Auntie Mame!

Aunt Jeri, my mother's older sister, was the model for Auntie Mame. OK, that's not absolutely true. But if she wasn't the model for Patrick Dennis' outlandish, biographical aunt, she was, at least, the personification; exuberant, full of life, dramatic in flourish, irreverent.


My aunt was the personal assistant to a sitting judge. Her husband, my Uncle Ben, was a New York City cab driver. He would drop her off every morning, pick her up every afternoon. When they drove anywhere in their own, private, car, she would sit in back and make him wear a cap. He was her chauffeur through life.


They visited my life intermittently- on their way to or from some exotic locale; a connecting flight from NY to LA to ports unknown. And back again.


My first memory of her: she wore short, midnight black hair with a streak of moonlight through it. A dinner length cigarette holder kept the tip of her Kent away from her lips. She held a frosted martini glass in the other hand and offered me the olive soaked in vodka. I was ten, perhaps as young as eight.


I spent my twelfth summer in New York City, visiting them. She taught me how a man treats a woman; opens the door for her, holds her chair, stands when she enters the room. Another caveat of hers; ladies did not smoke in public. This was, of course, 1960. Some time before my visit, her drink of choice became Almaden Chablis. A jug wine with a very distinctive aroma, one which I associated with my aunt from then on.


My aunt and uncle took me to see the movie Psycho that summer. Maybe they had no idea what it was about, as it had just opened. Maybe, having no children of their own, they had no idea what would be appropriate entertainment for someone my age. Whatever the reason, I know that for years after, I could not shower without keeping the curtain open and the bathroom door locked.


Uncle Ben always had a cigar in his mouth, even when not lit. The poison from the tobacco was the sole cause of the cancer that destroyed half his jaw. And half his tongue. It made it impossible to understand his speech or to enjoy a meal if he was eating with you. But, oddly enough, that was not what finally killed him. Retired for several years from driving a cab, he still dropped off and picked up my aunt at the judge's office every day. My aunt found him asleep at the wheel one afternoon as she stood at the curb and waited for him to get out to open her door. A massive heart attack.


She lived alone on the 26th floor of a high-rise condo in Manhattan for the next ten years. I lived on Long Island and worked in the city, a daily commute of 55 minutes one way. I hardly visited her because I always felt I was being compared, unfavorably, to my cousin- who was more successful and visited her more often than I. When she died in 1991, her personal estate was well over one million dollars- partially from my Uncle's family inheritance, partially from shrewd investments that the judge advised her on.


On Long Island I had a friend who introduced me to fine wines. We would often take weekend trips into the city to purchase cases of wine that we would then age in his cellar. On my fortieth birthday in 1988, he purchased a 1948 bottle of Chateau Latour for me as a gift. Still, when I toasted my aunt upon the reading of her will, I commemorated her life with a jug of Almaden Chablis, priced at that time well under ten dollars!