Uncle Emory

Uncle Emory came to visit during the summer of '68. I was still playing with Barbie dolls and wearing black patent leather shoes on my way to Bible school when he showed up with his summer's San Francisco overcoat of green and orange circles, a purple fedora, and dark black hair all the way to his knees. He smoked a bong in our Santa Rosa backyard while we sniffed the burned eucalyptus and fragrant bougainvillea from my mother's garden. Uncle Emory brought stories of City Lights, his favorite booktore in the North Beach neighborhood, and the literati he met in Haight-Ashbury. He'd always been a writer but settled for accounting and a part-time bookstore job on weekends. Parties in 'Frisco with drugs, scantily-clad women shivering in the summer's cool breeze, shirtless men kissing in the streets. I thought he was the best ever.

Daddy hated Mama's youngest brother. He kept the peace that long July 4th weekend only as a tribute to my mother, for whom Uncle Emory could do no wrong. Daddy had fought in Korea and wore striped, short-sleeved shirts, navy blue dockers, and a short, crisp-clean haircut. Occasionally I overheard heated debate and names such as Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, Richard Nixon, Billy Graham, and Curtis Lemay. And one day it all came to a screeching halt when the name of Ronald Reagan surfaced. Daddy and Uncle Emory could keep a semblance of peace without discussing our governor. I thought his daughter Patti was really, really groovy, but Uncle Emory couldn't stand anything with the name Reagan. So after Reagan's comment about the U.Cal. students and botulism, Uncle Emory went back to Haight-Ashbury. I didn't see him again until '72 when I went down there to volunteer for McGovern.