POOR UNCLE JULIUS'
Meyer, Ernest L.
A True Tale of Christmas Poor Uncle Julius By ERNEST L MEYER IN THOSE Milwaukee days, 40 years ago, during the pre-Christ-mas weeks our usually orderly household resembled nothing less than the...
...He throttled his temper and became a cold, calculating monster, a machine of destruction...
...Then I industriously began to fashion the buffalo's beard, a difficult job, and in the puffs of pungent smoke I wished I had chosen an easier pattern, something smooth shaven, like a giraffe...
...Yes, Georg, and something else happened that made me feel very happy," mother said with a smile...
...I was lost in a jungle of generosity...
...Meyer is also the author of "Hey, Yellowback," the story of his CO experiences during World War I, which he was always careful to foster —that a writer, though deft in the use of words, was awkward and incompetent in the use of any sort ol mechanical tools...
...There was an unused gas jet in there, and I had a pyro-graphic outfit and was all a-sweat with creative zeal...
...I made a brand new bread board, this time with a giraffe, minus whiskers...
...III The bare facts of the fire were, of course, known to me...
...Heaven help me," my father sighed...
...They sang, told anecdotes, played skat...
...He has no wife, no children to gather round him under the tree, singing O Tannenbaum...
...A good many things had caught on the bare horse chestnut tree beneath the window, and the branches were festooned with doilies, hook rugs, table clothes, and even the pajamas with the hideous red flamingos...
...Then father, taking his newspaper and cigar, went shuffling slowly to his room upstairs, looking like a martyr sadly put upon...
...Is the house on fire...
...With a howl of pain, Uncle Julius blundered against the parlor table...
...Our living room during those feverish weeks was a tangle of tissue paper, balls of wool, rattan, doilie drums, cracked nuts, paint boxes, and half completed foot stools and hooked rugs...
...Then I will relate the events of that dreadful night...
...He lighted one of his best cigars...
...I must have looked downcast, foi mother said sharply: Ncmsense...
...Dear Uncle Julius...
...I just cannot understand it...
...Everybody was in mellow spirits...
...And for whom are you making this burnt buffalo...
...He lurched against the wall, slipped on a small hook rug, and banged his nose on a projection, a knobby excrescence made by Nephew Hugo and intended as a parking place for visitors' hats...
...Very well...
...But please excuse me if I withdraw, for in all this stench I cannot tell whether I'm smoking a cigar or a bundle of kindling wood...
...my father cried, putting down his newspaper...
...Now, I can just see Uncle Julius sitting at his favorite table in the Hotel Pfister and summoning Fritz, the head waiter...
...He had spent the evening, he said, with three cronies at the Widow Heiser's tavern...
...For a creaking cadaver of 60, I am not doing so badly," Uncle Julius admitted...
...He came home after midnight, humming a cheerful melody as he climbed the steps to his bachelor flat...
...He vanished into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of rare old cognac and a glass...
...He took a book from a shelf and stretched out on the worn, form-fitting ancient sofa with such a feeling of well being as he had not known for years...
...Ernst," he said presently, "you are now a grown man, and I can trust you, perhaps, with a secret...
...For Uncle Julius...
...fall...
...Never, Uncle Julius reflected, had there been a Christmas tree more tastefully or more lovingly decorated...
...Mother shook her head slowly...
...My little speech deeply affected the good man...
...That is most unusual," father said with a puzzled frown...
...The gifts, nothing else...
...Yes, mother," my sisters and I chorused eagerly...
...He was a newspaperman, a writer, and there was a legend— ERNEST L. MEYER, New York newspaper man and author, has written widely of the Gemuthlichkeit of old Milwaukee, for Colliers, the New York Post, the Madison (Wis...
...I am making a bread board with a nice design on it...
...He leaned far out of the window and looked...
...Poor Uncle Julius,' " my father mocked...
...We sighed with relief when he'd vanished...
...That was Hugo calling," she said...
...I just cannot understand it," she repeated in bewilderment...
...Do I look like a red flamingo type of man...
...I recalled that on the day after Christmas news of the fire reached our family, and we were all appalled...
...My mother, always gullible when it came to father's persuasive logic, accepted the fable, and father was relieved of all household chores...
...It's only my fire-writing set, father," I explained...
...He removed his jacket and shoes and put on his carpet slippers and comfortable old dressing gown...
...The lighted cigar must have dropped from his fingers, and the sofa was on fire...
...There was one night, I recall, when father was reading a newspaper in his favorite chair while the rest of us were ankle deep in industry...
...Looking back, I guess father was not far wrong at that when he pictured Uncle Julius submerged in a flood of Christmas sentiment...
...Sit down, Ernst, and have a stein with me...
