My nephew Alex “Bruddy” Cincotta passed away after a car accident in early July. This my eulogy to him:
We are gathered here today to celebrate the life and mourn the passing of a young, but unforgettable Cotuit character, Alexander Churbuck Cincotta. Some of us knew him as a son, others as a brother, a grandson, godson, cousin, classmate, or a friend. I knew him as a nephew.
Alex was born on May 7, 1996, in Brockton, Massachusetts. He was the son of James Cincotta and my sister, Julie Churbuck Cincotta. He grew up here in Cotuit, on Sampsons Mill Road near the powerlines which he roamed on his dirt bike to the constant distress of the Barnstable Police department. He attended Cotuit Elementary School. He learned to fish, clam, and sail on the waters of Cotuit Bay. After a few years living with his parents in Florida he returned to Cotuit seven years ago and eventually started his own carpentry business.
Because his brother Nick pronounced “brother” as “Bruddy,” the family called him that with great affection, even after both boys grew up to be young men. When the family moved to Stuart, Alex and Nick went native and turned into accomplished hunters, spearfishermen and exemplary examples of that unique American species known as the Florida Man. Fearless, they thought nothing of crossing the Gulf Stream in an open boat to fish in the Bahamas or coming home from the Everglades with an assortment of alligators, snakes, and wild boars to the surprise and consternation of Jim and Julie.
Forgive me for jumping around in the telling of Bruddy’s life story. This is less of a chronology but more of a series of episodes, so bear with me please while I catalogue a few of Bruddy’s many talents and passions. For Bruddy wasn’t a mere hobbyist, but more of a fanatic who dove headfirst into everything he did in his life.
The food category begins with Bruddy the cook and gourmand. When he was a toddler, his hero was Emeril La Gasse, the TV chef from Fall River. At the age of three Bruddy figured out the rice cooker at 2 in the morning, and like Emeril, wasn’t afraid to “kick it up a notch” whenever he got behind the stove. Bruddy loved to cook. Whether it was stuffed quahogs or lobsters, home-made sausage, a brisket in the smoker, or a 2 a.m. feast for his friends in the outdoors kitchen in Stuart, Alex channeled his inner Emeril whenever he had the chance. Many a time he would stop by my house with the latest creation from his smoker. Text messages from the aisles of Costco would arrive asking, “Hey Uncle Dave, want me to pick you up a pork belly?”
Bruddy the child chef was followed by Bruddy the award-winning gardener who took the blue ribbon at the Barnstable County Fair for his zucchini when he was seven years old. Inspired by the green thumbs of his grandfather and grandmother, Nick and Sandy Nickerson, Bruddy always planted and tended a massive garden behind the house on Sampson Mill Road.
Zucchini’s success led to Alex the chicken farmer. I have no idea what inspired him to expand his little farm from vegetables to chickens, but when he approached me to see if he could take possession of the old Chatfield chicken coop behind the house on Main Street, Daphne and I were more than happy to see the little shack put to good use before it fell apart. Bruddy arrived one afternoon with his mother’s little boat trailer, a couple of strong friends, a bunch of rope and somehow managed to winch the thing onto the trailer and drag it down Main Street in the middle of the day, shingles flying off the sides as he drove away. As he pulled out of the driveway, he rolled down the window of his truck, leaned out and asked me a question for which I had no answer: “Hey Uncle Dave. Why did the chicken coop cross the road?”
Bruddy’s chicken operation expanded into a chicken paradise with a couple dozen fine hens and a magnificent rooster named Frank who I assumed was named after Frank Perdue, the king of chickens who looked like a chicken.
I saved empty egg cartons for Alex, and in return I received many fresh eggs straight from the old chicken coop. One grey winter’s day Alex came by with two dozen eggs and it was apparent that I either needed to adjust my eating habits and welcome a lot more eggs into my diet or share my cholesterol count with him and beg him to find another willing recipient. Alex suggested we find a recipe that called for a lot of eggs, so we pulled out the cookbooks and discovered Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her recipe for a cheese souffle. Leave it to the French to find a way to transform a lot of eggs and cheese into something, as Alex put it, “I could eat forever but probably shouldn’t.” No eggs ever tasted better than his did in that magnificent mess.
The great chicken endeavor was a display of Alex’s singlemindedness that turned what the typical hipster would have considered a hobby into Bruddy’s obsession, a project which, if a movie was made of it, would have been titled “Ol’ Yeller with Feathers.” The drama of Alex and his chickens was breathtaking.
