The Way The Dice Fell

I think it started somewhere in late '76 or '77, with that copy of Rolling Stone's College Life magazine.

I bought it because it was for COLLEGE guys, of course. I was in junior high at the time, and living out some of the worst years I'd had so far -- ask anyone in education what middle schoolers are like, if you want an earful of that -- and the idea of COLLEGE had great appeal to me. COLLEGE was when you were eighteen, no one could tell you what to do any more, and best of all, you got to go somewhere that WASN'T HERE, a place where no one knew you, a place where things HAPPENED, a place where you didn't have to drive ninety miles to buy a suit of clothes that weren't Western Wear, and where people talked about things other than oil, cattle, and football.

Y'know. Civilization.

And here was this magazine, talking about COLLEGE and what it was like. So I bought it. I HAD to buy it. Because in late '76 and '77, I hated my life, and I hated the place I lived, and I hated my hometown, and wanted nothing more than to go somewhere and start all over in a better place. I came to understand that this isn't far from typical for your basic seventh grader, but I didn't have a lot of perspective yet, y'know?

And I bought the magazine, and there was an article in it... about this thing that college guys did. Apparently, it was a game they played, unlike any other game that had ever been. And it was called "Dungeons and Dragons."

The article was an interesting read. The guys IN the article were unrepentant nerds, but I didn't know that. The GAME looked interesting though -- a sort of swords and sorcery thing that was played on a tabletop with miniature figurines, and didn't seem to have a distinct END, or victory conditions; winning simply meant that your "character" lived another day to have further adventures later.

I didn't know what it was, but it seemed to beat the hell out of Monopoly, and it certainly wasn't football. I began trying to find out more about this Dungeons and Dragons thing. Regrettably, the only sources of information available at the time were newspapers and news magazines, and coverage was spotty; the game wasn't a cultural phenomenon yet, not by far, and it didn't help that I lived WAY out in the boonies in what Robert McCammon referred to as the Great Fried Empty, the south end of the Rio Grande Valley.

But news spread. I ran across a newspaper article, and a short blurb in another magazine. They seemed to line up with what I'd already learned. And, of course, I read that copy of Rolling Stone's College Life to tatters. I honestly don't remember anything else that was in that issue; this weird new game had seized my imagination. I wondered what a "cleric" was. Fighters and wizards and thieves, that I could work out -- I had a working knowledge of "Lord Of The Rings" and the Ace "Conan" paperbacks -- but durned if I could figure out what a Cleric was, and I think it says something about the school system and my distance from any bright light of civilization, that of the three libraries in town (elementary, junior high, and high school), none of them had a dictionary that would EXPLAIN what a Cleric was. Clerks, no sweat, Clerical Work seemed to be what clerks did, and there was a thing called a Clerical Collar, whatever that was, but damned if I could find anything that just explained what a dratted CLERIC was.

I reread Rolling Stone's College Life, and I caught up on my Ace paperbacks with Conan in them. And Thongor the Barbarian; I figured it couldn't hurt. I drew pictures of warriors and dragons in History class, and wondered where one went about getting a copy of this Dungeons and Dragons thing.

And it was that December, finally, that the family took a trip to Laredo. Laredo was the closest major city to where I lived at the time, which ought to tell you something if you look at a map. But there was a mall there, the Mall del Norte, which was the subject of my quest. There were bookstores there...

...and the memory remains with me: seeing a cardboard standup display out front of Spencer Gifts. Stacked in that display were copies of the ancient Holmes Boxed Set, what would be known as the first Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set. Ten bucks. I promptly bought one.

I was disappointed that it contained no dice. It was one of those printed during the interregnum when TSR was having supply problems, and bound into the rules booklet were "Randomizer Chits" that you were supposed to cut out and put in Dixie cups, and draw numbers instead of rolling dice. Disappointment. But the rules themselves... the rules for this game were like nothing I'd ever seen before. I'd been right about my earlier supposition: you created a character -- a fictional character -- a swordsman, a wizard, a dwarf, an elf, a thief, or a hobbit -- and you walked this guy through worlds of adventure, gaining treasure, experience, glory... and possibly an untimely DEATH, meaning you'd have to roll up another character...

I was hooked. I taught a couple of friends how to play, and there was enthusiasm for the game. And the next time we went to the mall in Laredo, I was armed with an entire cashed paycheck from my first job. I can still tell you what I bought with it: A set of dice and a Player's Handbook from B. Dalton's Books, a Dungeon Master's Guide and a Monster Manual from Waldenbooks (they had no Players' Handbooks left), an Atari 2600 video game system at Sears... and I had about enough change left to buy the best Orange Julius I think I have ever had, right there in the main concourse. My old man was quite bent out of shape with me -- "You spent a WHOLE PAYCHECK? NOTHING left to put in the bank? Are you CRAZY?" -- but to this day, I have not even the shadow of a single regret for that glorious day.

My friends and I got started. There were addresses you could send off to for more information in the books -- I became well acquainted with the Dungeon Hobby Shop in Lake Geneva, and did a lot of business with them. I remember visiting Dallas in the summer of 1980, the summer everyone wondered who shot J.R. on "Dallas," and visiting my first real HOBBY SHOP... racks of miniatures, Avalon Hill and SPI wargames, and the White Box D&D sets that I still wish I'd bought, back when they were still cheap enough to afford... but I had the hardbacks, and that's all I thought I needed, back then. Them, and my Holmes Basic.

Through the years of high school, we fought through the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and through the other giant enclaves, and the Descent into the Depths of the Earth, all the way to the Vault of the Drow and the Demonweb Pits. We visited the Aerie of the Slave Lords, the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and so many others. I was only in high school for four years... like anyone else... but I remember those adventures as well as I remember anything I did in the real world. And I have continued to hold them dear... and to have more... in the years since, up to today.

...to the point where I run the Dungeons and Dragons Club at the school where I work. Won awards for it, even. It's reading, it's writing, it's creative.

To some folks it isn't much, but to me... and to a few others... it's been entire worlds.

Yes, to this day, I can still taste that Orange Julius. It tastes like triumph.

The Rapture Of The Whipcream

It was the summer of 1978 that I learned about Nitrous Oxide.

My friend Jimmy was the coolest guy on earth, the Fonzie at the center of the world. He had a Chevy van with orange shag carpeting, a waterbed, a disco ball, and a built in eight track tape player, and he was saving up to get a mural airbrushed on the side.

