Uncle Johnny

Johnny always spent Christmas with us.  When we were little we used to torture the poor guy.  At the ripe old age of Six a little movie called Star Wars was released and a lifelong obsession was born in yours truly.  Being a fan of the movie as well as a little kid meant that I was nuts over Star Wars toys.  I had mountains of the things.  Somehow a Christmas tradition was born where my father was responsible for putting all of the complicated toys together, and Uncle Johnny was responsible for putting on all of the decals. 

One year Santa brought me the Millennium Falcon.  It was freakin’ huge.  My father spent an endless amount of time putting all the little pieces together while I ran around the room freaking out wanting to play with it.  Eventually the massive hunk of plastic toy was handed off to Johnny for decal duty.  I thought he was going to throw the thing out the window.  So many tiny little stickers with so many tiny little inaccessible places to put them.  He got them all though, and I continue to be thankful for all of the painful frustrating work he did.

Uncle Johnny introduced me to video games.  He had Pong.  Actually it might have been a knock off of Pong, but it was a tennis game you played on your television.  This is back in the late 70’s so you can imagine how earth shaking such a device was.  I used to love playing that thing.

Uncle Johnny took me to my first rock concert.  Triumph at the Worcester Centrum.  It was a Thursday night.  He came up to Tewksbury and picked me up and we drove all the way out to Worcester… only to find out that the show was postponed.  Turns out guitarist Rik Emmet had fallen down the stairs a few days prior and messed himself up a bit.  The show was pushed back a few weeks and we went again for take two.  Years later we both admitted that we would have preferred our first show together to be Rush, mostly because I was then and am now obsessed with them, but we had a good time seeing that other 3-piece band from Toronto.

Uncle Johnny created a monster by giving me my first guitar.  He had an acoustic that he wanted to learn to play, but it was right handed and he was left handed.  I think he still gave it a shot, but it ended up in a closet somewhere.  My freshman year in high school I somehow evolved from wanting to play the guitar to needing to play guitar.  In 1986 he gave me that guitar for my 15th birthday.  It’s basically unplayable, the action is about 2 inches high, but I started taking lessons on it and I still have it.

Uncle Johnny was a recovering alcoholic who got himself sober through AA.  After he cleaned himself up he started working at a detox clinic.  I’m not exactly sure what it was called, or if the detox was just part of a larger facility, or anything about the place really.  I think he started out as a volunteer and eventually got a job in admissions.  He retired a few years ago and they threw him a party.  My sister and brother and I went.  It was an eye opening experience.  To us he had always just been Uncle Johnny… Dad’s big brother.  To all of the people at that retirement party he was something else.  He was the guy who was there to help them as they struggled to get their lives back on track.  He was there for all of them.  Hearing all of those people talk about him made me see him as more than just the guy who put the stickers on my Christmas presents, and it made me so proud of him.