People

In the People room today I’m reminiscing about an uncle of mine, and it makes me sad to bring back these memories.  I apologize for the length of this post today.  If you weary of reading over 2,000 words let me know, and I’ll try to shorten them in the future.  

Uncle Bud

He was my mother’s brother, several years younger than his sisters, and just seven years older than me.  At times it felt strange calling him ‘uncle’.  I met Uncle Bud in 1943, but I was only 18 months old.  At that time, my mother took my sister and me to live with our grandparents when Dad went to England with the Navy during the war.  We lived in Indianapolis for almost three years until Dad left the service and came home.  Indianapolis in those years, especially near downtown, already had become very busy with traffic accidents and fires, and it seemed like emergency vehicles were sounding their sirens most of the time. When I was three Uncle Bud was ten, we seemed more like brothers, and my only memory of him from those days is how he made fun of me for being afraid of the sirens roaring past our house day and night.  Uncle Bud’s name was Wesley, and he went by that name until he became a teenager when people started calling him Bud.  I called him Wesley when we were together, but he was Uncle Bud when I was talking to someone about him, like right now.  

In 1950 his mother and dad, my grandparents, decided to return to their roots down in southern Indiana, so they sold their house and moved back into the little town of Shoals.  My Grandpa had worked for a moving company, acquired an interest in furniture, and opened a used furniture store in Shoals.  That same year he bought a 16-acre tract of land in the county, with a small house where they lived for four years.  During those years, I stayed with them for three weeks every summer, roaming those wooded hills.  Uncle Bud and I made some good memories during those summers.  He was in his late teens and like the older brother I never had.  He had a .22 rifle and taught me how to shoot it and how to squirrel hunt.  He showed me the wildlife living in the woods and in the little stream running through the property.  And we talked about the smooth, white rocks that were scattered everywhere.

The year they sold that country property was a pivotal time in their family, especially for Uncle Bud.  That year I was still a pre-teen, he was a teenager but he seemed older.  He was a special- circumstance child: the difference between his age and his sisters set him apart from his family.  By 1950 they were all grown up and gone from home, so he grew up alone, regarding himself as an outsider and a bit of a loner.  This became a real problem after they moved back to Indianapolis. 

Grandpa and Grandma left their country property with a good deal of money.  They had bought that tract of land in 1950 for $4,000, and sold it for $40,000 four years later, a lot of money in those days.  Those white rocks were gypsum, and Grandpa learned later this was why they paid him so much for his land.  But he couldn’t turn it down.  I remember well the day they packed the back of a pick-up truck with the furniture they were taking with them, and I watched them head north toward Indianapolis.  Uncle Bud, a very small young man, was wedged in the seat between Grandpa and Grandma. 

Back in Indianapolis, it didn’t take long for Uncle Bud to adapt to his new life in the big city.  He went to work at a large grocery store, offloading trucks and stocking shelves on the night shift.  Soon, he had a steady income and was making many new ‘friends.’  And, I resumed my annual three-week visits with my grandparents during the summers.  Uncle Bud was fun to be around in those days, even in the city.  He showed me many new things that I had never been exposed to.  He led me along the sidewalks we would take to the drugstore, showed me how to cross paved streets, and dodge traffic.  He showed me how to sit at the drugstore counter and look grown-up.  He showed me how to order a fountain ginger ale, and how not to act like a farm boy from the country.  He showed me to the back of the store where the dime novels were, like Mickey Spillane and Louis L’Amour.  He showed me the racy ones on the back of the display.  Uncle Bud liked to read, and he liked his dime novels.  One day he showed me his collection he had hidden in a closet, and he cautioned me not to tell his sister about the dime novels.   

I think it was my first summer in Indy when he taught me how to ‘pitch pennies.’  This gambling game involved two or more people tossing pennies toward a crack in the sidewalk, and whoever landed their penny closest to the crack won all the pennies.  The other game he taught me was how to ‘pitch nickels.’  This was similar to the pennies game except the stakes were bigger.  Instead of pitching them toward a crack in the sidewalk, you pitched toward the base of a wall along a sidewalk.  The coin closest to the wall wins the other nickels.  I was told these were very cerebral games which you could learn in the big city.  He cautioned me never to tell his sister that he had taught me these ‘pitching’ games.  And I never did.

Grandpa spent a lot of time fishing with me – he loved to take naps on the river bank.  I liked fishing with Uncle Bud as he would show me interesting things in the water.  We fished the west fork of the White River at a place called Broad Ripple where the river rolled over the shallows, and there were many water dwellers under rocks.  Uncle Bud introduced me to hellgrammites, a black, dangerous looking, caterpillar-type critter with a large set of sharp pincers.  He showed me how to avoid the pincers and put them on a hook for bait.  On his off days he also loved going with us to seine the big Fall Creek at night for bait minnows and crawdads. 

