My cousin Pete Martin and I were putting up fast-drying wreaths in one of his bars just before Christmas.
I think it was 1950; I was just out of high school.
I was breaking up with Rosemary De Branco that year, who was getting too old for her Angora sweaters and simple string of pearls — and me.
The black- and white-squared floor of the Four Aces, one of Pete’s two bars, had become a carpet of pine needles from wreaths we had hoped would last at least through New Year’s Eve.
Pete had bigger trouble. His wife, Pat, a gorgeous Catholic girl, had weeks before (because of a girl) tossed him out. Women loved him.
So there he was, sleeping on a roll-out cot I had to put away each noon when I came in.
You may ask, why am I writing about Pete of all people, this last week of 2021?
It’s only because the needles from my wreaths cover my floor, and because he was family, and it’s my job.
He had, at the bequest of his mother, my Aunt Mamie, given me two summers and one autumn of after school jobs the past two years, helping him out in his two bars. Now, he needed me that week.
“Couldn’t he find someone older?” my mother moaned.
“You can only trust family,” Pete insisted.
So there I was, preparing for my last New Year’s Eve with Rosemary, excited to think I might get to tend bar. Like that was gonna happen.
Two summers had passed where I had swept up and dumped the ashtrays, stocked the ice boxes behind the bar with beer. Pete paid really well, and it was the coolest room in town.
Now, there we were, cousins in the cold, getting ready for a bad New Year’s Eve in the year our lives would change dramatically.
Pete had snared a big, new job to start that spring, managing a string of Katz Drugstores in the South, especially the big, new one in Memphis, where he became good friends with Elvis.
Yes, that Elvis.
Pete wrote to Aunt Mamie that Elvis would come into the Katz emporium with his myriad of buddies, and Pete would lock the door, while Elvis and crew smoked, drank and sang old songs.
They would spend thousands of dollars on perfume and huge Teddy Bears.
It was in January of ’56, I think, when I was in New York doing stand up, when my sister called to tell me that on New Year’s Eve Pete had died of a massive heart attack, while dining in a Chinese restaurant, and that Rosemary De Branco had married a Marine and had two kids.
I worked the news into my act.
It’s almost New Year’s Eve, and I’m writing about my cousin Pete. Why not? Who could do it better? Who said, “You can only trust family?”
Goodnight, Pete. Goodnight, Rosemary. I miss you and all those who passed this year.
In memoriam: Darla Pickett. Colleague, newswoman, activist … rest in peace, Darla.
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
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