...He was not called upon to help in the manufacturing of Christmas cheer...
...Unhappily, my ill-fated bread board was lying on the table, one of its sides overlapping the table edge...
...So all of his good friends and relatives try to add a bit of joy to his holidays by making special gifts, and I think it unkind of you to make fun of us...
...Oh, nothing," I said, flushing...
...Very well, Anna...
...Always still in December...
...Ernst, go on with your buffalo scorching...
...Yes...
...Always you say: 'Poor Uncle Julius.' Look, Anna, if I had one-tenth the income of Uncle Julius I would retire for life from newspaper work and go in for a career in art like, say, manufacturing burnt buffalos...
...It may have been due to his exertions or to the third glass of cognac, but Uncle Julius dropped into sound and sudden sleep...
...It will be a Christmas surprise...
...His lungs were bursting, and he coughed painfully...
...Then, through the smoke, I called out helpfully: "We can always mail our gifts...
...As a matter of fact only the front room was touched by flames...
...I could not even find room in a bureau for my shirts because the drawers were loaded to the brim with such things...
...It came as a great shock, therefore, when two weeks before the holidays mother answered a telephone call and came back looking startled and unhappy...
...And so, children, we shall all work harder next year to brighten the Christmas of poor Uncle Julius, shall we not...
...To be sure, a bread board is precisely what Uncle Julius needs...
...During the course of the years he had received a mountain of hand-made thingumbobs: sofa cushions, table runners with blue windmills and blue cows, chiffonier doilies with ketchup-colored birds of no known species, arm bands and suspenders hand embroidered with anemic forget-me-nots, flannel pen wipers, footstools and tabarets that wobbled a bit, and vast quantities of indescribable whatnots which Uncle Julius was supposed to hang on the wall and use as receptacles for whisk brooms, matches, calling cards, fire tongs, feather dusters, and fallen hair...
...The snow-covered lawn was a magnificent clutter of oddments...
...Though his hair had grown whiter since I'd seen him last, he looked hale and vigorous, and he greeted me warmly...
...He has left no forwarding address...
...Please present it to the chef and instruct him that I absolutely insist that he slice my pumpernickel on this beautiful board...
...Your poor buffalo bread board, Ernst, was broken right in half...
...Nobody heard the uproar...
...And on no account must he carve a single nick in the buffalo's tail.' " My father snorted a loud "Ha...
...After the steins had come, I complimented Uncle Julius on his robust appearance...
...He opened wide one of the front windows, letting the chill air blow in...
...Uncle Julius looked at me intently for a long moment, then he leaned back, laughing loudly...
...We children dropped our work and gasped...
...He actually looked pale, and could murmur but a few broken words of thanks...
...My little flat became overstuffed with sentiment...
...I poked my head guiltily out of a little alcove that connected with the kitchen...
...I ; told Uncle Julius that on no account was he to worry about the damaged gifts and that next Christmas we would not only supplant those that were ruined but we would also make sure that there would be an extra store of good and useful things...
...The room was full of smoke...
...And what did he say to that...
...He was still suffering from shock, I suppose: Then, to hearten him, I said that L had noticed some of the things on the lawn had been injured by the...
...And, sure enough, beginning in mid-November of the following year our home became a madhouse of industry...
...My father surrendered with a sigh...
...At least not since those—those odd things happened in your flat six years ago...
...I know Uncle Julius is very well off...
...It proves how wrong you were when you said that Uncle Julius does not treasure the Christmas gifts we make for him...
...I owe my good health to my long winter vacations in the faraway lands...
...She returned an hour later, and we could tell from the relieved look on her face that things were not so bad as we had feared...
...I do not enjoy even the choicest brews when I have to drink alone...
...I am sure that Ernst's bread board will delight poor Uncle Julius...
...He suddenly felt the need for self-expression, and, still in the darkness, he banged his fist on the table...
...No wonder you look so pleased...
...as pot holders, hand knitted neckties of unique hues and designs, and even new-fangled pajamas with a pattern of red flamingos...
...I shook my head...
...Ah, how we all slaved that year, looking forward with joy to the happy Christmas of poor Uncle Julius...
...The good man was so overcome that he sat down, covered his face with his hands, and moaned...
...Georg...
...He ran, coughing, to the hallway telephone and called the fire department, then stumbled downstairs and outdoors where he shivered under the horse chestnut tree with its gay festoons of hook rugs and flamingo pajamas...
...But, my boy, there is in everything a saturation point...
...That was the year, I think, that you presented me with a beautiful bread board, was it not...
...Always in December," he nodded, then added sharply: "What makes you ask that, my boy...
...Uncle Julius escaped without hurt," she reported, "and because the fire department came quickly the house still stands...
