Old Rick’s Gold Room   My mother’s sister, blinding with the shine of reflected virtue, explained the happy fact: neither the rosary, the Nine First Fridays, nor even her lips on the papal ring itself — nothing would so insure her smooth admittance to Heaven quite like a priest in the family, a godly cure for the pox of sin (hers, anyhow — my case was clearly worse): her brother, the good one we called Uncle Father Abe, not Rick, the bad one, Abe’s twin, whose bar downtown would damn him straight to Hell. Well, there in the thick of the Tenderloin the only thing straight was me, the weird nephew, here for our winter wassails, toasting family and fate, Uncles Rick and Abe, and Abe’s good friend, Aunt Clint.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont September 2010