To pay for this glorious excess, he worked as a stockboy at Stanley’s, a small chain of grocery stores down on the Texas coast. I don’t know if HEB has killed them all off yet, but back in 1978, you could still find them everywhere, and at one of them, Jimmy made the amazing discovery that N2O was used as the propellant that ejected the whipped cream out of the spray can.

In addition to his impossibly cool transportation, Jimmy also prided himself on always knowing where to get weed, disco biscuits, amyl nitrate, and other things (y’know, because it was the seventies, and it wasn’t drug abuse, it was a lifestyle), and he pondered how to add nitrous oxide to his repertoire. And Stanley’s provided him with the key to the mystery.

At the time, Reddi Wip and other aerosol whipcreams had upright nozzles; you push the nozzle to one side, and the cream would come out. But Stanley’s store brand, the cans were designed more like shaving cream cans: a button at the top with a nozzle poking out the side. Jimmy discovered that if you jammed a fairly thick pin into the gap between the button and the assembly, the nitrous would leak out and could be inhaled, or collected in a balloon for later use!

Well, this was a discovery of some magnitude for a mob of teenagers in 1978. A dime bag of weed was ten bucks and would quickly vanish, but a can of Stanley’s Whipped Cream Topping was only 59 cents, and was probably on sale on top of that! A great party was organized, and Jimmy was greatly lionized as the Renaissance Man of the Seventh Decade.

Jimmy had many friends, and it got to the point where he was selling a LOT of whipped cream. It was HIM selling it, because Stanley’s had these little customer satisfaction tickets, and if you turned in enough of them with your time card, you could get a cash bonus. And we ALL wanted to help out good ole Jimmy, so many tickets were filled out, singing Jimmy’s praises as the epitome of everything a fine and noble stockboy should BE!

So naturally, trouble followed. Management called him in for a chat.

“What’s the deal with the whipped cream, Jimmy?” asked the manager.

Jimmy, of course, refused to admit to anything; he’d have asked for a lawyer if he thought he could get away with it. “Beg pardon, sir?”

“The whipped cream, Jimmy. What are you doing with the whipped cream?”

“Um... selling it to customers, sir? That IS what I’m supposed to be doing... right?”

The manager sighed. “Jimmy, when you turned in a hundred and fifteen Customer Satisfaction tickets with your last time card, I was sure you were having your friends come in and fill them out so you could steal from the company.”

Jimmy’s stomach dropped about ten floors.

The manager continued. “So I noticed a lot of these tickets talked about whipped cream. So I ran the numbers. In the past month, this store has sold FIVE TIMES as much whipped cream as any other Stanley’s! We’ve sold almost TWICE as much whipped cream -- in the middle of summer -- as we normally sell in NOVEMBER, when there’s THANKSGIVING! You’re NOT cheating the system. You’re selling whipped cream like it was going out of style! What in God’s name are you doing to sell all this whipped cream?”

Jimmy remained outwardly calm. Between his ears, the wheels spun at a frightful rate. He didn’t DARE tell the truth -- he didn’t want to be the guy who derailed the party train -- so he decided to bounce it back. “Um... well, it’s because of YOU, sir.”

“Wha?”

(A while back, the manager had made a big noise about how everyone should be a salesman, even the stockboys, pestering customers to buy more and other things than what they had. Everyone had ignored the manager, but Jimmy pounced on this and made this amazing story about how he’d taken it to heart, and how now when ANYONE walked through the bakery section, Jimmy would pounce on them with a lyrical pitch about how Stanley’s Whipped Cream Topping turns a cake into a FESTIVAL, only 59 cents, AND it’s on SALE, and you’d be amazed how many people just say, whatthehell, and drop a can into the cart...)

Well, it turned out that the appeal to ego was exactly the right move. It turned out that upper administration hadn’t thought much of THIS manager’s motivational program with the tickets (too easy for employees to cheat) and they’d thought his point of sale program where you got stockboys and cashiers to push product was just dumb. But THIS fine, motivated young man had taken it to HEART and earned himself a fine bonus, AND quintupled the sales of a given product! VINDICATION!

And Jimmy was off the hook, and a great party was held to lionize this Renaissance man of the seventh decade.

Until the following week when the manager told Jimmy he’d be attending a management conference and giving a speech.

Jimmy said “Wha?”

The manager explained that he wanted Jimmy to give a longer, fruitier version of the speech given in the Manager’s office, to vindicate the man’s programs.

Jimmy began to explain that he had plans that weekend--

Management offered a $200 cash bonus if he did, on TOP of the ticket bonus and his regular paycheck. Plus, there would be a champagne buffet afterwards.

Jimmy promptly agreed that this was a speech that needed to be given! Between the two bonuses, he’d have enough to pay off the airbrush artist to do that Star Wars mural on BOTH sides of the van...

And Jimmy stood at a podium at the Hilton and gave a speech in front of a roomful of grocery managers and assistant managers and spun a line of absolute crap about how to sell whipped cream to housewives. And there was much applause. Jimmy pondered whether the van’s port side would have a head and shoulders bust of Darth Vader or portray the lightsaber battle between Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. And then, everyone broke for lunch and headed for the champagne buffet, where sparkling wine was served in plastic glasses...

...and the Assistant Manager For Bakery clapped a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “All right, Jimmy, cut the crap. What’s REALLY going on?”

“Wha?”

“The old man’s being going on about how you’re the hottest thing in the store because you know how to sell. Everybody should sell like Jimmy! So I’ve been WATCHING you.”

Jimmy’s stomach dropped about ten floors, and he nervously gulped the rest of the champagne.

“Last week, I didn’t see you talking to any housewives. What I DID see was a whole damn biker gang walk in and ask if you were working, and where you were. I kept an eye open in case I had to call the cops. But they talked to you for five minutes, signed your ticket, and bought ten cases of beer and two cases of WHIPPED CREAM! Now what the hell is going on?”

Jimmy gulped. “Well... okay, you got me... I couldn’t tell the old man what was REALLY going on...”

Asst. Manager Of Bakery grinned. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Keep talking.”

Jimmy closed his eyes. “Y’see... they’re buying it for sex.”

AMOB boggled. “Wha?”

“Y’start with some guy, right? You have a can of whip cream, and you test him by asking “Hey, I bet you’re popular with the ladies, right?” and if you think he’s the right customer, you say something like “You know that thing that they don’t wanna do? They’ll do it if you put a TOPPING on it!” and you hold up the can of whip cream, right?”

AMOB boggled some more.

