Uncle Herb: The Sum of All Fears

When I was a child, I had little reason to want for anything or ever endure the fearsome, icy pangs of terror.

Unless I was in my grandmother Hawken's basement.

In the bottom floor of her home lived my dad's older brother, The Terrifying Uncle Herb.

By the time I met him, The Terrifying Uncle Herb was already in his late 30s, and, although he had never moved out or gotten a job, he had not been entirely complacent--he had, quite apparently, dedicated his every waking moment to becoming a tangible embodiment of every fear a young, hyper-imaginative child could possibly conjure.

My grandmother's home and large backyard was an oasis of fond childhood memories, but the long, narrow hallway leading off of the TV room in her basement was a stark exception to that rule. At the end of this dimly lit passageway, was The Terrifying Uncle Herb's room.

During holidays and mundane family get togethers, my cousins and I would often gather in the TV room to avoid the meandering conversations of our parents, but, invariably, this escape would be ill-fated. Without warning, and with a miasmic presence that would chase all light from the room, The Terrifying Uncle Herb would sweep out of the eerie hallway and into the room.

He would stare and glare and, had he been appropriately articulate, he probably would have snarled.

He would mutter questions about why we were downstairs, what we were watching and why our rapt silence in front of a television set was causing so much noise.

The Terrifying Uncle Herb was a bone-chilling combination of a slovenly appearance, directionless anger, seething frustration and a permeating odor of stale nicotine and room-temperature malt liquor.

None of us could understand at the time how utterly harmless he was or that he was, at best, a pitiful caricature of Harper Lee's famed shadowy neighbor.

We simply could not understand this strange character shuffling back and forth across the cold tile floors and occasionally appearing upstairs to pile dark meat and stuffing onto his plate before disappearing back down the well-worn stairway.

When I was much older I realized that one of the emotions I felt was pity, but, while still young, I simply misunderstood everything about him. And that misunderstanding, naturally, struck fear in all of us.

To this day, despite conquering dozens of other trepidations, the anxiety I feel at the mere mention of The Terrifying Uncle Herb remains unabated.

Amongst my Hawken cousins, with whom I have absolutely nothing else in common, we can still talk in hushed, troubled tones about the frightful influence of The Terrifying Uncle Herb in our earliest memories.

I am not wary of walking through my otherwise shady neighborhood late at night, and I don't hesitate to mingle with the assortd riff raff of the NYC subway system, but, to this day, no force on earth could send me down that dark hallway alone.