Today, though, I thought I’d share a couple of images and thoughts of my Uncle Al Nyrell, who was one of my mother’s three brothers. All of them not only were salesmen for the Morton Salt Company, but also great guys to have as uncles. Axel, however, shared a special bond with my mother and with my brother and me. My mother had been the baby of her family, and Al was the middle of her three older brothers. She also had two older sisters. In addition, all of my mother’s other siblings had kids of their own; however, my Uncle Al and my Aunt Myrtle had none. My brother and I were the youngest of all the offspring, so Al and Myrtle spoiled us to no end.
Uncle Al was eleven years older than my dad, and he served in the U.S. Army in Guadalcanal when he was 36. Having survived that ordeal, he returned home to be a salt salesman, and his territory was Rhode Island. My uncle and aunt had settled in Cranston, so we would take that long drive about every other month to visit them, and they would come to the Cape on those months in between. In those days on those roads with those vehicles, the Dennisport-Cranston route was a long drive.
Along with the family lore about my dad’s wanting to name me “Bill” is the tale of my uncle’s visit to the Cape when I was still in my crib. One of the highlights of my March birth was that I was born with bronchial pneumonia. I don’t recall that, but I have been told on numerous occasions that my uncle awoke one morning in my mom and dad’s newly-built Cape home and asked why the coffee had been percolating seemingly all night long. His kid sister had to explain to him that it wasn’t the percolator that he heard, but her baby’s breathing. That would be me.
There are so many other great things to say about my Uncle Al (as well as my Aunt Myrtle and all the others), but I will share just two more. As I said, Uncle Al’s last name is Nyrell, and his favorite beer was Cranston’s own Narragansett Lager beer. Whenever my aunt and uncle arrived on Cape, he would unload a case of ’Gansett from the trunk of his company automobile (which is what they called cars back then). Uncle Al gave me my first sip of beer. (Thanks, Al. It’s never tasted any better than that since then.) What I very clearly remember, though, is the day that he showed me all the bottles in his full case of Narragansett, each of which had an N atop the cap. Even though I did not know the alphabet, Al taught me early on that “That N stands for Nyrell.”
The other thing that I remember so well is the day that my Uncle Al died. It was 1954, and he was 49 years old. He had died of a quinsy sore throat, which is an abscess on the tonsils. Ironically, his symptomatic sore throat could not be soothed by gargling with Morton salt in warm water, but he did not think it was anything serious. He choked to death on that abscess. At the age of six, I was home when my mother received the phone call on that August day, and I can still picture her sitting in the sun on our back step and sobbing beyond control. It was the first instance I had ever known of anyone’s dying.
Needless to say, my Uncle Al taught me a lot of things in those six short years, and a lot of those memories are clearly linked to life along Snatch Alley. One of these pictures below was taken in our yard in June of 1951, when other homes had begun to spring up. My Uncle Al is on the right, with his hand in the pocket of his cardigan . . . in June.
The other picture is of him in Guadalcanal. That picture sits on my shelf, where I see it every day. Clearly, there is a longneck bottle in his right hand, and I choose to believe that it is a Narragansett Lager. You and I can almost be certain that it is not, but still I like to believe it is so.
Today is Memorial Day, and -- among others that I have known and lost in battle and thereafter -- I am remembering Axel Nyrell. He was a large part of life along Snatch Alley.
Preserve your memories; they’re all that’s left you.
No comments:
Post a Comment