One year a part of my summer visit was very stressful.  Uncle Bud had fathered a child, and my grandparents were asked to help with the expenses for the child.  In the mid-‘50s, this was something that was kept silent, but neither Uncle Bud nor the girl, wanted to marry.  This situation caused a great deal of conflict between Uncle Bud and his parents.  Sometimes the child’s mother and her parents would show up outside the house wanting money.  This would take years to finally settle. 

Uncle Bud seemed to be always in debt.  I never knew for sure, but suspected he was playing gambling games during and after work.  Sometimes during the afternoon, men would come around the house looking for him, and I figured they were looking to collect a debt.  If I saw them I was supposed to tell them he was still in bed sleeping, which he probably was.  My Grandma would never let them in the house. 

He frequently talked about finding ways to make money on the side.  One year he went down to southern Indiana for a few days, sleeping in his car, and scouring a wooded area looking for ginseng.  He had heard ginseng was bringing high prices in China, and he wanted to get in on that.  The problem was that ginseng is a root that has to be pulled from the ground, and then dried before it can be sold.  He came back from that trip with his car trunk loaded with it, laid it out on tables and all the flat surfaces in the basement, and started drying it with an electric heater.  After a couple of days, it began to shrink until there was very little left.  He said it sold for thirty dollars per pound, but his crop only weighed a half-pound.  He barely made his trip expenses.

On one occasion, he brought home a big box of tree plants.  He said they were dwarf fruit trees and he could grow an entire orchard in the back yard.  The fruit would be regular size – peaches, apples, and pears, and he planned to sell the fruit at the big farmers’ market downtown.  He and I planted them all over the backyard in that rich, black dirt.  These city lots are very narrow, so the problem was that the backyard was fully shaded all day with giant shade trees from the neighbors next door.  The only time the trees could get sunlight was in the winter, and in central Indiana, fruit trees will not grow in the winter.  After two winters, I helped Uncle Bud pull up all the dead dwarf trees we had planted.

The summer he decided to use me as his side hustle became significant for me.  He didn’t tell me that I was to be a pigeon, I learned that term later, but he said he would teach me how to play poker.  First off, he wanted to know how much money I had brought with me.  He knew I always brought a small amount of money that Mom and Dad would give me for the trip.  I used it for the fountain ginger ales and sodas, and a couple of dime novels which I never took home.  He cautioned me not to tell his sister, and especially my dad, that he was teaching me how to gamble with cards.  I think he took about half the money I had, and I never really got the hang of poker.  But I knew Uncle Bud had some pretty slick friends who gambled, and I was pretty sure he had learned from them how to take people’s money.

He came home from work one day carrying two large boxes, and asked me if I liked canned meat.  He had salvaged several dozen small cans of meat that had passed the ‘sell by’ date and the store was throwing them out.  Most of them were Spam, along with tuna, sardines, chicken, etc.  I think he was offering me these things as exchange for the money he had ‘won’ from me.

Being with them only for two or three weeks in a few summers, I could never know a whole lot about the real relationship between Uncle Bud and his parents.  I heard them argue a few times, usually about money, but it seemed to me that their arguments were between people who did not know each other well.  While my grandparents could be nice, generous people, they were not the kind to be very close to.  I knew they loved me, and I loved being around them, but I was never convinced there was much love between them and Uncle Bud, either way.  I know now that Uncle Bud suffered from feelings of inferiority, extreme insecurity, and loneliness. 

I liked my Uncle Bud.  He was often disconnected, moody, and generally unhappy, but he was never cross with me, never said an unkind word to me.  In the early years of our relationship he was like an older brother, talking to me, teaching me things.  Later on, through the ‘60s and ‘70s we would see him occasionally at Mom and Dad’s house, he seemed distant, usually looking down, and acting like he was somehow inferior.  Perhaps guilt from his past might have been weighing on him.  The last time I saw Uncle Bud was after Grandpa’s funeral, and we all were gathered at the house.  When I walked in,  he was seated at the kitchen table drinking coffee.  I gave him a hearty “Wesley!” and a handshake.  He gave me a faint, twisted smile, but never looked at my face.  We had a brief conversation there, along with some other people, but I don’t remember anything we might have talked about.

Uncle Bud lived a text book case of the troubled life.  It was clear he had acquired a gambling habit which became an addiction.  My mother shared with me that he told her he owed some people a lot of money.  In the Fall of 1990, he showed up at Mom and Dad’s house and asked if he could stay with them for a few days.  They said he was acting very paranoid, on the run, trying to escape from some creditors.  My sister told me he was taking some dangerous prescription medications.  He was staying in their upstairs bedroom, and one day he shot himself in the head with a handgun he had brought with him.  We know he was troubled, but we can only try to piece together some factors which might have contributed to his decision.  We pray that he took a minute that day to seek peace with a forgiving God, and we hope we will see him again in the new life to come. 

I sure would like to talk with Uncle Bud again, and reminisce a while about the days we had squirrel hunting and fishing together.  I think I could get him to laugh.