The Answering Machine And The Good Brother

The Other Uncle Louis (Lou)

I wrote an article a few months ago about my dad’s brother named Lou who cheated dad and how he could have helped us out financially when Dad broke his back in a fall in about 1941 or thereabouts. I called it Uncle Lou, No One To Remember You, But Me. As I was thinking about this article recently, I remembered that Mom had a brother name Louis (Lou) too. You could say he was the good Lou. He was always trying to be nice, gave us kids nice presents and was kind to mom, his only living sister after Dad died.

As I recall the good Lou, who was called Louie when he was young, he always was a bit flamboyant. He bought a beautiful car when I was about four and he took a picture of me beside that car. I was wearing pigtails and a bow in my hair. I remember the car as being a pinkish color which was quite unusual in 1938-40. It was huge by the standards in those days and when he came to see Mom and Dad and us, all the neighbors thought “here comes her millionaire brother.” He went into the wholesale produce business and sold to the small grocery stores which were prominent then on almost every corner of homes called row houses in those days.

He did well and he worked odd hours. He went to work at night around midnight and came home around nine a.m. and went to sleep. He lived at our house when I was about four and he was a deep sleeper and Dad had to awaken him at eleven to make sure he got to work on time. After a while, he moved out because he could afford it and he met a young woman who worked downtown here in Baltimore and walked by his business every day. The story was he whistled at her and eventually she went out with him and they married and had two daughters.

He would often come to see Mom and Dad and always brought them a whole watermelon which in those days was a treat. We had so many melons, that to this day; I do not really delight in eating them.

We had grape vines in the back yard and somehow, Dad made wine from them and all the relatives who were liked by Dad often got a delicious bottle of wine at holiday times for a treat. Dad also did another unusual thing. We must have had tomato vines and he took and had a made up recipe he created and pickled them and so everyone, especially Uncle Louie, loved the pickled green tomatoes which were eaten like kosher pickles today. You can even find Dad’s type of pickled tomatoes in delly counters all over the city. Dad would give bottles of the pickled tomatoes to nice relatives. Everyone wanted Joe’s wine and tomatoes.

About thirty years ago, Uncle Louie bought the first home answering machine. One day, Mom called him and heard for the first time “Please leave a message and Lou will return your call soon as possible”. She called me up and said what is this thing he has, I want to talk to him and the machine answers. I told her that this insured that when he was not home, he would know she called.

Mom passed away on October 19^th, 1984. My brother Herb, my daughter, my son and I were there for days while she was in Johns Hopkins and all the whole week. On Friday night, we decided to go home for a while and my brother would come back later. Of course, five minutes after we left, she passed away and my brother got the call and he went back to the hospital to make arrangements etc. I called Louie and told him as he and she were the remaining of the seven siblings. He said “you know, she called me before she left. I was at a restaurant that knew me and they called me to the phone and when I answered, no one was there. I knew it was her saying goodbye.” My brother, my children and I thought what an ego he had, to think, she could call him, when she had been almost asleep all day and only talked a tiny bit then.

We all laughed about it for many days thinking where did he get this idea, that he was so important that she stopped on her way to Heaven to call him even though he had been a good brother to her in later years and younger years; and she had been a great sister and let him live with us before he married.

However, the more we and I thought about it, we found it quite interesting. There was no caller I.D. in those days to see who was calling and even so, it would have said Johns Hopkins Hospital because there were no cell phones then.

I, who have many credits in psychology from college thought that if this made him feel good and contented thinking that the phone call and the hang-up were from his beloved sister, so be it. It was OK and kind of sweet.

Whatever can give you contentment about someone or something is to be marveled at and even could be adding to tender remembrances of loved ones.

I still adhere to showing love, admiration, contentment and help to others while we are all here and if Louis (the good Louie, the good Lou, uncle and brother) believed and I know he truly did that Mom loved him enough to stop on her way to Heaven, so be it. He deserved the thought, because he had been a dear brother to her and nice to us kids and it made us feel better to have a good and thoughtful Lou in our childhood and adult lives.  It made the bad Lou written about in the former article not defame the name of Louis and did show that there are good Lou’s and other ones too.

Names cover people and the two Lou’s in our lives could not have been any different. One caring, kind, full of charm and personality and the other not anything to ever remember him by other than all the nasty things he did to us as written about in the former article. I am glad I remember the kind one and shall never forget his charming smile and happy personality. The good Lou was indeed that and if Mom decided before leaving to call him one last time, she did not have time to leave a message on his answering machine, but he knew it was her. That is a delightful thought.