“Fifty nine cents. And it’s on sale!”

AMOB looked skeptical. Jimmy shoveled onwards.

“And you see some pretty lady, hot pants, big hair, spangled tube top, right? You let her know that they’ll kiss her where she’s never been kissed before if she puts a TOPPING on it! Liven things up! Fifty-nine cents! And it’s on sale!”

AMOB looked stunned. Jimmy went for broke.

“And the beauty of it? REPEAT CUSTOMERS! Once it WORKS, they’ll be back and buying the stuff EVERY WEEK! That’s why the BIKERS came in! They KNEW about this stuff, because I sold it to them WEEKS ago! That’s why my numbers are so high! Once you get the ball ROLLING it don’t STOP! FIFTY-NINE CENTS A CAN, BABY! AND IT’S ON SALE!”

And in the roomful of drunk grocery managers, the two of them stood in silence.

“Wow.” AMOB stood, pondering. “Okay. That’s amazing. All right. Enjoy your lunch.” And he walked off.

And Jimmy promptly knocked back another glass of champagne as the tension drained out of him. Dodged a bullet AGAIN! Although he noted that AMOB seemed to be chatting with a group of junior management... and several of the people he was talking with glanced sharply at Jimmy...

And that night after the conference, we held yet another grand party to lionize this Renaissance man of the seventh decade, and to celebrate the beginning of the artwork on his van of vans.

And then, three weeks later, Jimmy threw yet ANOTHER party of parties... partly to celebrate the completion of the airbrush work... but also to celebrate his promotion to Assistant Manager Of Bakery, a thing unheard of at Jimmy’s tender age of eighteen! Promotion! Raise! Prospects!

Turns out there were more than a few assistant management slots opening up at Stanley’s grocery stores, all of a sudden. It actually made the papers at one point that a great many assistant managers seemed to be getting arrested (and subsequently fired) for some sort of vague sex offenses that the paper wouldn’t go into details about......

The Book Of Dead Names

Going to get on the soapbox for a minnit. Going to be loud and profane and opinionated. Them what don't want to hear it, consider yourselves notified.

For those of you who care: You have a right to determine your feckin' name.

I have that right. You have that right. We all gots that right, every one of us.

I'm gonna pick on Michael Peters, 'cuz he's a sport with a sense of humor. He, like everyone else, has a right to determine what people call him. I know he does not like "Mike." Perhaps he wants you to call him "Mr. Peters." He prefers that I call him "Michael." And all of that's perfectly okay.

Someday, he might want people to call him "Dark Overlord Michael O'Kittensquisher, ravener of the night and eviscerator of the gods, dark overlord of Hell." And on that day, I might well tell him to go there and wait. But he has the right to at least determine what people will call him, even if it's goofy as hell.

I have strong feelings about this, because I grew up with people making fun of my name. It's bad enough when the first thing someone does upon meeting you is to make a joke out of your damn NAME, but I've met plenty who decided that I was an unpleasant person because I didn't like the joke, didn't want to participate in the joke, didn't find the joke funny after several thousand iterations, and most certainly didn't want to participate in the mockery of basic courtesy that occurs when you MAKE A FECKIN' JOKE OUT OF MY DAMN NAME!

Remember that, folks. I introduce myself, and the first thing you do is horselaugh about my hilarious name and mock me to my face about it? You might as well just hock up a loogie and spit in my eyes. As far as courtesy, manners, and first impressions go, it's essentially the same thing, and I don't care what your so-called intentions were.

Don't insist it was a joke. Don't try to softpedal it or laugh it off. You chose to be an ass to a person you just met, and you can damn well carry the consequences of that. And I've played this unpleasant game enough times that I WILL call you out on it.

All of you who just said, "Hey, pleased to meetcha," please consider yourselves exempt from this rant.

This brings us to "deadnames."

Like I said, you got rights. You can call yourself "Firstname," or "Lastname," or "Mr. Lastname," or even "Mr. Firstname;" I do just that at work. You can call yourself whatever the hell you want. It's your call, NOT MINE. Or anyone else's.

But it seems to me that if your name was Adolf, and you got tired of Hitler jokes, and you changed your name to Bob, and I kept following you around and making Hitler jokes and calling you a name you had discarded, this is essentially spitting in your face again. "You don't GET to be Bob! I demand that you are ADOLF! ADOLF FOREVER, because I SAID SO!"

And this is a thing you have no right to do. These are the words of someone who has chosen to be a major dick.

Trans folks often change their names. They take on new names to match the new identities and self-images they build, because they're tired of conforming to someone else's expectations. They want to make their OWN call, dammit. And it seems to me that the freedom to decide who you are is the most basic of all freedoms.

If you or a politician or some rando on the street gets to decide who I am, how free AM I? So if I'm not going to be a hypocrite, I need to give that same freedom to you and Bob Who Was Formerly Adolf, and John Wayne Who Was Formerly Marion Morrison, and every single trans person on the planet. It's all of us or none of us.

Speaking of trans folks, the picture below is of Jennell Jaquays, who was trans and out and proud. I never met her IRL, but we talked on Facebook quite a bit; I am privileged in that she was accessible as all hell and willing to be talkative and even chummy with some rando on the internet who happened to be me. I was and am a big fan of her work.

She died on the tenth of January, this year. I miss her. I miss our conversations on Facebook about her old work and whatever was going on with her at home and blah blah blah. I never met her, but I felt like I knew her, at least a little. Enough to feel the gut punch of knowing that the circle is smaller by one. Enough to miss her.

And it burns my biscuits to no damn end that she's gone, and that there seem to be no shortage of people out there who will acknowledge all the cool stuff she did and created and made... while deadnaming her to the dogs and back... either not understanding what that means... or just not caring.

I have a difficult time with people who spit in your face while saying, "I really admire your work, but I spit on you as a person." Because that's what it feels like. This post is too long already. I'm going to shut it off now. But before I do... just... don't be a sonofabitch, okay? Give folks the freedom to decide who they are, and what they're called, and don't show us all your ass by deadnaming someone who's gone, and can't call you out on it.

Okay? Because you're not deciding who they are. You're not deciding or declaring or forcing anything. All you're doing is showing us all what a prick you are.

Miss you, Jennell. I'm sorry I couldn't do better.

Just Say No: A Tale Of Retail

I'm a bad person.

That being said, I used to work at a convenience store. Spent several months working there until a serial robber/murderer who was working his way south out of Austin finally made me nervous enough to quit the job before he came far enough south to notice my little mom and pop gas station in north San Marcos.

