A Gentle Giant

Uncle Cy was so tall that he had to duck his head to enter the rooms in our house. Tilting my head back, I would gaze up at his 6’6” frame. I can remember his big hands pulling me out of the ocean when the undertow grabbed me at Plum Island beach. Cy scooped my brother and me up in his arms during a sand storm and carried us to the shelter of his beach cottage. He was a gentle giant with long, slow-moving arms and legs.

Not only did Cy stand out because of height but also because of his red hair and bulbous nose. He was slim but had a good build, as he had been a lifeguard at the beach for many years. He wore very obvious hearing aids in his large ears which had little wires attached to a box in his shirt pocket. His hearing was irreparably damaged in WWII when he trained the canine corps to become accustomed to the sound of heavy artillery. His usual holiday attire was a bow tie, shirt, sweater that buttoned down the front, and plaid pants which he must have purchased from the Big & Tall Men’s catalog. His sweet smelling, Edgewood Ready Rub pipe tobacco always lingered in the air.

Cyril R. Knowles began his career as a skilled cabinetmaker, working for a company in New Hampshire renowned for its fine work. The small Cape Cod house that he shared with his wife Helen also showed evidence of his fine work as he built cabinets for storage in every available spot. We were lucky that their little house was only two blocks from our house, so we visited back and forth often. In fact, whenever one of my younger brothers would decide to run away from home, the far-reaching destination was usually Uncle Cy and Aunt Helen’s house.

Other evidence of Cy’s handiwork came to us in the form of wonderful childhood gifts. Luckily for us, he had no children of his own, and we were the recipients of his largesse. He made a doll-size cradle for me one Christmas. My brothers and I had fun tipping a small sail boat that he made for us to play with in the lake. But the best gift was located right in our own back yard. Once Cy backed his pickup truck into our driveway and unloaded enough wood to build us a little house with doors and windows. It was a house to me and a fort to my brothers. We believed that he could build anything.

Later on, he shared his talent for woodworking among many of the school children in our town by teaching woodworking part-time to the 7th and 8th grade “shop” classes. He never embarrassed me; instead, I was proud that the man whom my friends all called “Uncle Cy” was actually related to me. I can remember taking food that we made in home economics class down to the shop for Cy to eat. He even let me have my first boy-girl party in 8th grade at his beach house, and my parents weren’t allowed to come.

The cottage at Plum Island, a barrier island off the coast of Massachusetts, was the gathering place for many family events including an annual cookout. Although Uncle Cy had only few relatives on his side, Cy’s wife Helen was my dad’s sister, and they had a total of eight siblings. So there were many cousins—all about the same age—for us to play with. One of the happiest occasions for me was the engagement party in my honor that Cy and Helen hosted for all our relatives at the beach. I love to look at the photos taken at that party during the 70s and laugh at the clothing and hairstyles. He truly took our family on as his own. One time, shortly after his only brother died, Cy shared his inheritance by sending each one of his nieces and nephews on Aunt Helen’s side a check for $1,000.

Uncle Cy did not seem to work very much in the years that I knew him. He was relaxed, friendly, always took his time with people. He drove a tidy, red pick-up truck with “Cy Knowles, Handyman” scrolled in black letters on the door. Cy would pull up along the side of the road whenever he saw someone he knew just to pass the time of day. Pipe in mouth, he would wave if he couldn’t stop or just yell “Hello, there, gorgeous!” out the window.

Cy had some hobbies that occupied his time: fishing, painting by numbers, and listening to the police and fire calls on his citizens band radio. When he had a successful fishing day, my mother might be surprised with a fresh cod in her kitchen sink, sometimes so large that the head stuck out one end and the tail out the other.

Probably because of his bad hearing, Cy often got his words mixed up. Today I would call these mistakes in language “malapropisms.” For example, he might say that he was “edgifying the youth of North Andover” when he meant educating, or he would refer to the “state welfare cistern” instead of the state welfare system. He was also famous for his daily afternoon naps, at which time he would excuse himself to “pray and meditate on the problems of the world.”

Uncle Cy often told us that he couldn’t work much because he had a “bum ticker.” I didn’t think too much about it because he had been saying it for years and years. Finally, though, when he was in his mid-seventies, he died suddenly of a heart attack. I remember driving for eight hours in the rain to attend his funeral. Aunt Helen was devastated, and we all missed him terribly.

Cy died about fifteen years ago, but his generosity lived beyond him. When Aunt Helen many years later, I received an inheritance that enabled me to remodel my kitchen. I know that Uncle Cy would be pleased with the beautiful wood cabinets that were installed.

Looking back, I would not change anything about my relationship with Uncle Cy. Although we never had any deep conversations, I always enjoyed being with him. I never saw him in a bad mood or angry. He was friendly to all, fun loving, and very generous with his time, his money, and his talents. He was a big man in every sense of the word, a gentle giant.