Two Uncles

#106 - I was awake after a couple of hours sleep. The full moon shined through the window and spread itself like a white sheet across our bed. The room was bright enough to read the wall clock.

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                     Two Uncles 

I was awake after a couple of hours sleep. The full moon shined through the window and spread itself like a white sheet across our bed. The room was bright enough to read the wall clock. Midnight.

I found myself thinking about my Uncle Dale, on my dad’s side, and my Uncle Charlie, on my mom’s. My favorites, both long gone. Spending time with either of them was the best of times. That happened regularly before my teen years. 

Uncle Dale, in Mississippi, one of my dad’s older brothers, didn’t go to college as did his siblings. Pretty much a loner, he was a carpenter and lumberman. He sometimes had to travel to find work and would be gone for weeks at a time. He lost half of his index finger on his left hand to a mill’s saw blade.  

He wasn’t quite the black sheep of the family, but he was close to it.  

Uncle Dale was the only one of the family who could and would enjoy fashioning an existence for himself out in the woods if he had to. These skills were rapidly being replaced by all things modern in post World War II. He was a throwback to earlier times. 

He didn’t talk about it, but he was part of the D-Day invasion. 

If he was home when we visited, he would take me hunting. A day in the woods squirrel hunting was a day well spent to my thinking. He showed me how to skin and prepare the squirrels for cooking. Squirrel meat tastes pretty good. 

He gave me my first gun. A Remington 22 rifle. I’m certain it was with my dad’s approval. My dad ran a tight ship. 

Uncle Dale had a restless soul and during one work trip away from home he never returned. His sisters weren’t happy with his coming and going all the time. Letters home were few and far between and from different locations. Then, there was nothing. 

Years later, and after his passing, the little money he had made it back home to his sisters. He had been in Rocklin, a town on the outskirts of Sacramento, less than a hundred miles from where I now lived. If I had only known, we could have renewed our relationship. 

His belongings were being held for the required time before disposal and I made arrangements with the authorities to go up and look them over. 

There was little to look at. He had lived alone in his apartment for years. That is all we knew. There was little of value and no real telling of what he did for a living. He had an income from being a veteran. I took his tool filled wooden toolbox and a few other items. I still have the toolbox.  

Farewell, Uncle Dale. RIP. 

Uncle Charlie was not the loner type. He enjoyed people. And his toys.  

He had a Harley Davidson “Panhead” motorcycle. He sold it and bought a white Corvette. He said he got it to match his white flat cap hat. There were not many Corvettes tooling around the rural hills and hollers of West Virginia. 

He had a ski boat up on a lake near his hunting camp and driving up there in his Vette was high on my list of things to do. 

I spent a couple of weeks visiting him and my grand folks during the summer for a few years running. 

Both he and my granddad had worked the coal mines, but both were now glass blowers. They made all sorts of glass objects. I found them fascinating and would have loved to do that myself.  

They made marbles. I had a beautiful collection of marbles. Cat’s Eyes and Shooters and a couple rarities that I can’t remember the names of but I bet they would be worth some money nowadays. I think they were from Germany. I don’t remember what happened to my marble collection. 

We’d drive out to my granduncle's farm (in the family car, not the Vette). They still used an outhouse, a two-seater. They had only recently gotten electricity. A couple light bulbs hung from the main room ceiling. An old flintlock muzzle-loader was mounted over the fireplace. 

One time out in the front yard, a bull chased me, and I ran into a fence resulting in four stitches at the corner of my left eye alongside my nose.  

“No, it wasn’t a bull,” they said. ”It was a cow, and it wasn’t chasing you. You just ran under that strand of barbed wire that keeps the cows away from the house.”  

I like my memory of the story better.  

Uncle Charlie and family had a pet squirrel monkey. Cutest thing and friendly, too. Later, I saw an ad for baby squirrel monkeys in the back of a comic book, or maybe Classics Illustrated, my go-to for my English class book reports. Somehow, I convinced my mom to let me get one and that I did that was amazing in itself. 

It was the meanest thing. He wouldn’t even let me touch him. I finally gave him away to a pet store. The man said he was an adult and not a happy one at that. 

One time, Charlie took me, along with his wife, Bonnie, and their daughter, Peggy, on a trip over to Myrtle Beach. Other than sunburns, I don’t remember much from that trip. But I do remember Peggy.  

She was my age and suddenly, what the older guys saw in girls clicked in me. I was smitten. It was probably a good thing we were separated in real life by time and distance. 

Charlie and Bonnie later divorced. Peggy went away with her mom, and I never saw her again. Charlie remarried and had another son and daughter. 

The last time I saw Charlie I was passing through on my way to visit my family in Louisiana from where I lived on Cape Cod. I was on my Suzuki 500. We went up to his camp. We did some off-road trail riding. My road bike did pretty good off road. I only dropped it a couple of times. One time it was down a steep slope. I was glad Charlie was there to help me get it back up on the trail.  

A few years later, Uncle Charlie had a heart attack up at his camp while biking.  

Farewell, Uncle Charlie. RIP. 

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