Mariner

February 13, 1995

My Great-uncle Andrew is etched on my memories of by-gone days. He was a brother of my grandfather, John Wilson, who was the most unforgettable man of my experience. Some day I’ll write about my grandfather; but so far, each time I try, I put the pen down because I fear the result will be too maudlin.

Andrew Wilson was the kind of man about whom Robert Louis Stevenson could have written. Jack London would have found a way to make him a character in a story of the sea. The most picaresque image in my mind is that of Uncle Andrew walking up George Street from the Ferry Street streetcar with “Polly”, the parrot, perched on his forearm.

Polly became a fixture in the households of my mother, Aunt Florence, and Aunt Fanny. I don’t know whether Polly was shuffled from one house to another every few months because she was a privilege to be shared or a nuisance to be equally borne.

John Wilson was a year or two the elder of the brothers. Both were born in Sweden either in Örnsköldsvik or Härnösand. Both are port cities on the Gulf of Bothnia. The reason for the uncertainty is that my grandmother came from one of the cities and the brothers from the other, but I don’t know which was which. Both shipped out as as cabin boys somewhere between ten and twelve years of age. Both learned the ropes and ways of the sea. My grandfather married Annette Brock (“Anna” pronounced Ahnuh) in Sweden. They migrated to the United States, settling in Boston and raised five, possibly six, daughters: Anna, Elizabeth, Carrie, Florence, Fanny and ?.

Uncle Andrew and my grandfather did not look like brothers except in size. They were both about four inches over six feet tall, big boned, but not overweight. My grandfather had white thin hair, light skin, sharp nose and high cheek-bones – much like the Scandinavian stereotype. Uncle Andrew, however, had a full head of black hair even in his eighties. His skin was dark, almost swarthy, with a big nose and a piratical mustache – more like the facial appearance of a Greek or a Mediterranean type. My mother also had black hair and a darker skin than her sisters so there must have been something in the genes from somewhere. Uncle Andrew explained his black hair by saying that he always washed it with kerosene. My surmise is that this “shampoo” was not so much to preserve the blackness as to eliminate tiny creatures which I am sure must have been common aboard ship.

When I knew him, Uncle Andrew was more bent over than his straight-backed brother and walked with a little difficulty. Not surprising when one knew that in the course of sixty to seventy years at sea, he had more than once had broken arms, ribs, legs, hips – falling from masts and rigging. He was much resentful, when in his late seventies, he could no longer get a job on a freighter. He died at the age of 87; and his last years were spent at Sailors’ Snug Harbor on Staten Island, New York City, a seamen’s home with some sort of Masonic connection. Uncle Andrew was a Mason; Uncle John Granstrom a Shriner, which didn’t hurt when Uncle Andrew’s application to Sailors’ Snug Harbor was considered.

But most of all, I enjoyed his stories. Like many old Salts, one could not be sure that his “yarns” were precisely accurate in all details. At the forefront of my memories is Swedish Christmas Eve (about which I have written elsewhere). If Uncle Andrew was in port, he would be there with his stories about the Bible, the hospital in Havana and the “Big Finn”. If he started on “Seenyoreetas”, one of the aunts would stop him, “There are children at the table.” He had a peculiar patois – broken English, Swedish accent, with some Spanish mixed in, like dressing in a salad. For many years he had shipped on United Fruit vessels to Central America, Havana, and other Caribbean ports.

The Havana story has stayed in my mind-pictures. Later on, when I asked my mother or one of the aunts, “was he telling the truth?”, the answer was, “you don’t think Uncle Andrew would lie, do you?” Reflecting years later, I realized that my question was not precisely answered.

Anyway, Uncle Andrew described being hospitalized in Havana. He had been diagnosed with what he called “The Fever.” He noted one night that another patient in the ward was given “a big black pill.” In the morning, the man was dead. The same pattern occurred another evening “He got the big black pill and in the morning he was dead.” He went on, “The next night they gave me the big black pill, but I only pretended to take it. When the lights were out I got out of the window, down the fire-escape, went to the harbor and swam out to my ship.”

Hard to believe? Of course! But I believed it then and still do – of course my Uncle Andrew could have done that. Another memory is that to my childish eyes, his hands seemed as large as tennis rackets; and I felt their size and strength when he would pick me up.

Christmas Eve, when Uncle Andrew was there, usually took a turn that was biblical and theological. As I have thought back, there were no believing Christians there. My Uncle Frank Crimmins was Roman Catholic, but he and Aunt Fanny lived in New York City and did not often get to Boston. Those gathered at the Yule table were skeptics, but that interfered not a whit in their consumption of food and drink (particularly drink). The men went to the 5 a.m. Julotta service at a Swedish church. That still puzzles me a bit because as far as I know, that early Christmas service was the only religious service any of them attended all year.

Uncle Andrew was the only one familiar with the Bible. Through the years of voyaging he had read the Bible again and again. At the Christmas Eve feast he would expound. My phonetic spelling of his Christmas “theology” doesn’t capture his accent, but it’s the best I can do:

“Yeesus Christ was a goot fellow, but he wass a bastard – it says so in the Book. Joseph did not know Mary wass going to have a baby. But Joseph wass a goot fellow, too.”

Of course at that age I did not know enough to to understand what heresy, even blasphemy, that Uncle Andrew spoke. A few years later when I was becoming somewhat aware of the Bible and how it came to be; and then more years later in Theological School and more formal Bible studies, I marveled how Uncle Andrew with little formal education to speak of, had perceived the heart of the matter – that doctrinal or creedal beliefs about Jesus and his father, Joseph, weren’t nearly as vital as what they understood and how they acted in their dealings with other persons. In such perception, Uncle Andrew was a “goot fellow”, too.

So perhaps you can understand a bit how his brother, his nieces and their husbands, and the smaller fry always had a big warm welcome for this carpenter when he came home from the sea. I never see a parrot but what the image pops in my mind of Uncle Andrew walking up George Street with Polly perched on his arm.