Uncle Gino

When your childhood is spent relocating, you are filled with memories, both brief and epic, of those who breezed through your life.  Memories can be instantly brought back from a voice, a name, but for me it's often a smell.  That's why the smell of a certain perfume, homemade meat sauce and Maraschino cherries makes me think of my early years in St. Louis.

This perfume I'm talking about might be famous, but I have no idea.  I refer to it by the only name I ever called it, Carol's perfume.  Carol was a tall, thin, blonde woman who lived in the townhouse next door.  She had a distinct laugh possessed solely by her and her sister, Dee.  It was a cackle, but not at all witch-y.  Carol had a dog named Whiskers that, now that I think about it, resembled Carol herself:  tall, thin with wiry yellow hair and long nails.  I only mention the nails because our stairs shared a common wall and every time Whiskers would walk upstairs we could hear the clicking of his nails on the wooden steps.  Going up the stairs was not a problem, but the going down was completely uncivilized.  I never witnessed him descending so my description of what would happen is based solely on what I could hear through the wall.  It was a sound that could only be made by a large dog sliding down wooden stairs and thumping against the wall at the bottom.  I realize I will probably get letters from ASPCA or something,  but I swear to you it still makes me laugh when I think about it.

Aside from her perfume and odd dog, I have etched in my memory her unique posture.  It's not exactly her posture I remember but her habit of holding her left arm next to her side, elbow bent with her hand hanging floppily in mid air.  She had no ailment I was aware of that caused her to do this, but I think it was just her relaxed stance.  My parents tell me once I was playing a solitary game of charades and asked, "Guess who I am?" and I held my arm like Carol's.  They knew right away.

My parents were friends with Carol and her live-in boyfriend, Gino.  (Apparently, being a good Catholic Gino felt "living in sin" was, well, a sin, so whenever he would come home he would announce, "I'm house!")  Gino owned an restaurant in the Italian section of St. Louis called "The Hill" and always drove a Cadillac.  I remember many evenings spent with me sitting at the bar in his restaurant ordering Shirley Temples filled with Maraschino cherries while my parents ate, drank and laughed in the dining room.  I also remember the waiting area was filled with church pews which is where my father would retrieve my sleepy body from when it was time to go home.  And it was dark.  Not just outside, but inside as well.  Looking back it was either to provide ambiance or anonymity, maybe both.

I don't remember the first time I met Gino but my parents recall their first introduction quite fondly.  Around ten o'clock one evening my parents heard a knock on the front door.  It was Gino holding a huge plate of antipasti. No words, just food.  That served as neighborly introduction and they became fast friends. Most of my memories of Gino are not mine at all; they are from the stories my parents told me.  Gino was fond of me.  At five years old I was, by far, the youngest child I had ever seen at Gino's restaurant or his house.  That is as long as you don't count Carol's younger brother with Down Syndrome.  I have no idea how much older he was than I, but I always assumed he was an adult because he would be perfectly content to sit all evening listening to the adult conversation and was  never interested in playing with me.  Being so young, Gino would dote on me and tell me that if I was his child, I would always have the finest dresses and the best toys.  One time Gino was ribbing me about something and I responded with a dismissive gesture and said, "You Italians are all alike."  Of course, all the adults, especially Gino, loved my response enough to tell that story 40 years later.

My father tells me that Gino was in The Mob.  At five you don't think anything of your Uncle Gino having a new Cadillac every couple of months.  You just like going for rides to get ice cream.  I never even noticed the stream of mafioso that would file into the restaurant, paying their respects to Mama Patrino in the kitchen, then moving directly to the back room.  Dad always assumed Gino was fairly low in the organization, but I like to think he was an important player.  I knew Gino would never hurt a fly, but to this day I still feel that owning a restaurant frequented by The Mob served a valuable role in the history of organized crime.  I mean, who loves eating more than Italians?

Even now, I will be walking in a shop and a woman will be wearing Carol's perfume and it will instantly bring me back over thirty-five years to my life in St. Louis.  Or when my oldest child was little and a bartender friend  named a drink after her because she always wanted five Maraschino cherries.  But, more often, when I'm making homemade pasta sauce and my stove top is covered with splatters from the bubbling sauce, I am reminded of my time spent as Gino Patrino's special girl.