Winter of 1966

Uncle Antonio Old School Tough, - Aunt Angie Old School Wife

      The next two months after my father assaulted my mother, I lived as if in a fog. We moved to my Uncle Antonio and Aunt Angie's house, a week before Christmas, to get ready to move to North Carolina. My mother had made arrangements for us to live with my Uncle VD, (his name not his initials), Aunt Trudie, and my Grandmother, whom we called Nana.

      Christmas day celebrations were held at my Uncle Antonio's place. My uncle Antonio worked as a bricklayer and a stonemason and was an avid and prolific hunter, as evidenced by the multitude of mounted animal heads that adorned his living room.

      This Christmas, my father went all out with the gifts for us kids. The number of gifts that Santa brought us that year was triple. Finally, the day after Christmas, we all packed into my Uncle Antonio's Cadillac and drove away. As we looked back, my dad had a forlorn look on his face and waved slowly good -bye.

My brother and I wept piteously, and my sister sat quietly, looking numb.

      My Uncle Antonio did his best to lighten the mood with his special brand of humor. He was a character, a real old-school kind of guy. He had started working in the coal-mines near Erie, Pennsylvania, when he turned twelve. This was before any child labor laws were in effect. Our uncle told us that he was one of over a half-dozen siblings, all pulling their weight to help the family. His mother made potato vodka in their bathtub to help support her large brood. Back then, adults and children alike worked twelve to sixteen hour days, and Uncle Antonio continued doing this until the tender age of sixteen. When he was sixteen years old, he lied about his age and joined the Marines toward the end of World War II. Before he was deployed to fight in the Pacific Theater, he had been stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

      A friend in his battalion invited him home for a little R & R, to meet his sister, and to enjoy some good ole' down-home cooking. Rumor has it that my Uncle Antonio and my Grandmother developed a mutual "interest" in each other. Rumor also has it that, before he left for the Pacific, a certain "chemistry" had developed between him and one of her daughters (my Aunt Angie). Regardless of rumor, after the war, he did in fact marry my Aunt Angie, and whatever angst that may have existed between my Uncle and my Grandmother had been resolved long before I arrived on the scene.  (Many of my mother’s relatives were just a bit incestuous).

      It was during my uncle's last campaign, that he ended up being one of two people out of an entire battalion that survived an assault by the Japanese. He and his battalion were attacked by a horde of enemy soldiers.

      He, himself, was shot in the stomach, bayoneted in one lung, his jaw broken by one rifle butt, and his skull cracked by another. After the assault, he and his friend were thrown down a mineshaft, or off a cliff of sorts. The fall added to his list of injuries. His back was broken in a few places, along with a various other bones. He and his friend were the only surviving members of his battalion. He spent over a year in a military hospital bed recuperating.

      Uncle Antonio was the quintessential tough-guy, what is often referred to as a "man's man." He was a little bit of John Wayne, a little bit of Conan the barbarian. Despite his being very tough, if he had a few drinks under his belt and happened to watch a war movie, he had been known to have melancholic fits of weeping. The scars and the memories of the war were always with him.