...But of course...
...That is excellent news," my father said...
...He says that Uncle Julius left suddenly on a long winter tour abroad...
...I shall take comfort in the thought of poor Uncle Julius wallowing richly, knee deep, in bread board, peppermints, and miscellaneous Christmas sentiment...
...As you very well know, Uncle Julius is a bachelor and for 20 years has been eating his meals out...
...The match went out, and at the same moment Uncle Julius stumbled across a hand-made footstool, the gift of a distant cousin...
...Sensational...
...they had drunk deeply of the goblets of special hot holiday punch...
...The gifts, to be sure...
...Uncle Julius struggled to his feet, ran to the kitchen, and returned with a pan of water...
...He lit all the lights in the house...
...During this season of domestic upheaval, my father moved vaguely about the rooms, unhappy and unwanted...
...I accepted happily...
...Father retired permanently to his retreat on the second floor...
...You forget entirely the matter of sentiment...
...He awoke later and just as suddenly with the knowledge that something was wrong...
...Uncle Julius sighed...
...And now, as Uncle Julius related the background of the episode, my memory went back six years, and I could see the whole adventure in a new and interesting light...
...He struck another match, found the gas jet, and lit it...
...My pyrographic set was red hot for hours, and the alcove smelled like a smokehouse...
...It was the kind of tranquil evening Uncle Julius thoroughly enjoyed...
...But he's a bachelor, and Christmas must be a sad time for him...
...When I got to the house, there they were safely outside on the lawn, and a great many got caught in the tree after he'd thrown them from the window...
...And when I got inside and found him safe and sound, I actually kissed him on the cheek, and I told him how touched I was that at the risk of his life he had saved our hand-made presents from the fire...
...Then, carefully and methodically, he went from room to room, picking up armfuls of Christmas gifts—hat racks, footstools, pincushions, bread boards, whatnots and everything— and hurled them through the window, singing joyously meanwhile at the top of his voice...
...There was a faint hiss and a puff of steam, but the flames had eaten deeply into the back of the sofa, and Uncle Julius saw that it was no use...
...Never, Uncle Julius told me, had he felt such a keen, overwhelming surge of satisfaction as when the flat had been stripped clean of 20 years' litter of Christmas kindness...
...Shame on you, Georg...
...Well, let me assure you that I appreciated the gift as well as the hundreds of other gifts showered on me by my dear friends and relatives...
...In that instant, Uncle Julius confessed, he turned icy all over...
...Father suddenly shouted: "In heaven's name, what is that infernal stench...
...What do you think he saved from the flames...
...He opened the door, struck a match, and fumbled for the gas jet in the parlor...
...It is only that my parents have been remarking that you never spend the Christmas season in Milwaukee...
...The house was freighted with the banana-oil fragrance of gilt stain, and our meals were faintly flavored with confectioner's sugar and fish glue...
...A True Tale of Christmas Poor Uncle Julius By ERNEST L MEYER IN THOSE Milwaukee days, 40 years ago, during the pre-Christ-mas weeks our usually orderly household resembled nothing less than the wreckage left by a tempest in a toyshop...
...Then Uncle Julius closed the window and lighted the gas log in the fireplace...
...A buffalo...
...Also a tabaret with a four leaf clover design...
...It was not until years later that I learned how our very industry had wrought uproar and catastrophe in the quiet bachelor quarters of Uncle Julius, and on Christmas night, too, when such unholy things shouldn't happen...
...It's not money I'm talking about, Georg...
...My mother, murmuring: "Poor Uncle Julius," left at once to offer condolences...
...My mother, my two sisters, and I were frantically busy till late each evening making things for the holidays: gilded walnut shells and pink-tinted popcorn for the Christmas tree, a vast variety of hand-wrought gifts for friends and relatives, spiced peppernut and anise cookies and a special gingery confection called Lebkuchen, nicely polished and with almonds on the top, for the Yuletide feasts...
...II I had quite grown up and was on spring vacation from the University when I chanced to meet Uncle Julius at his favorite Milwaukee tavern run by the benign Widow Heiser...
...Then he told me about the curious happenings of that Christmas night six years before...
...Fritz,' says Uncle Julius, 'here is a bread board which I carry around with me wherever I go...
...Season after season we toiled to add to his hoard...
...Uncle Julius' fist smote the end of the bread board, it bounded into the air, and the burnt buffalo cracked viciously against his jaw...
...Capital Times, the American Mercury, and The Progress-i v e. His book, "Bucket Boy," published in 1948, was the colorful story of the little group of German - American liberals associated with the liberal German paper, Germaoia, published in Milwaukee just past the turn of the century...
Vol. 15 • January 1951 • No. 1
