Really, just saying "Uncle Moose" will conjure many Flashbacks for any readers who knew him, he was a unique person and is very much missed. Uncle Moose had a gruff exterior with a tender heart hidden beneath, a heart especially tender for "Lovie" there next to him.
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Uncle Moose would travel to town to purchase his overalls from our nearby retailer. On his last visit we sat out on the front porch for an hour or so, me on my swing David Williams built, he on the Adirondak chairs my brother built. When the chit-chat dwindled, we all began to stand up. The second Uncle Moose leaned forward in his chair, our cat shot out from under him and disappeared around the house. All that time, he had been sitting on our cat.
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Uncle Moose was a builder. My father, his brother, an IBM engineer. When we had trouble around the house, Uncle Moose & Uncle Bill would often come work on it and soon the Moose/Uncle Bill combination became known as the Charlie Brown Water Company.
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Fixing a leak in the water line coming in the house, Uncle Moose was down in the ditch working with Uncle Bill up on the backhoe. Uncle Bill went too far and gave Uncle Moose a broken foot.
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On another repair, they HIT the main water line, creating a geyser. Uncle Moose staggered to the back door and yelled at mom, "Minnie DON'T SAY A WORD, just turn off your water." Years of experience taught him that mom would pick on him endlessly for making the repair worse.
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And the last repair to report had the uncles out back working while dad was at work. It was all on the down-low, mom was hoping dad wouldn't notice anything had gone wrong that day. There was a water problem, she called the brothers, and according to plan, it would be fixed before dad knew anything about it.
Things didn't go according to plan. When dad was walking in from work, Uncle Moose was walking out, "Oh, by the way, Jer," he said, "there's a small hole in the back yard you need to check on." Dad went out back and found a giant hole where the septic tank had totally sunk in and collapsed.
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If you knew Uncle Moose, I know you have some stories.
3 comments:
When I brought this blog up Dad was standing there and his first comment was "ohmygosh I thought that was ME"!! I remember all those "blunders" he was too too funny and I miss him a lot!
God bless Uncle Moose...
Good thing we didn't know all of this when we had him build our garage apartment for my mom. Well, maybe by that time, it was Carl calling the shots and Uncle Moose was second in command! If that were possible.......
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