as to why Uncle Andrei, who showed up too, was always so silent and generally stayed long enough only to exchange a few formal pleasantries, and then quickly slipping out.
After all, she was such a nice woman, his siblings and in-laws insisted.
Why did he have to be so anti-social?
Typical stupid Andrushka, being hostile to nice people.
After a few more such unpleasant experiences, one time Uncle Andrei came to a wedding accompanied by an Irish Amazon, jiggling and glittering with far too much jewelry and make-up; a woman who was with him only because he had paid her to be with him.
Great was the uproar, humiliating his wife, such a very nice woman, Uncle Andrei showing up with a brazen whore who laughed at his wife. A real rectal aperture, stupid Andrushka.
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Uncle Andrei thereafter never attended another family gathering, for which he was soundly criticized for his absence; after all, this was "family," and there was something very wrong with someone who didn't get along with family. It just seemed so disrespectful of him.
As decades passed, he found company more congenial elsewhere.
The two daughters--one of which was not his, as it inevitably became known--were educated, and made respectable marriages. And although he had never done as well as his siblings and in-laws, being among those last-hired, first-fired, Uncle Andrei did not die without means, leaving both daughters a tiny estate.
A great host of friends took care of his funeral, although his surviving siblings and in-laws attended, acting hurt.
"We don't know why he never liked us," they whined.
