Ive said that Judge Polier made my great Uncle Bill my guardian when I was 14. He was the totally, completely opposite of the family I grew up with. When I was at Hawthorne no one provided clothing for me. I wrote him that I didnt any clothes of my own, just some institutional things that were available to new arrivals. One was a striped pinafore, which just wasnt me. Uncle Bill arrived with a huge suitcase full of blouses and skirts, penny loafers, socks and left money for me to get underthings. When I got thrown out of the residential girls club and my parents threw me out, he began giving me 21 dollars a week for rent and food, saw to it that I got into nursing school and still gave me an allowance for years. He gave me my first dog, a little Welsh Terrier, Butch, provided I take one of the restaurant kittens. Putty-tat was black with four white paws and a white blaze on his chest. They were both babies, about 7 weeks old, and grew up as loving siblings. Uncle Bill grew up in Wigand in England, had gone to law school, was a solicitor. He hated the law, and ran away to sea. At one point in his life he was Chief Bartender and Storekeeper on the Leviathan. He loved the restaurant business, and in the 1920s owned a restaurant on the Palisades in New Jersey. During prohibition, he supplied the liquor for it by having a man in a basement in NY, blowing Johnny Walker bottles and getting English booze dropped outside the three-mile limit in the Atlantic, smuggling it in in small boats and doctoring it by the fellow in the basement on Horatio Street. He eventually was caught and spent a year in Atlanta Federal Prison. He never held a liquor license because of that, even after Prohibition ended. He became a coffee broker and roasted and sold coffee, until he made enough money to go back in the restaurant business. When I was a teen, he owned three restaurants in NY, two cafeterias in the Garment District and a lovely place in the CBS building. Two were Colbys and Colbees. Colbees in the CBS building served a business girls lunch which consisted of a cup of glorious bisque, half a sandwich , a small brownie and ice cream and coffee. I ate there almost daily when I worked at Weintraub Advertising, on a break from nursing. For years he bought my work clothes, beautiful suits from Bloomies or Bonds, decent shoes, and often my nursing uniforms. He was proud when I was dressed and came to the restaurant to see him. I was his kid and more father to me than my own had ever been. He sent me to my first circus, first racecourse, first opera. He taught me what wines to drink, what whiskies and gins were worth drinking, often bought me six packs of liquor to take to parties in the city or on Fire Island. He provided Thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas geese, and one Christmas a huge Italian cream cake which I took down to 17 Barrow for them to serve. He regaled me with WW1 and 2 stories of sea battles, and stories of the silent film beauties he had had relationships with. I shortened his pants, since he was only 52 and often shaved him as he got older. He was silver haired, a sweet man who referred to my father as the Hun and despised him for giving his children away. When he was nearly in his 80 s I brought him to live with me in the Bronx and it broke both our hearts when I moved to New Orleans. A few months after I got there he had a stroke on his way to the restaurant, was near death and the Union representative at Colbys, who was a special friend, called me and begged me to fly home. I did and was too late, but arranged his funeral in our old neighborhood, chose his funeral clothes, and got the Episcopal priest next door to where he had lived for years to do the funeral. His friend, the Union man, and I were the only mourners. I rode with the funeral director out to a cemetery in New Jersey near his old restaurant and buried him. I grieve that I wasnt there when he died. No one should die alone. I never really had parents but him, and I had him for a long time. We were only distantly related, but Judge Polier knew what she was doing when she put us together and I am eternally grateful to her and to him. I am the person I am, because he taught me to love him, my children, my cat and dog, and the love of story telling.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 07:20:41 +0000
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