Uncle Jake

I was very young when I first remember Julius. I couldn’t have been even five or six when he was working in the basement of our house on Greenfield road in Berkley, Michigan. Julius was a friend of the family and man, could he put in drop ceilings. My mom and dad had decided to finish the basement of our small three bedroom home so we could host the annual Jacobucci-Coon Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Birthday parties and, I suppose, so we could have a place for our toys. They had built a small bathroom and a closest on the west wall, a large laundry room in the southeast corner where the stairs emptied into the basement and two open areas for entertaining the guests. On this day Julius was working on the drop ceiling with the young version of me watching every move he made and asking all of the standard boy type questions. As I watched him on the ladder, hanging the metal rails that would hold the white panels, for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how he was going to get one of those panels around one of the always cold metal stanchion poles that ran across our basement. Julius, always the joker and cigar smoker loved to tease with us kids. He and his wife Helen were a little older than my parents. They had met just after my parents tied the knot in August of 1952 when they rented an upstairs apartment from Julius and Helen in a tree lined suburb of Detroit, aptly named Ferndale. They were instant friends. Julius and Helen had no children and at that early point in my parents married life they were child free too. They quickly became close, often enjoying each other’s company. Even after moving out of that Ferndale apartment on their own, my parents had maintained their relationship with the Sebastians and still do to this day, although Helen passed away a few years back. Sometime in the eighties Julius and Helen moved to the clean, dry air of Sante Fe, New Mexico and my parents have driven out many times just to visit.

I remember some of the parties that they would have together, especially around New Years Eve. New Years Day was special because that was Helen’s birthday, January 1st. They would all laugh and laugh among Julius' cigar and Helen's cigarette smoke all night. Uncle Jake, as we all called him, would often tease me about wanting to take me to Vietnam for a vacation (the Vietnam War was being fought at this point) and I would always say no take me to Australia! He would come back with the idea that his friends, the Viet Cong, wanted me to come over there and meet a man named Charlie. I laughed until my side hurt.

I think that I may have learned to laugh and tease from Uncle Jake. He always was laughing, smiling and encouraging to me.

That day, in the basement with Uncle Jake looking down on me from that ladder, he went into a long story about how he was going to get a ceiling tile around that pole in my basement. He had arranged with the Coast Guard to come with one of there huge helicopters and lift the house up with a chain so he could put that tile in. He wanted me to go outside and look for the chopper.

Thanks for the laughs Uncle Jake.