Did I ever tell you about my Uncle George? He was the family nut-ball that as children we thought was the cat's meow and all the adults would just state that he was a little "eccentric." His first name was George although no-one used it or even knew it. He was called "Uncle" as a child by his siblings and mother, and it stuck. Uncle was a piece of work. He typically would remind you of Barney Fife from the Andy Griffith show. He never worked a day in his life. If people asked him what business he was in he'd say, "The Sponge business," meaning that he sponges off his niece in New York for the summer and sponges off the other niece in Florida for the winter. He made a lifetime career out of not having a job.

He was in the army for a short time. If you asked him what "company" he was in he'd say "B" Company: "B" here when it starts and "B" here when it's over! He'd show you a scar on his finger where a bullet grazed him in some war you've never heard of. Truth is … he got so damn nervous about having to go overseas that he developed an ulcer and was honorably discharged for it, thereby receiving a small stipend of spending cash monthly for the rest of his life. Since he spent the summers with my family he was the playmate for four rowdy children. He was a regular Milton Berle dressing up in ladies wigs and feather boas, asking if we wanted to play "house." When we eagerly said "yes" he'd reply, "Fine! You be the door — I'll slam ya'!"

Uncle always had these bright ideas about things that always seemed to go horribly wrong for me and my siblings. There was the time that he was in the mood for an apple pie and told me and my brother to climb an old apple tree we had in the woods behind our house. We were to shake the branches and let the really juicy ones fall down to him. I kept asking him what were all the green leaves that were covering the tree that we were lying on (in just our bathing suits), but he would just say, "How the hell would I know?" Well we were covered in the worst case of poison ivy ever after that. We also became bloody messes after one of his "galavantin" trips through the pricker bushes in the woods in search of blackberries. If a small animal came across our path, or a section of woods looked a little scary, he always made one of us (at the tender age of eight, mind you) go in front of him. "You go first!" "No you go first Uncle you're bigger!" "Didn't anybody ever tell you to respect your elders?" "I'm a kid for cryin' out loud — you're supposed to protect me!" Suddenly he would just turn tail and run like hell, forgetting to yell "BEES!!!!!" and leave us behind to get stung! Can you believe it?

My parents would go out for the night and say, "Now behave yourselves" and they half-heartedly were directing that at him. "Hey, let's make homemade ice cream!" he'd yell. We got the old hand-cranked wooden contraption out of the basement and he concocted what was supposed to be a recipe for "chocolate" ice-cream. It took us forever but the thought of the delicious treat kept us going. When it was all done he took the first spoonful right out of the container and slowly tasted his masterpiece without saying a word. He then took another spoonful, and without warning, flung it into the face of my cousin. Thus started a war of ice cream throwing that trashed the basement and ruined my father's pool table. There was ice cream on the ceiling, sofas, walls, just a horrid mess with soppy kids all worked up and soaked. After seeing what had happened he simply said, "You kids are on your own," and hijacked my little girl's bicycle to go off boozin' at the neighbors. Picture Barney Fife trying to ride a little girl's pink bicycle down a dirt road with a carton of cigs in the white flowered basket and ringing the bell the whole way. We found him in the ditch all askew and hung-over the next morning. He got so drunk he fell off the bike. He insisted over coffee it was because of the UFO in the trees that distracted him. "The birds, I'm tellin' ya, the birds in the trees all starting goin' plum crazy and then all this blinking lights started to appear! I could have been killed or worse — experimented on!"

He actually tried to get me to milk a bull once when he confused it with a cow after dipping into his special blend of "cough medicine." His favorite past-time was going down the road to the old farmer's barn, eat snake meat and yell, "Carol Ann! Go in the barn and milk the cows," which meant dealing with the bull and when you're only four feet high the nightmares go on forever. Do you know how many times I got chased down by a cow, dodging cow pies, and had to dive through a barbed wire fence? All because he wanted fresh milk right from the cow. Yea, Uncle was a character all right. There's one in every family I suppose. Now that times are changing and I'm getting older my little nieces are starting to look at me as the family nut-ball. Well, somebody's gotta carry on the tradition I suppose — might as well be crazy Aunt Carol.