There are some really interesting characters in my family.
I had an Uncle Herb, who worked at a brewery and drank free beer all day. My mother didn't approve of him, needless to say. Us kids were fascinated by him because he was funny, and because he gave us dimes and quarters whenever he saw us. He named his dog Lucky, which we thought was a pretty cool name. Lucky ate Uncle Herb's dentures one night and survived. I guess he was a lucky dog.
My kids have 2 Uncle Jims - one on each side of the family - neither particularly like the man in the following poem, but I had to share it, because every family has its share of members who don't quite fit the mold.
I heard the poem on "The Writer's Almanac" on NPR Radio one morning this week.
Uncle Jim
What the children remember about Uncle Jim
is that on the train to Reno to get divorced
so he could marry again
he met another woman and woke up in California.
It took him seven years to untangle that dream
but a man who could sing like Uncle Jim
was bound to get in scrapes now and then:
he expected it and we expected it.
Mother said, It's because he was the middle child,
and Father said, Yeah, where there's trouble
Jim's in the middle.
When he lost his voice he lost all of it
to the surgeon's knife and refused the voice box
they wanted to insert. In fact he refused
almost everything. Look, they said,
it's up to you. How many years
do you want to live? and Uncle Jim
held up one finger.
The middle one.
By Peter Meinke