Usually, when I think about the place, I think about the Beer People. Texas, at the time, had blue laws forbidding the sale of booze before noon on Sunday, and as the low guy on the totem pole, I worked EVERY Sunday morning. And dealt with loud, confrontational idjits who simply could not see why I wouldn't risk jail and being fired just so they could have a twelve pack for breakfast. EVERY Sunday.

But today, I remembered the Four High Guys.

The bars closed in San Marcos at two, which was when it became illegal to sell beer on Sunday morning. I had a graveyard shift this particular occasion, so I sold a hell of a lot of beer and cigarettes, up until about two, after which business utterly died. And so, I sat and read a paperback and occasionally looked around for something to do.

Around three... the car pulled up. And pulled up and pulled up and pulled up. Slooooowly. There were four young men in it, two of which were looking out each window, apparently at the stripes painted to mark the parking spots. They stopped, pulled back out, and sloooowly began pulling up again. As near as I could tell, they were trying to position the car EXACTLY between the yellow lines.This went on for a while. Finally, the car was positioned precisely where they wanted it, and the driver killed the engine. And then they all looked at me.

I did not look back at them. I watched 'em out of the corner of my eye, in the mirror. I already had an idea about these guys.

Upon verifying I wasn't watching, an animated discussion broke out. There was much gesturing. I noted that these gestures weren't the sloppy, fluid gestures of drunks. No. These were the rapid, precise, sharp gestures of people who were not in the least bit drunk, and had adopted their altered state from other chemicals entirely, some of which may not be found in nature.

After a few minutes, a heated four way game of rock-paper-scissors broke out. It took a bit, because one of the contestants had apparently forgotten how to play.

Finally, it was determined that the passenger side front seat guy had lost. He looked disappointed. Then he looked at me and looked a bit frightened. And he got out of the car and entered the store.

I paid him no mind. That's what the mirrors are for. He looked around, hypnotized and dazzled by the fluorescents. He looked like what sinners must look like when they pass the pearly gates and see the face of God. Mm-hm. We were dealing with the Clear White Light, here, or perhaps mushrooms.

He began carefully wandering up and down the aisles. I watched him in the mirrors while looking utterly disinterested. At one point, he stopped and began carefully examining the motor oil display. After a moment, he began rearranging it, making sure the brands were segregated and the cans were properly spaced.

HONK!

He jumped out of his shoes, just about, and then IMMEDIATELY proceeded to the cold case. Whoopsie. He'd lost focus, and his homies were unhappy. Time to fix that. He reached the cold case, dipped into his pocket, and came out with a piece of paper. He unfolded it... and unfolded it, and unfolded it, and unfolded it, and then peered carefully at it... and began selecting items from the case.

I looked up at him with mild interest as he approached the counter, as if I had just now noticed him. On the counter, he put a bottle of water, and four bottles of orange juice. Yup. Urban legend says that when you begin to come down, a jolt of vitamin C will kick you back up for a little while. The Clear White Light, for sure.

He looked at me. I looked at him.

I said nothing. I stood there and stared at him blankly. He began to look nervous.

In truth, within my skull, a battle royal was raging to see who would win: my good twin or my evil twin. My good twin wanted to ring the guy up, take his money, make change, and send him on his way. My evil twin had other ideas.

As the stare and the silence became more and more uncomfortable, the poor guy giggled nervously, and then forced the grin down. He took the piece of paper out again, unfolded it and unfolded it and unfolded it and unfolded it, and peered at it carefully.

"Um," he said. (giggle). (pause). (forced blank face). "Hello. Good morning. I... (snicker)(blank face)... would like... two packs of... (glance at paper again)... Mar'boro Lights 100s." (Look of relief. He'd managed to get through the sentence, and begin human interaction with a non high person. Now, if he could just hold it together...)

And my evil side won by a landslide.

"Heigh-ho," I said, adopting a professional attitude and a VERY slight Eastern European accent. "Burwati. Do-bizzo hoksu mitto? Gormuloi boltagon."

He stared at me. He tried to interpret what I was saying. He failed utterly, and a slow look of horror began to spread across his face.

"Arrowshirt clearasil," I added. "Ngaio marsh. Meow?"

The "meow," I think, finally tipped him over. His face and emotions were fighting as fiercely as my good and evil side had been a second earlier, except that part of him seemed convinced that he'd forgotten how to understand English, and was horrified, and the other part just wanted to laugh hysterically. He slowly sank to his knees, giggling hysterically AND looking horrified, like a hero in a Lovecraft story who's seen too much, TOO MUCH, and madness is taking its toll...

And as he sank to his knees, giggling like a horrified machine gun, his friends realized he was in trouble, and all three of them exited the car, and stormed in the doors......and then stood there, dazzled by the fluorescents.

"Is this guy with you?" I said, ringing up the OJ and cigarettes. "He's weird. Is he high or something?" Their friend by now was on his knees in front of the counter, giggling like a hypercaffeinated Uzi, utterly oblivious to all around him.

They all stopped cold and looked at each other in a way that would have had any reasonably experienced cop doing a facepalm.

"Uh," one of them said. "Yuh. Nuh. Uh, no. He's just drunk. I'll pay for the stuff."

"Dang," I said. "I hope he ain't drivin'." I bagged the stuff and handed it over to Mr. Natural, who thrust a ten at me, handed the bag to one of his sidekicks, and he and the other guy carefully hooked arms under our hero's armpits and began hoisting him to his feet, still giggling in horror.

"Thank you, come again!" I called after them as they hustled him into the car and did a fast fade.

No, I'm not a good person at all.

Another Memory, Early Childhood

A memory crystallized in my head today.

The year is 1968, or ‘69, or maybe even 1970. I would have been five years old, give or take a year.

Mommy has sent me to the store. In my pocket is fifty cents. The little mom and pop grocery where we normally shop is some three blocks away, and the town is quite small; no one thinks anything of a five year old wandering around the neighborhood, if he stays out of traffic and out of trouble; it’s even odds that everyone who sees me knows who I am and who my parents are.

I have an errand to run. I don’t mind; the payoff is a generous one for twenty minutes of time and a three block walk, even if my little legs make it feel like a long walk indeed. I walk into the store; one of the ladies at the checkout recognizes me and says hello. I wave back, and head for the comic book rack. Which comic will it be? My tastes at the time ran towards Casper The Friendly Ghost, or perhaps Richie Rich, but Archie was usually pretty good, or perhaps Hot Stuff The Little Devil, a comic that was considered acceptable for children’s consumption at the time (no worse than Casper, really), but would be screamingly assaulted by parent and religious groups today, at the mere sight of its red, horned, pitchfork bearing protagonist.

