Uncle Beau’s recipe for justice:

Guile, guts, guns and goodness!

GASTON DE ROSAYRO

In some of my earlier columns I introduced you all to my Uncle Beau, a exceptional personage who will be celebrating his 94th birthday later this year.

He is a tough, no-nonsense type of guy. He taught us how to box and street fight. He is not a big man in a physical sense. But even when he was in his late seventies he could move with the grace and agility of a panther.

The very thing that makes him as a real tough guy attractive is that he has both courage and a heart.

And like the heroic movie characters he also feels secure enough to show kindness and compassion to others. Sensitivity in a tough guy can be a wonderful and humane quality and he has it in abundance.

Although a man of considerable means he has never flouted his wealth. He has always been down to earth and a man of modesty. He still likes to take a spin in his classic vintage Bentley on a clear road. But the best thing about him is that he has exhibited great generosity for others.

Uncle Beau’s cheerful temperament and liberality of spirit in most spheres have endeared him to both his family and his vast colony of friends.

He doesn’t suffer fools gladly and has never shown much affection for his fawning relatives who with more hope than real faith have been attempting to milk him for ‘moolah’ on various pretexts. As I said earlier he has no time for a brigade of freeloading nephews, nieces and their spouses who try to cash in on his generous heart.

His home is a great hall of impartiality. He is a crusader driven by a passion for justice and determination to fulfil the promise of equal justice under law and outside it as well when the occasion demands it. Indeed, he is a truly heroic personage who has risked his reputation, liberty and life to combat wrongs suffered by individuals.

But even during the times he has been constrained to overstep the bounds of certain asinine laws he has done so with intellectual integrity and sheer brilliance. In other words he has managed to disentangle himself from the clutches of the very law he has infringed.

Once when a cousin faced threats from a powerful bully we tried to intervene but the man didn’t seem to listen to reason.

He had brandished a sword and told my terrified cousin that he would make minced meat out of him. But Uncle Beau took the intimidating bull by the horns and the problem was solved virtually overnight.

He ensured that his nephew was never troubled again. Questioned as to what tactics he had used to brow-beat the persecutor he replied with his characteristic sang-froid: “You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can get with a kind word alone.” Which prompted a family wag to comment on the moral of the episode to paraphrase the Gospel as: “Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t!”

His feats have entered the chronicles of family mythology. The legend goes that he took on a professional fighter named Gunboat Jack who outweighed him by at least forty pounds.

While they danced around trading punches Uncle Beau is said to have suddenly pivoted like a dervisher and felled him with a knockout kick. This inspired the young family scribes to devise the immortal jingle: “Jack was nimble, Jack was quick, but Jack still couldn’t dodge Uncle Beau’s roundhouse kick!”

In all, we are lucky to have him as a favourite uncle who stands out from the crowd.

It would be apt to quote the famous American writer and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes in the context of men of the calibre of Uncle Beau: “For him in vain the envious seasons roll, Who bears eternal summer in his soul.”

And so on his 93rd birthday last year we sent him a toast card or rather a roast card which he appreciated so much that he had it framed. In it were some of the most bizarre gems ever recorded such as: “Uncle Beau once shot down a Japanese fighter plane with his finger, by yelling, Bang!

The quickest way to a man’s heart is with Uncle Beau’s fist.

Uncle Beau plays Russian Roulette with a loaded revolver … and wins!

Uncle Beau doesn’t play ‘hide-and-seek’. He plays ‘hide-and-pray-I-don’t-find-you!’.

When the Gonibilla (Boogeyman) goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Uncle Beau.

Once a cobra bit Uncle Beau’s leg. After five days of excruciating pain, the cobra died.