Looking back over the years, is there a single Boomer who didn’t have a strange – or let’s say “interesting” – relative or two. I sure did. One that comes immediately to mind was Uncle Sidney. Uncle Sidney was my grandmother’s (Mama Ida) younger brother. She was a Davis and had three sisters – Ann, Pearl and Topsy, and two brothers, Arthur and Sidney. The family lost their mother soon after Topsy, the youngest, was born and Aunt Ann raised the children herself.
When Aunt Ann retired in the early 50’s, she and Uncle Sidney moved to a cottage near Atlantic Beach, in Morehead City, fronting Bogue Sound.
It was a modest cottage with a small pier on the sound where Uncle Sidney kept a wooden rowboat. Each summer, my family went to visit and stayed with Aunt Ann and Uncle Sidney. We went to Atlantic Beach and played in the surf. We crabbed to our heart’s content off the pier and occasionally took the rowboat out in the sound.
Uncle Sidney had one and a half legs. His lower left leg was severed when he tried to hop on a moving train. I expect alcohol was involved because Uncle Sidney really enjoyed a drink or two or three, or until he ran out of money from his part time job at a local filling station.
One thing I remember about Uncle Sidney was that he was a world-class snorer. When he had had a few drinks or beers (usually every night), he snored the paint off the walls, mixed in with some cussing that would make a sailor blush. I learned some of my best cuss words at Aunt Ann’s cottage. But during the day, Uncle Sidney was a gentle and dear person.
One day, I suppose I was about 8, Uncle Sidney offered to take me and the row boat out into the sound and catch a few croakers. Since I have always loved to fish, even at a very early age, I was all over his invitation and helped lug rods, reels, bait, buckets and oars to the dock. Uncle Sidney would have to row since we had no motor.
Things were going famously – we had a half-bucket of fat croakers – until a dark cloud suddenly loomed on the horizon and the wind began to blow.
Uncle Sidney was fighting both a hard tide and heavy winds and couldn’t make any headway back to the pier.
He did manage to get the boat close to shore, though still about 500 yards from the cottage. Because he had a wooden leg, Uncle Sidney couldn’t get in the water. Exhausted, he pleaded with me to hop overboard and pull the boat back to the pier.
Trouble was, I knew what things lived in Bogue Sound: sting rays, giant killer crabs, tiger sharks, jelly fish – probably even worse – and I declined my Uncle’s request. So Uncle Sidney rowed and rowed and we were still losing ground. Miraculously, the tide changed and the winds died down and we simply drifted back to the pier.
Uncle Sidney was so tired that evening that he went to bed sober and never made a sound. Slept like a baby.
I know now that I would have been safe getting out and pulling the boat back in, but at that age, I figured it would be better to just drown at sea.