I choose a comic that suits me, and head for the checkout, and put it on the counter, well over my head and almost out of reach. The nice blonde lady is there; at the time, I remembered her name, but now it’s long lost. She asks me, “Is there anything else today?”

“Yes’m,” I reply. I am being a good boy today, and remember my manners. “Need cigarettes.”

“Winstons, right?” says the blonde lady.

“Yes, ma’am”

She takes a red pack of Winston shorts down from the rack, and rings up the smokes and comic on a manual register; the change comes to something like six cents. We thank each other for the transaction, and I trot back to the house, eager to begin reading my comic.

Mom is in the kitchen. I hand her the smokes and the change, and find a place to begin reading...

Yeah, that happened. And I think I remember it so well because I seem to remember that it happened once or twice a week...

Uncle Telly's Cat

My Uncle Telemachus was a storyteller. Dunno if he ever wrote them down, but he could tell a story with the best of them, and I have been compared to him more than once, to neither of our irritation or insult.

Uncle Telly had a wife and family, but today I will talk about his cat. The cat wasn't anything unusual as cats go; Telly's cat was, in fact, very typical of cats.

And I never would have known Uncle Telly had a cat until he told me about the day his friend Salvatore came over, and they got to chatting and watching the football game and drinking beers one Sunday afternoon, the way men do. Note that I was not there; this is Uncle Telemachus' story, and this is all HIM.

... and apparently, this particular game wasn't as exciting as it might be. Or maybe there were too many beers involved. This may well have been the case; Uncle Telly had a liver like leather, and could drink most anybody under the table.

...but, as it was, at one point, Sal dozed off on the couch. Uncle Telly didn't mind; he sat and sipped his beer and watched the game.

After a while, Sal's head sort of fell back a bit onto the back of the couch. He did not wake up.

After a while longer, Sal began to buzz a little, the way some of us do in our sleep.

And after a bit longer, Sal began to outright snore. Loudly. The way your spouse does when she's imitating you and complaining that you snore, or some character on a sitcom does, shortly before someone throws a lamp at him.

Now, Uncle Telly didn't much mind; he just turned the sound up on the TV. But Telly's cat apparently got interested. What was THIS?

And Telly's Cat jumped up on the armrest of the couch and began to examine Sal in some detail. What was that NOISE?

Telly paid no attention, until the cat crept a little closer, cautiously... and then doubled back, got on the armrest, jumped up on the back of the couch, and slowly began to approach Sal's head, which was lying full back on the cushions, now, roaring away like a small chainsaw.

...well, apparently, the game wasn't all that interesting after all, because Uncle Telly noticed the cat, very cautiously sneaking up on Sal's head, and began watching the tableau on the couch more closely than the game. Hey, he never told any stories about the GAME, but I must have heard THIS one like six times, now.

... and Telly's Cat finally got very close to Sal's head. He peered into Sal's mouth with some interest, and much curiosity. Where the hell was that NOISE coming from?

About then, Uncle Telly glanced at the coffee table, where there sat an unabridged dictionary.

He glanced back. The cat was now staring raptly into Sal's mouth. Craning his neck a bit. His muzzle was now in Sal's wide open mouth. Where was that NOISE coming from?

Now, I will tell you, I don't believe that there was an unabridged dictionary sitting on Uncle Telly's coffee table. This is exactly the sort of exaggeration I would expect from Uncle Telly. I am in fact, fairly sure that it was a copy of MOUNTAIN BEAUTY OF COLORADO: A PHOTO COLLECTION or some other coffee table book of the sort you'd find in a nicely arranged living room.

But Uncle Telly wouldn't settle for that. No, he had to have an Unabridged Dictionary, sitting there on the coffee table for no reason.

In fact, the first time I heard this story, I think it WAS a coffee table book, and then a few years later, it was a dictionary, and I'm sure if he was here now, he'd tell me with a straight face that it was the entire collected Oxford English Dictionary, in fourteen volumes, in a neat stack, sitting right there on the coffee table.

At any rate, the cat now had his entire face, up to the ears, in Sal's wide open mouth, engaged in close and focused examination of Sal's rattling tonsils.

Sal had not noticed, and was still dead asleep and snoring like a bomber on its way back to England on one engine and many prayers.

So Uncle Telly calmly reached out, picked up the book, whatever it was... carefully positioned his arm so's not to hold the book over the coffee table, but a section of floor, about three feet off the ground... and then turned his head to face Sal and the cat...

...and dropped the book.



Did I mention the living room had hardwood floors? And that this was all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica?

This, of course, woke Sal up and startled both him AND the cat, and I leave it to your imagination what their respective reactions were. I assure you that your imagined mental picture is probably not exaggerated nor far off.

I do not remember the exact words Uncle Telly used, but there were few of them, and I remember that he somehow found a way to distill "explosive sudden pandemonium" into a six syllable adjective. Uncle Telly was GOOD with words.

And this is how I found out that my Uncle Telemachus had a cat. And a friend named Sal. I could not tell you if he still does, after THAT, but that's the version he told ME.

UPDATE: My cousin informs me that in the original version of this tale, she thinks that it might have been his father in law, not a friend. In which case, I am here to tell you that Uncle Telemachus was a braver man than I, because there’s no way in hell I EVER would have pulled anything like that on MY father in law....

Mind Control

While back, I read this series of books: Wild Cards, edited (and partially written by) George R. R. Martin, back before his Game Of Thrones was a thing.

Spoilers for a book that’s old enough to drink: Our heroes discover that the man who will likely be our next President has used his psychic powers to manipulate his way all along the electoral process... and that rather than being the moral upstanding family man he presents, he is in fact, a twisted, evil, homicidal maniac who uses those same psychic powers to feed on other people’s suffering. It gets him off.

God knows what he will do as President.

So one of our heroes has to make a moral choice. And he takes psychic possession of the guy at the Convention, where he’s about to accept his party’s nomination... and forces the candidate to say some horrible things, and act like a twisted loony, right there in front of all the delegates. The entire convention is horrified, and the speech makes front page news... and the bad guy does NOT get the nomination.

Now, I’m not sayin’ that Donald Trump is evil. Or twisted. Or insane. And I’m pretty sure he’s not psychic.

