I would like you to meet two guys. A couple of my main men. If I had to choose between them, I could not. That's because they are both super-duper special guys - different in many ways and the same in many others.
In terms of who is who in the photographs, this is Rob here on the right. And that is Jim on the left. (I tried to put them on the same level, since that's how I think of them in my little pea brain, but the software wouldn't let me. Or whatever determines such cypber-stuff that I encounter on my blogspace. Therefore, I placed them in an "artistic" fashion - facing inward. But I digress.)
The reason for a Flashback Friday with this post today is that Rob, here on the right, is my son-in-law. He is also an uncle with three young nieces to his credit: Gracie, 2 years; Emily, 4 months and Carla, also 4 months - and just 5 days older than Emily. And in a few months Rob is going to become a dad.
As for Jim, he is my other son-in-law and the father of Gracie and Emily. And in a few more months, he is going to become an uncle,too. Isn't it neat the way things work out? Yep; I think so too.
Now although I am still fairly new, relatively speaking, (no pun intended there!) to sons-in-law, I am no stranger to uncles. Because when I was a little kid I had the best kind of uncles. Not a bad one in the bunch, and I had plenty of them. Seven of them actually and a lot more if you start counting the "Greats" but we won't here - we'll just stick to the regular uncles for expediency's sake!
But the uncle I knew best and if I was really, really forced to pick (because remember, I had all kinds of super uncles, one even taught me to water ski and another rode me around town on his motorcycle), I would have to say that my Uncle Allen was my favorite because I was closest to him.
Some of the best times that I shared with my Uncle Allen were before I started kindergarten. Some really snowy days I'd get a call from my uncle's wife, my Aunt Ruby - who was also my mother's older sister. She would say, "Gale? Unkie wants to know if you would like to come over for some Rooster Soup." And of course I would be THRILLED because it sure was fun having Rooster Soup with Unkie.
Ok; at this point we probably need a bit of explanation. First of all - I couldn't say "Uncle Allen" when I was a little kid learning to talk. The best I could muster was "Unkie." And it stuck. Forever. And the Rooster Soup? Nope, nothing fancy, just plain old Campbell's Chicken Noodle, which I enjoy to this day because nothing brings back Unkie like that old familiar Chicken Noodle.
As for my unkie, he was not big on show. He was a quiet man. He was tall and lean. Loved to fish and go camping and to our numerous family picnics. He took me with him when he went to catch crawdads in the lake at City Park with my cousin, Alene, their only daughter. He never yelled; never swore (at least that I heard). He worked for the Bessemer Ditch Company, which doesn't sound very glamorous and it wasn't. He wore big old work boots and because I was taking tap dance lessons, he liked to tease me by shuffling his big old clodhoppers on the wooden floor in the dining room - teasing me to pieces about my tapping skills.
Now that I've told you about him, here he is in one of my favorite photos of him. He's where he loved to be - out of doors. The inside of a house just couldn't contain him. And I only had him a few short years - cancer took him when I was just 18. But the 44 years that have passed since then? Those years have not dimmed my memory of him even a little bit.
So I wonder. With these two great sons-in-law, how will THEY stack up in the area of Unkie-dom? Someday will my own granddaughters and grandsons remember the fun and fond times they had with a very special uncle? Something tells me they just might...........
Bye for now :)
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