Three Cheers for Uncle Pete; Celebrating Mrs. M; A Few Political Notes

Three Cheers for Uncle Pete; The Prince of Douglaston

As I remember, it was between the vegetable risotto and Dover sole courses at the Four Seasons last week when Bernadette Duncan told a story about my mother I'd never heard before. Bern, one of my Uncle Pete's four (grownup) children, was part of a Smith-Duncan entourage that numbered 19 last Thursday night in a private room at the restaurant. It was my fortune to be sitting near her as she recalled Aunt Kathryn?my mother, long deceased?from the days when we were kids in the 60s. Mom, born in 1917, was the middle child of Irish immigrants?at Ellis Island my grandfather's real name Dungan was sloppily changed to Duncan (it could've been worse, say Dershowitz)?with Uncle Joe (1915) the oldest and Pete (1920) the baby of the family.

Anyway, Bern told those of us at one end of the table that her Aunt Kik would dote on her just a little bit more. My cousins Steve and Phil were darling boys, Mom'd say, but Bern and I have a special code. Whatever, I always thought. Seems that Mom, on various visits of the Duncan clan to our Huntington house?they lived closer to the city in Douglaston?would give Bern some of the bracelet charms that she'd collected over the years. I remember that treasure box very well, which also included silver dollars and buffalo nickels. And here's the story I'd never heard: Just before Pete went off to World War II, he'd presented my mother with a pair of earrings, which she prized. She and her two brothers were extremely close. At some point, obviously a shared secret between the two gals, Mom passed down the earrings to Bern as an heirloom. As I've mentioned, my mother was a streetwise customer and my brothers and I thought we knew just about everything about her, but this sweet anecdote nearly choked me up.

Unfortunately, Joe and Winnie were unable to post for this particular affair. They're both real pistols with spellbinding stories from their youth, the days when they'd pal around in the city with my parents, double-dating, going to that era's clubs, Coney Island, Yankee Stadium, maybe a double feature. I look at the photos that've survived a lifetime of different houses, floods in the cellar and inferior technology, and it's still striking to see my relatives so radiant, in their early 20s, before they started families and careers. I can only hope Junior and MUGGER III will look at the homemade movies and pictures of Mrs. M's and my own youth, and that their children will ask us old geezers what it was like in the 20th century.

As the dinner progressed, Steve took the floor and remembered how his dad?a magician at heart?would surprise his four kids by replenishing their wallets overnight. "You'd have five bucks on a Saturday night," Steve said, "and the next morning there'd be a few more dollars stuffed inside." That's Pete. I remember so well the long phone conversations he'd have with my mother?Mom's ear glued to that black receiver on the rotary phone?and they'd just gab for hours about anything that came to mind. The kids, Fourth of July barbecues to be planned, reminiscences of growing up in the Bronx, maybe even the politics of the day. My parents were strict Republicans except when it came to the Vietnam War; in fact, my mother, just months after my father died, cast her first Democratic vote, for George McGovern in 1972. As I recall, Pete never took politics too seriously?although he was a Perot voter in '92?he was too happy a fellow to lose sleep over the daily travesties that the U.S. government indulges in at will.

One of Pete's traditions that always baffled my parents' Great Depression-imbued concept of financial matters was his astonishing "Open Drawer" policy, an arrangement where he'd cash his check on paydays and put part of it in a living room bureau. Anyone in the family was allowed to dip in and take what they needed, no questions asked. I'm sure this is part apocryphal?though maybe not!?but my brothers and I sure saw nothing strange about it, despite my mom's tsk-tsk's. After all, Pete said, it was only money. It's not everyone's approach, but he's sure had a long and rich life, raising a terrific family, so who can make a judgment?

Typically, there were a number of heated debates at the table, one of which involved yours truly and my oldest niece: Bush vs. Gore, of course. Abby, who was born in 1967 just a few months before Pete's fourth child, Ronnie (both are now mothers of three), and I have a long history of jousting with words; to an outsider, it looks like heated battle but that's just the way we communicate. We've traveled together extensively, from the time when she was just two and her parents took me along to Lake George as a sitter. In '87, we toured Cairo and Luxor together, initially getting conned by a slick guy named Mohammed who sold Abby $100 worth of fake perfume. However, she was so charming that he felt guilty and more than made up for it by squiring us around parts of Cairo we'd never have seen by ourselves, and protecting us from other shysters like himself. It was a weird but cool experience, and if it weren't for Abby's mock naivete, the trip wouldn't have been half as much fun.

Still, when she was spouting some nonsense that could've been dictated by Chris Lehane, the oily Gore press spokesman (jettisoned by convention time, I predict), I journeyed back into the past when she wasn't so vocal. I was just 11 when she was born, fairly young to have a niece, and for about a month after, when my school bus stopped at Southdown Rd. and LaRue Dr. at the end of the day, classmates would yell, "Goodbye, Uncle Rusty!"

One of the guests who hasn't been to many, as Pete would say, "Smitty Boy" dinners, was a bit taken aback by the abrasive tone of our conversation. Andy, who's dating another of my nieces, Zoe, thought it was just a little rough. "Nah," one of my brothers explained, "that's just the way Russ and Abby duke it out. This is mild." Once that was explained, Andy and I got down to a discussion of something more serious: Red Sox baseball. He's a huge Bosox fan, which, in addition to his being a swell fellow, makes points with me. Both of us were larding on the praise of Nomar, Pedro, Ramon and Carl Everett, much to the disgust of my brother Jeff, who's been a Bronx Bomber stalwart since he could read the funny papers, which I'd say was about 1949.