It just occurred to me that if that book was written today? And a candidate went fruity-gumballs, right there on the podium, and started spouting crazy talk?

There’d be a substantial portion of the American public who’d say, “Right! THERE’s a man who’s not afraid to speak his mind, and I AGREE WITH HIM!” And some news agencies would point out the crazy... and other news agencies would call it a rousing success. And while some of us would be shocked and horrified...

...others would eat it up. To be on the winning team. To stick it to those OTHER people, who have it COMING!

So take a look at that title, up there, again. Wonder if we’ll see more of that? And how much? And how soon?

Up On The Bedsheet

I think it would have been the summer of ‘84 that I lived in Wimberley, Texas.

Wimberley’s a little tiny town nestled in the Texas hill country, but still within easy driving distance of where I was going to college. It’s not too terribly far from Austin. And back then, it really was a tiny little community.

There were these three little houses in a cleared area of the woods, and my two chums and I shared one of them. We could walk less than a hundred yards down the street and fling ourselves in the river, and sometimes did.

Across the street from our little clearing was the town’s sole burger joint (there were a couple of trendy restaurants, but you wanted a cheap burger and fries, you went to Fatso’s.) On Wednesday nights, the old couple who owned the joint would hang a bedsheet on the back of the place, and set up a projector, and show an old movie. They literally rented old films from an outfit that serviced art theaters and suchlike, and the lady who ran Fatso’s would set up a card table with a cigar box of cash, and that was the Box Office, and for two bucks, you could walk into their back yard and watch whatever they were showing that week. Since we lived across the street, we brought our own lawnchairs and sodas and often popcorn.

Saw Psycho there, and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and True Grit, among others. The back of the burger joint was a wide, grassy area, and the whole community would show up, to some extent. Or at least, all the locals.

It wasn’t a place for film buffs. Kids ran riot, for one thing, and there were often side conversations going on here and there on picnic blankets and clusters of lawn chairs. More than anything, it was a little like watching TV with your entire neighborhood in the living room with you. And no commercials.

But it wasn’t crowded, nor was it squalid. Plenty of private space, clusters of lawn chairs and camp stools, blankets spread out, and occasional air mattresses with clusters of people on them.

I still remember how, before True Grit started, some guy dragged a little portable barbecue out to the back of the field and roasted up about ten bucks worth of hot dogs and put them on slices of bread and gave them to anyone who asked (a pack of cheap hot dogs was about eighty cents back then, and a loaf of Wonder Bread was a little more than half that, and apparently, he was feeling generous.) Even brought a bottle of French’s mustard. For no reason at all.

Tourists didn’t know about this. It was a thing the locals did for the other locals. We wouldn’t have known about it, except we lived right across the street, and even then, two dollars for a night’s entertainment was a good deal.

At summer’s end, we all packed up and moved back to San Marcos for the fall semester, and I never lived in Wimberley again. It’s a very different town, now, where real estate goes for insane money, and the locals have mostly sold out and moved on, and it’s a burgeoning little town that sort of SELLS itself as a bucolic small hill community... but it’s not... full of big new houses with tiny little yards, and very little forest is left. Fatso’s closed down years ago, and even the building is gone now.

And I write this now with wistful feelings, because I wish I could go back and pony up a couple of bucks and watch an old movie in black and white or Technicolor, projected on a bedsheet in the gloaming of the evening, with smoke pots keeping the mosquitoes away and someone’s kids running back and forth before the movie starts.

And I know I will never be able to do that again.

Studying Art

This one is for the miniatures painters.

The painting below is Frank Frazetta’s “Death Dealer.” It’s one of Frazetta’s more famous paintings, not counting the stuff he did for Ace Books’ Conan series paperback covers. He originally did it for himself, but later licensed it for use on a paperback fantasy anthology. But he retained the rights, so it also turned up years later on another fantasy novel, and later, a heavy metal album cover, and ENDLESS calendars. Frazetta got a lot of mileage out of it. He also did several other paintings of the same character, but this is the one where the Death Dealer was sitting on a horse.

It’s an iconic artwork, so I was most interested when I heard that a minis manufacturer had produced a 3D version, a 28mm miniature of the character sitting on his horse. And yeah, I bought one. And when it arrived, I lovingly washed and prepped it... and got my paints ready...

...and realized I was stymied.

Y’see... I’ve been doing this for a while. I’ve literally been painting miniatures for something over forty years. And in that time, I have learned something about color... and light... and shadow... and the way these factors behave and interact on a three dee object.

And when I began to paint the figure? I realized that it was wrong.

Light, and therefore color, are strongest at the point where the light is COMING from. If a light is over your head, the highlights, the brightest spots in your coloring, will be on top of your head and the prominent spots facing the light source... bridge of your nose, tops of your cheeks, upper surfaces of your shoulders, and so on. Colors work differently below that, all the way to the areas where light is WEAKEST, in shadow, where colors are muted or nonexistent, depending on how deep the shadows are.

I realized that Death Dealer’s face, back, and shoulders are in shadow, despite the fact that the light source is overhead. This should not be. It’s against all the rules. The side of the HORSE facing the viewer has REFLECTIONS, indicating that light is coming from THAT SIDE. And if the HORSE is lit, the RIDER should be lit. You SHOULD be able to see Death Dealer’s FACE. And yet... you cannot. It’s in shadow.

And I repainted Death Dealer something like five times before I just said the hell with it and repainted him exactly the way he appears in the painting above. It was the only way he looked RIGHT.

And I finished him, and put him in a shadow box... and stopped to marvel at the unnatural talent of Frank Frazetta, who could heighten the mood of a painting by BREAKING ALL THE DAMN RULES, and he was STILL so good, you wouldn’t notice!

Here's to you, Frank Frazetta. We shall not see your kind of talent again. In addition to the fact that you got paid something like twenty times for the same painting!

My Favorite Politician

“I have a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple. And we have talent.”

What James Watt meant to say was “My staff has great diversity, and they’re a great bunch of people, totally qualified for their jobs.” But Watt was not a terribly tactful man. He was, in fact, kind of the exact opposite: a living example of the Peter Principle, a competent executive for timber corporations who was WAY over his head in government work.

James Watt, first Secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan, starting in 1980, was my all time favorite politician. He was appointed, not elected, but he came in and made it clear that this whole “national parks” and “national resources” thing was up for sale to the highest bidder, and a lot of people weren’t happy about coal and drilling leases being offered on public land.