Hawks would find their way inside of the chicken run and Alex would run out of the house prepared to do battle. Crows got in on the banquet, and Alex would have to catch and release them too. Every varmint and critter in Cotuit and Santuit wanted to eat Bruddy’s chickens. When I asked Alex what the difference between a varmint and critter was, he replied, “You can eat a critter. A varmint you can’t.” Now I know.
Fences were repaired, holes were patched. Alas, finally, sadly, even Frank the Rooster became a victim after a fox chewed through the cupola of the coop and ran amuck inside. Dear Bruddy tenderly nursed his prize rooster, mortally wounded in defense of the flock. He bandaged Frank’s wounds, made splints for his broken bones, and rushed him off-Cape to an emergency veterinary hospital for surgery.
There he called Jim and Julie in Florida to ask for their credit card number to pay the vet’s bill. What’s $3,000 to save a beloved pet you can eat? But alas, Frank succumbed to his injuries on the operating room table (the vet forgave the bill) and the noble bird was brought home and buried with full honors in front of the coop he defended so valiantly.
I think I can confidently state that will be the only time I’ll ever write a condolence note for the loss of a rooster.
Then there was Bruddy the waterman. He had a 100-ton captain’s license, was certified as a diesel mechanic, a marine electronics technician, and knew more about the art of Fiberglas and gel coat repair than anyone I’ve known. He majored in marine technology at Broward College in Florida, and whenever I was stumped about some boat repair or another, Alex was the person I turned to for help. In the Churbuck-Cincotta tradition, he, like me and his mother Julie, put in his time at the HyLine, even sailing under my old captain, John Lynch, on the Canal cruises. I wear Alex’s old HyLine jacket to this day like some sort of merit badge.
Chef, gardener, chicken farmer, mariner. Alex didn’t tinker or dabble. Alex didn’t have hobbies. He had projects. Once Bruddy set his mind to something it became a Rain Man level obsession. I’ll miss the way his face would light up whenever he shared the progress of his latest venture.
It is said de mortuis nil nisi bonum – that one should not speak ill of the dead — but Alex — like some of us, me included — was not without his demons nor flaws. For a long time, Alex struggled with addiction and was deeply ashamed of his lapses and stumbles. Many of you here today suffered alongside him, desperate to help, to encourage, to counsel, to cure him of the burdens that undermined him and set him back time and again. As someone once said of Alex, “If he wasn’t so nice it would be so much easier to be mad at him.”
Like so many of us here this morning, I tried to offer him advice. After his spectacular “bad idea” on the Fourth of July when he blew up the port-a-potty at Town Dock, I paid him a visit and tried to cheer him up with some encouraging words. You can do it Alex. You can take control of your actions and put the past behind you. Hollow words seemed to be a waste of breath as I said them out loud. But Alex listened and he tried to own his problems …. but he also blamed them on his genetics, arguing that he was born into the Churbuck branch of the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fireworks. I took exception to his theory and tried to persuade him we weren’t living in the 1600s when predestined damnation was a convenient excuse for one’s sins. Alex told me he was cursed and that the fix was in as far as his bad behavior was concerned. I disagreed. I always saw the promise inside of the problems.
I admire him for naming his boat the Bad Idea and sticking two exploding firecrackers on both sides of the hull as an act of contrition in case there was any confusion in Cotuit over what “bad idea” he was referring to. I tried to persuade him that he had a lifetime of opportunities to turn his life around, even going so far as to sneak into a stack of books I sent him a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance.
I think he appreciated my reading recommendations, and one day after the affair of the porta-potty was in the past he asked me to recommend some more.
“Uncle Dave,” he said, “The book on chickens was great and I learned a lot. The one about the shipwreck full of gold was amazing. And the one about fighting Nazi’s in Greenland was awesome too. But that Ralph Waldo guy – I mean I get it …. Be true to yourself and don’t give into peer pressure and be your own person. But why did he have to beat the point to death over and over for 50 pages?”
I don’t know Alex. I wish I had an answer to that question. And I wish I knew why the chicken coop crossed the road. I like to think that when Alex passed away, he was greeted in the great beyond by his pets, like the old Count in the Sicilian novel The Leopard who, as he lay in a delirium on his death bed, was greeted by all his favorite pets at the gates of heaven. Now, whenever I see a chicken, I’m going to think of proud Frank, defender of the roost, greeting Alex with a rousing cock-a-doodle-doo as he goes on in our memories as our dear brother Bruddy, one of a kind.
God bless Alex, and God Bless you all.
