Uncle Allie

Uncle Allie

Last week my brother Joe and I traveled up to our birthplace, Elmsford, New York, to pay our respects to Uncle Allie. He died at the age of 89 and was the last of that generation. The Floral trade was both his profession and his avocation. He was part of a family tradition, first established by my grandfather and shared by his four sons. Uncle Marshall and Uncle Allie worked the business in Elmsford. Uncle Jack had a florist and greenhouse in Pauling, N.Y. Uncle Charlie moved out west, first to Nampa, Idaho and then to Boise to establish his own greenhouse and florist. At least three variations of Cooke’s Greenhouse are still being practiced in Virginia and New York. Out in Arizona Uncle Jack’s children are also still active in the business.

For the majority of the first nine years of my life, I lived next to the greenhouses and florist shop that consisted of the place my grandfather and then Uncle Marshall and finally Uncle Allie practiced their trade. It was a special place to grow up. I can remember playing baseball with an odd twist in the backyard of our house. If anyone hit a ‘home run’ over the 8 foot high hedge, it was an automatic out, because over the hedge were the glass panes of Uncle Marshall’s greenhouse. It wasn’t so bad if Granddad was there potting up the plants for he’d return the baseball without question, but if Uncle Marshall was around, then we’d run first to the money jar to reimburse him for the expense of the broken glass. We three boys learned to become singles hitters rather than go for the fences.

Now, the old house has been demolished; an office building sits on the site. The greenhouses have been sold for development but the joy of laughter, the smell of the crushed flower stems, the music coming out of the beat up old radio, the sudden chill of walking into the flower cooler on a hot summer day, all these things still fill my senses and my memory. Allie was a jovial man, a round man who enjoyed his family and his work. It showed. He was the youngest of the family and my mother’s favorite. I never thought of him as astute a businessman as his other brothers, perhaps even not as quick witted and intelligent, but he was surely the kindest.

One remembrance, which I record to remind myself in the future as much as to inform the reader, is this. I was perhaps five or six years old. It was a rainy early fall evening. I have no idea where Allie’s family was, but it was just he and I. He was always active in the Fairview Volunteer Fire Department and this evening the semi-annual fireman’s carnival was underway. He took me up the road to the carnival site, but because of the rain and chill of the night, we had the fair almost all to ourselves. I can’t recall ever having been before, so the activities of the carnies and the rides and the smell of cotton candy were frightening to me. Luckily I had my Uncle who knew everyone.

He showed me the shooting gallery and a number of other attractions and offered to pay my coin if I’d like to participate, but I was to shy and to overwhelmed to agree, but finally, he suggested that we put our money down on a spot for the wheel of fortune. We were the only ones there, my (his really) coin the only spot taken in a long table of numbered squares. The fellow behind the counter spun the big wheel and sure enough, it trickled to a stop on the number where my coin rested. I was asked what I would like from the pile of prizes, and I selected a glass juice pitcher painted with pictures of oranges and eight juice glasses to give to my mother.

But even then, somehow I knew that the game was rigged. Rigged in my favor, or really, in Uncle Allie’s favor. Somehow he had some magic to make that wheel stop at the only square that contained a coin, my square. And for the next fifty years as the juice pitcher and eight glasses gradually diminished to but one glass, every time I had orange juice I would remember that night. For as long as they lasted it was the only juice glass that I would ever take down from mother’s cupboard. The last glass was broken eventually, as all temporary and fragile things are, but Uncle Allie’s magic, which was neither temporary nor fragile, has remained to this day.