A politician would have soothed the media, or misdirected them. Watt poured gasoline on a forest fire, so to speak, with the arrogant gleefulness of one whose guvvamint power makes him untouchable by mortals... and he had a knack for gaffes not seen until the early years of the Bush presidency.

“They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.”

“If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.”

"I never use the words Democrats and Republicans. It's liberals and Americans."

"My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns."

There was also a delightful international incident when Watt informed Israel that support for Israel could be endangered if American Jews didn’t get behind his energy program... and, finally, and tremendously weirdly, he banned the Beach Boys from using public land in Washington for a concert... due to their “unwholesomeness” and that of their fans. Satanic rock and roll? He never explained. Nancy Reagan, of all people, invited the Beach Boys back later.

I love James Watt because he actually got the Great Conservative Dinosaur, the patron saint of the Republican party, Ronald Reagan himself, to stand up and say, “Dude, you have got to stand down. You cannot keep saying this insane crazy shit. You are making us all look bad.” And Watt resigned his office in 1983, only two years after he accepted the post.

I thought about Watt in 2011, when Sen. Jon Kyl made his remark about how 90% of Planned Parenthood funding went to pay for abortions... and when the world called bullshit on him, he, uh, well, fumfuh, muh, duh... “...not intended to be a factual statement.”

James Watt ought to be the Patron Saint of “Authority Figures Who Say Stupid Shit On An Open Mike.”

And I miss the days when being that idiotic in public meant your political career was over.

The Uncle Meat Project

Submitted for your approval: an actual project I turned in for one of the more useless college classes I have ever taken, and it explains in and of itself why I did it, and how.

Only one thing wrong with it: it's largely bullshit.

No one in my family ever told stories about "Uncle Meat." But… my grandfather, my parents, and several other relatives had a wicked sense of humor, and a knack for storytelling, and a near-total disregard of the truth when in search of a laugh.

So I guess you could say I could blame it on my family. In truth, I guess you could say that the culture of my family is based around humorous bullshit, and attempting to get each other to believe it, but somehow, I didn’t think the TA teaching the course would much like to hear about THAT.

So I framed it a little better for her, and stole “Uncle Meat” from an obscure Frank Zappa project. At any rate, here's the story of how it all began, kind of. The version below is pretty much the exact version I turned in to my teacher. She loved it. Got an A in the course.

Sometimes I still feel kind of guilty about that… but it does prove one of my eternal maxims.

“Good bullshit will get you out of any situation.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

THE UNCLE MEAT PROJECT: AN INFORMAL ANALYSIS

Project for RDG 1310, Multiculturalism In The Classroom

T.O. Bedlam

11/19/01

Our family began with Dolan. Dolan, first name unknown, came across from Ireland following the Potato Famine, and came to New York to find his brother. He was a country boy, and New York confused him. Unable to find his brother, he wound up moving south in search of work, until he reached West Virginia, where he married a local widow. They had children, hers and theirs, all of whom were daughters; there is no one in the family now named Dolan....

This is what I'd come up with for my Multiculturalism project, and I wasn't pleased with it. It sounded like a million other geneaologies I'd read, a dozen other dramatizations of someone else's family tree. It wasn't what I wanted to do.

Create a presentation based on your culture, your family, your traditions. Include written and visual elements. Be creative. This was the assignment. Bleh. How to be creative? I'm Scots-Irish, but we've been in this country since the Civil War, and some of us go back even further. We don't have any Old World traditions. I grew up living Generic White People culture, the same as everyone else in LIFE magazine. What was I supposed to do, include photos of genuine Generic White People Cuisine? Wonder Bread, tuna salad, and California Dip? Include photos of Christmas With The Bedlams? The only thing that was really traditional at Christmas was my grandmother, running around with the Instamatic, insisting that we pose, pose, pose, and hold that pose.... and even that, I find, isn't all that unique a childhood memory.

I wanted to do something different. I wanted to provide some measure of the flavor of my family, and its uniqueness... while still pointing out its cultural connections within the larger society. I wanted to be creative. But what to do?

We had two days to do our presentations. On day one, I still hadn't started, and had no idea what I was going to do.

Kelly Flores had a nice, memorable presentation. She's from Laredo, a total blend of Hispanic and Anglo culture if ever there was one, and made this the focus of her presentation. I really liked the Collector's Mexican Barbie Doll, complete with correct hair and skin tone, and a cute flamenco dancer's outfit. Talk about blending of cultures! She also had handouts Xeroxed, with the tale of La Llorona, the Crying Woman, both in English and Spanish, a tale firmly rooted in local folklore--

Local folklore.

Folklore.

And then I remembered Uncle Meat.

I was saved.

After class, I sped home, fired up Microsoft Word, and began thinking hard about Uncle Meat, and everything I'd ever been told about him. I called my sister that evening -- one of my few surviving relatives -- and asked what she remembered... and the memories came back.

I would make my presentation about Uncle Meat.

**************

My mother's father was the first person to mention Uncle Meat in my presence. My grandfather was a big, bluff, Irishman, built like a Maytag, and in many ways was the stereotypical Irishman. He didn't drink, but he could spin a tale in such a way as to stop halfway through and grin in such a way as to have the whole room ready to pass the hat for their pocket change to get him to finish the story.

And one day -- I think I might have been four or five -- he told me about Uncle Meat. That wasn't his real name, of course -- his first name was actually Aloysius, and he had six or seven middle names, one of which was Meatigan -- but his friends and family called him Meat, because he was certainly eager to please, but certainly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you know what I mean.

I was curious as to who Uncle Meat was, and why I'd never met him before, and said so. Was he dead? Gran'ther assured me that he was not, but he was not fond of large family gatherings, because someone always seemed to be bringing up something silly he'd done, and he'd get embarrassed. He did a lot of silly things, for some reason.

I don't really remember all of that first Uncle Meat story -- it had to do with how, when the family moved to Texas around the turn of the century, they had sent Uncle Meat down to secure a house for them. He'd done so, but then the worst blizzard in years had struck.

(I interrupted at this point to ask how often blizzards occurred in the lower Rio Grande valley. Gran'ther assured me they weren't common these days, but back around the turn of the century, they happened all the time, even in summer.)

Well, Uncle Meat had shut himself in the house, but it was cold, and he knew he needed to get a fire going, He put the wood in the old iron stove, but he couldn't get the fire lit because it was so cold the matches were frozen! This was bad news. Fortunately, Uncle Meat had a plan. He had bought some food earlier, including some hot peppers, and it occurred to him that if those peppers were really hot, he might be able to use them to get a fire going.

