Chapter 10 UNCLE GEORGE
My uncle George was the oldest boy in the Foreman family and my dad was next to the
youngest. They were separated by eight brothers and sisters and nearly twenty years in
age. Their father died about fifteen years before I was born so I never knew him. However,
from the relationship that I had with my uncle George, I would say that he was much more
like a grandfather to me than an uncle. Even though he wound up with a whole passel of
grandkids, he would never allow any of them to call him Grandpa. One time, when one of
them accidentally called him that, he told them, "Call me Grandpa once more
Uncle George lived just across the Oklahoma line in Guymon where he had a wife, six
or seven kids and a goofy brother-in-law living with him. Evidently conditions at home
must have gotten a bit tedious for him at times because at least twice a year he would
show up at our house to spend a week or two.
During those infrequent visits, he taught me all sorts of earthy lessons that few
fathers would ever pass on to their young sons; like how to chew tobacco and spit the
juice, how to sneak up on a fly and catch it in my hand and how to blow my nose without
using a handkerchief. He also taught me how make vulgar noises with my hand under my
armpit, to lift my leg when I farted and how to pee my name in the snow. Fortunately with
the passing of time, I have gotten over most of those disgusting traits. He also tried to
teach me how to whistle through my teeth but the only time that I was ever able to do it
happened to be in school. I was hiding behind my geography book, curling my tongue and
puckering my lips just the way that he showed me and trying to whistle. By pure chance I
got everything right and let fly one of the most ear splitting whistles you ever heard.
That got me a quick trip to the Principal's office for a dose of the type of discipline
that he used to keep unruly boys in line. I don't know if it was because of the five swats
on my butt or what, but I was never able to whistle again.
Uncle George was a huge horse of a man, standing at least six feet five tall with
nearly three hundred pounds of pure muscle. During his younger years, he owned a carnival
and medicine show which traveled all over the country selling patent medicine. One of the
main attractions was his strong man act. Part of his act was to put his middle finger
through a small ring in the top of a two hundred pound chunk of iron shaped like a
pyramid, pick it up, carry it across the stage and place it in a wooden framework bolted
to the stage floor. After proving that he could move the chunk of iron, he would invite
any of the men in the audience who thought that they were fairly strong to come up on the
stage and try to move it back. Naturally, since this was a carnival, the invitation always
included a little wager just to make it more interesting. They had to put up a dollar in
order to try to pick the weight up and carry it back to where it had been. If they were
able to do it, they would win five dollars. Needless to say, few of any of them were ever
successful in getting it out of the frame, much less carrying it across the stage.
What the people didn't know was that inside the glove that George wore, there was a
metal hook which followed along the inside of his middle finger and attached to a leather
strap which went up his sleeve and looped around his opposite shoulder. Without this hook,
there was no way that a person's finger was strong enough to pick up that much weight. |
