Say Uncle

Dear You,

I chose my uncles very well. Uncle Doral was at least interesting, even if beer and baseball were his main passions and he died quite a long time ago now.

But I'm thinking of my mother's youngest brother, Kenneth; and my father's youngest brother, Vaughn, mostly.

Kenneth was a Marine in my earliest memory. He visited with a chess set, and I recall sitting on that old porch way out in the country in southern Ohio, where my father had rented a farmhouse. We sat on the steps and he patiently taught me the pieces and how they move and a bit about the strategy . . . then he beat me game after game after game. Even when I was grown up and living far away, we managed to have a game during our occasional visits, and twice we had an extended game by exchanging moves by postcards. He still won most of them. These days, every time I bring up my computer chess program, I think what it would be like to have just one more game with Ken. I miss him.

And I miss Vaughn, too. He was only nine years older than I, and I can still see him when he visited us -- in another farmhouse, this time closer to Columbus -- wearing his Coast Guard uniform. He brought firecrackers, which in our house were Forbidden Fruit indeed! Vaughn would get a Maxwell House coffee can, lead us three boys out to the yard, light a cherry bomb and toss it under the upended can and sit on it as it exploded, leaping into the air as if surprised. When I got older he taught me to play blackjack, relieving me of my allowance money but then treating me to a pizza. And as the years wore on, he was a correspondent as we explored the family genealogy.

On my family tree, it is probably Vaughn who hangs nearest the heartwood of the trunk.