Unfortunately, as he held the frozen peppers over the fire and struck them together briskly, he revealed his ignorance about real Mexican hot peppers. The sparks they struck ignited the wood, but then, those peppers were so hot, the stove began to melt! The molten iron ignited that old timber house! And poor Uncle Meat had to flee outside in his long johns! If not for the warmth from the burning house, poor Uncle Meat might well have frozen solid before daybreak!

I was fascinated. I was amazed. My grandfather had a knack for storytelling, and the limited version I recite here is a small and pathetic thing compared to the original. I believed for quite some time after that that it was possible to ignite fires by striking chilies together, if you knew how... and if they were real Mexican chili peppers.

Interestingly enough, my grandfather was not the only person to have knowledge of Uncle Meat. Around that same time, my mother's brother admitted that he had lived with Uncle Meat for a while during his college years, and proceeded to tell a hilarious story of how Uncle Meat had gotten into the bakery business, but had not known how to leaven bread, and had wound up with an angry mob outside his doors, threatening to beat him to death with his own stony loaves.

My mother was familiar with Uncle Meat, but had not met him personally. She did, however, relate several exploits that her father and brother and a couple of uncles had related to her.

I became fascinated with this amazing, hilarious person, whose sole factor of certainty was his habit of messing around in areas he didn't understand and therefore getting into trouble in some form or fashion. I determined that he had no children, but that he had been married several times -- his wives invariably left him, although TWA had lost one of them (she'd been packed in with the luggage to save the price of a ticket, and they'd lost the suitcase), and another had last been seen clutching the tail of a large kite over Cuero, Texas, during a hurricane. His age was uncertain; although he had been an adult around the turn of the century, he was still alive and quite active during the early 1970s.

When I was seven, I decided that I would very much like to meet Uncle Meat, although by then I knew better than to loan him money or help him build anything. My grandfather laughed, and said he would introduce us if Uncle Meat ever turned up for Christmas, but he couldn't guarantee anything -- Uncle Meat came and went as he pleased, and there was just no telling when or where he'd turn up.

That was the year my sister (who may well have been quicker on the draw than I was) asked precisely how Uncle Meat was related to us. Was he Mom's brother? Or Grandpa's? Just who WAS Uncle Meat? Gran'ther laughed and explained that he was actually a distant cousin on Gramma's side of the family, but he had been around so long, everyone just called him "uncle", although at one point, he had been "Uncle Aloysius", instead of "Uncle Meat".

I later discovered that this was to be one of Uncle Meat's distinguishing characteristics -- he was NEVER from YOUR side of the family, always your spouse's.

Uncle Meat was the last of childhood's illusions I shed. I'd quit believing in the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy, but I'm pretty sure I held some faith that Uncle Meat still existed all the way up to age eight or nine. After that, I still enjoyed the stories, though. We all did. We claimed that we just told them to amuse the children, but for a time, before I reached adulthood, there really weren't any "children"… but still, a Christmas never passed without someone sharing an Uncle Meat story, old or new, or most likely, both.

I left home, and got on with my life. When we got together, though, Uncle Meat was still very much in evidence -- and one day, much to my surprise, I found myself telling one of Gran'ther's old stories to some of my cousins, who were maybe six or so. They sat there, enthralled, as I related the story of how Uncle Meat had accidentally burned the house down by striking frozen chili peppers together… and I realized why Grandpa so enjoyed telling the stories. I also realized that he'd been right -- that I would meet Uncle Meat someday -- because, after the story was told, I realized that I just HAD.

Before my grandfather died, we spoke about Uncle Meat at one point. He told me that he had renamed the character "Uncle Meat" during the late sixties, to avoid confusion with a real fellow who had married into the family… but that "Uncle Aloysius" had been a fixture in stories HIS grandfather had told HIM, and his grandfather had come over from Ireland shortly before the Civil War… and that it made him feel good to know that the tradition (such as it was) would continue.

As I grew older, and as I studied, I came to realize some things about Uncle Meat. I realized that he was folklore, an oral tradition handed down from generation to generation within my family. Uncle Meat was a rite of passage, as well -- only you can determine when and if you will ever pull someone's leg with an Uncle Meat story. Uncle Meat stories were usually humorous anecdotes or longish jokes, but there were more than a few cautionary tales thrown in there as well -- usually involving what happened to Uncle Meat's youngest the time he decided to play with matches, or got separated from his folks at the County Fair. Uncle Meat was no less a teacher of the young than the Brothers Grimm.

Any number of things could give birth to an Uncle Meat story. At least one is a rehashed version of a story originally found in Reader's Digest. Any number of jokes have become Uncle Meat stories.

…And then there was the day my father blew up the pot roast. I was home at the time, and lying in bed reading, when I heard a KAPOW noise from the kitchen. I ran into the kitchen to find my father sitting spraddle-legged in the middle of the kitchen floor with a pot roast in his lap. He was covered with gravy, and looked kind of stunned. He'd tried to check and see if it was done without bleeding off the pressure from the pressure cooker first, and it had exploded, sending the pot roast ricocheting off the ceiling, whereupon it had smacked him in the face on the way down. For days afterwards, he nursed a "sunburn" that had been caused by the hot gravy.

Imagine my surprise when that same story was told -- by my father -- in slightly altered form the following Thanksgiving, as a new Uncle Meat story.

Gran'ther in particular was often inspired by gag postcards of cowboys riding giant jackrabbits and so forth. I still have a postcard he got in Florida, showing a photo of a lovely bikini girl about to get her behind bitten by an alligator (presumably stuffed). He told me that this was the last photo ever taken of Aunt Clofullia in one piece, because Uncle Meat was so busy fiddling with the camera, he hadn't noticed the alligator until it was too late… I remember dozens of odd postcards and strange pictures he showed me over the years, swearing up and down that Uncle Meat had made the papers again…

In time, I had a family of my own, and one night I found myself telling a story about this crazy relative I had to my new daughter. She was skeptical, but willing to listen to the story. Even after hearing two or three other stories, she wasn't entirely convinced I wasn't a liar… until we went to visit my folks for that first Christmas… and she heard my Uncle Ken telling an all-new Uncle Meat story.

It took her a long time after that to decide whether Uncle Meat was real or not -- I refused to admit that he wasn't -- and now, she's twenty years old, and still, from time to time, asks to hear one of her old favorites.

So long as we are family, Uncle Meat will never die.