Andy fully approves that Junior and MUGGER III have joined their pop in choosing the right team to root for; the only area of disagreement we have is that he still hasn't forgiven Roger Clemens for leaving the team. I had a problem with the Rajah too, initially, but got over it soon: anyone who gives a fan 12 incredible years?including '86 and his war-paint theatrics in the '90 playoffs against the Oakland A's?can't be discarded like garbage. The era of franchise players, Cal Ripken notwithstanding, is over and I fully expect that in five years Nomar Garciaparra will bolt to, say, the Detroit Tigers, for a $200 million contract. That's reality.

Mrs. M and I had to call it a night about 9:45 to relieve our sitter, and so after hugging Aunt Peg and Uncle Pete, bidding farewell to the Duncan cousins and taking two bundles of cotton candy that the maitre d' had kindly set aside for Junior and MUGGER III, we went out to Park Ave. to catch a cab. The only melancholy note that registered with me?aside from the absence of Joe and Winnie?was when I wondered what my own parents might've thought of such an event. They'd have been tickled, to use one of Mom's favorite words, I'm sure, to see how the extended family shared so much history and love. It's exactly how they always wanted our lives to work out.

Mrs. M's Worth A Million Moms It was a quiet Mother's Day at the Smith loft?the boys and I were delighted that Mrs. M didn't traipse down to DC for the Democratic rally disguised as the Million Mom March?and that's just the way my wife likes it. (Frankly, fewer kids would get killed or maimed by guns if the media, in a craven grab for ratings, wouldn't give so much attention to stories like the Columbine tragedy, the enormity of the coverage of which gave impressionable and troubled teens copycat ideas.)

Mrs. M was scheduled to sleep in as long as she liked, but by 6:30 Junior and MUGGER III were too excited to let that plan work out. Who could blame them? Our younger boy gave his mother a beautiful bookmark with a dried flower inside that he'd made at school: perfect, he said, since Mrs. M is never without a book. She's definitely the fastest reader I know, whether it's a James Brady novel, the latest from Jim Knipfel, a brushup on Greek mythology or a collection of essays about physics.

Junior's present was a little more complicated. He'd created a jewelry box out of popsicle sticks in his first-grade class, colored it orange, and asked if I'd take him to Tiffany's so he could put something inside it. We went there on Friday afternoon and he immediately picked out a diamond and ruby necklace?with a price tag of $65,000. "Uh, son, let's move on to another area." Couldn't blame him for the thought, but he was satisfied to buy a pouch of Tiffany coins that Mrs. M can redeem at some time in the future.

I also had some help in creating a gift for New York City's greatest mom. I gathered together about 30 pictures of the boys, and asked my New York Press colleague Jeff Koyen to design a mock-MUGGER column layout, like he does every Monday. The result, helped along with tips from friends Giselle and Orianne, was a six-page spread of color printouts, laminated and then strapped together with metal rods and between-panel fasteners.

All three offerings were hits and then the boys took their mom to nearby Socrates for breakfast, where Mrs. M and other ladies were presented with carnations: small-town Tribeca. And as a bonus, Junior finished the lyrics to the first song he wrote for the rock band, The Bad Boys, he formed with a few classmates last week. "Unleash the Dragon" isn't headed for the top of the charts, I guess, but we were pretty pleased that he spent so much time working on the rap?naturally?tune, only occasionally asking for help in spelling words. Mrs. M, with his class on a field trip last week, overheard Junior trying to cajole a buddy into being the group's manager. "This is an important job," he said, "the manager sometimes gets half the dough!"

I don't want to carp on the Million Mom March?it's actually an idealistic notion that was polluted by politicians?but reading Hillary Clinton's message delivered outside the White House during a "warm-up" rally really made my blood boil. The Senate candidate said: "We don't want flowers or jewelry. We don't want a nice card or a fancy meal as much as we want our Congress to do the right thing to protect our children." Coming from an apolitical mother those words might've had some meaning, but anything that Hillary says is poll-tested and phony. The fact that the march was organized by Donna Dees-Thomases, sister-in-law of Susan Thomases, the First Lady's close friend and political adviser, made it all the more suspect. Anyway, aside from gun control there are plenty of things that Congress can do to help the country's children, most of which Democrats like the Clintons and Al Gore oppose.

School vouchers, for one, so that parents can have the choice to yank their offspring from schools with union-protected teachers, who are often woefully ill-equipped to instruct students of any age. A bill in support of massive tax cuts is a constructive one that Congress could pass: I'm sure the single mothers and low-income wage-earners would rather have some extra dollars in their pockets rather than the government's.

When I was a kid, Mother's Day was a big deal at our Huntington household as well. Like most women with children, the admittedly Hallmark-holiday was my mom's favorite day of the year. My brothers and I would clip daffodils and a few tulips from the weedy garden in the front yard, put them together in a bouquet, and she'd always act surprised. We'd also chip in money to buy a gift or two: one constant was a box of butter crunch candy; others that I remember included a set of yellow dishes that she used for clam dip; a porcelain dove (in the Vietnam years); as well as poems and stories that we did as school projects. My dad would go into work late on those Sundays, so that our mother could have all her boys together. Corny, but true: back in the days when Leave It To Beaver and My Three Sons were classic sitcoms and not derided as conservative propaganda by the likes of bitter old bastards like the Times' Frank Rich.

Out of Their Heads A few political notes.