Thanks for the lift Uncle Bob

December 8, 2024JT Twissel 27 Comments

Legend has it that my mother’s water broke while she was shooting the bull with her two younger brothers in my grandmother’s kitchen. Charley, the elder of the two boys, frantically called The Enforcer (aka Grandma), who was the head nurse at the hospital in the next town over and she ordered him to drive Mother to the hospital PDQ. But Charley couldn’t do it. Perhaps it was the sight of all that embryonic fluid on his mother’s kitchen floor or perhaps Charley had begun to celebrate the weekend a little early. And so fourteen year old Bobby took charge and drove my mother to the hospital.

Uncle Bob age fifteen. That’s Charley’s wife next to him – my Crazy Auntie Dottie.

I guess you could say, without my Uncle Bob’s calm in the time of crisis, I would have been born on the kitchen floor. And how did I thank him? I wrote a book about the time I spent with him in Germany in 1970.

Click here for a synopsis of the book.

My mother had a predilection for stretching the truth. Thus I landed in Europe believing my long lost uncle was some sort of a spy.

Uncle Bob in his late thirties discussing top secret spy stuff over a beer with his friend Bruce, also a top secret spy.

He quickly disabused me of that notion. Below is an excerpt from The Graduation Present.

“Gilberto, did you get a look at the knockers on Lou’s new secretary?” Uncle Bob asked the driver as we drove along.

“Molly, you mean Molly, right?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s her name. You know, the big ones are fun to cuddle but there is something to be said for frisky little titties. The French have a saying that the perfect size tit fits into a champagne glass. What do you think of that Gilberto? You like the little bitty titties?”

“Ah, Uncle Bob. I’m in the backseat,” I reminded him.

“So? You got a thing against tits?”

“I can’t believe I actually thought you were a spy.”

“Spies don’t like tits?”

By the time the book came out (it only took me four decades), my uncle had retired to Florida with his church-going, Texas-loving second wife. She took great umbrage at my portrayal of her husband and threw the book away before anyone in her family could read such rubbish. I doubt she read much beyond the frisky little titties scene which is a shame because the book is really about a silly, clueless girl in a complicated world.

Robert Ross Jameson, April 1, 1936 – December 4, 2024.

Hope there’s lots of peanut butter up there in heaven! And, thanks for the lift.

The Silence of the Sun

February 19, 2024JT Twissel 38 Comments

When the Sunday paper arrives, Joel grabs the funnies and I grab a section called “Insight” which includes commentaries, political endorsements, puzzles and “Life Tributes” (which, I guess, is a nicer way of saying “Obituaries”) I’m at the age where I do run into a name I recognize every now and then but more often I run into the names of people I wish I’d known.

For example, a writer by the N. Scott Momaday died last month. His name didn’t ring any bells and it should have. I mean, among his many honors he did win the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel House Made of Dawn.

The title of this blog is from Momaday’s poem If I could ascend.

Something like a leaf lies here within me;/ it wavers almost not at all,/ and there is no light to see it by/ that it withers upon a black field./ If it could ascend the thousand years into my mouth,/I would make a word of it at last,/ and I would speak it into the silence of the sun.

And so I have another author to discover.

Besides Dr. Momaday, the world lost Simone whose “greatest legacy was the people she raised who are kind, caring and productive.” And the world lost Court Appointed Special Advocate, Artie, who was “quick witted and playful and adored children.” And Dolly whose “door was always open. Dolly’s kitchen was always open. Dolly’s heart was always open.” And Jim, whose “unconventional teaching tactics and personal touch inspired students to read with insight and write with purpose.” There are many more wonderful folks but I will end with Julio whose “generosity was boundless, helping all those that he met each day” and Lee who “loved to say he was swimming in a sea of friends and what a sea it was.” Ah, swimming in a sea of friends. Just that phrase tells you a lot about someone, doesn’t it?

The Celestial Smooch

January 4, 2024January 10, 2024JT Twissel 27 Comments

It’s rare to glimpse the moon in the morning where I live, especially this time of year. If it’s not the fog hanging about, it’s the haze. But the other morning I arose just in time to see the sun bid the moon adieu in a clear blue sky.

Kind of a blurry image but I only had only seconds to catch the first rays reflecting off the the moon’s surface.

It’s the third day of the New Year and I should be making plans, right? On the first day we can be forgiven for dawdling about. On the second day, well, we’re getting over the first day but on the third day there just aren’t any excuses. Time to get motivated like these blokes from one of my favorite feel-good movies (which I watched in honor of the recent death of one of its stars, Tom Wilkinson.)

I was surprised to read that this low budget flick did far better both critically and financially than expected. A group of unemployed steel workers decide to become strippers. Only one of them knows anything about dancing; only one of them is particularly handsome (or “hung”); and none of them are what you’d call “buff.” I mean, really! Who wouldn’t want to cheer them on?

I’ve been working on a story about a family I once knew, which is probably why I’m having trouble getting motivated. It was a family that thrived on doing good deeds. They literally went to Mass every morning and fed, clothed, and sometimes even housed the transients loitering the streets of Reno Nevada. They rescued many lost and hopeless kids like me and always had a menagerie of pets, both domesticated and wild. On the surface, a wonderful family always joking and having fun.

But all Catholic tenets were indisputable. If you dared to doubt any of them, you were going to Hell. Even if you were as loving and giving as Jesus Christ himself, you had to accept all the tales in the New Testament as truth or you were going to Hell. As you can imagine, when the children became adults they all suffered from either schizophrenia or substance abuse. Not because they believed those stories but because they feared going to Hell if doubt crept into their minds. I see a lot of that fear in the world today and it’s frightening. Perhaps that’s why I’m entering 2024 on tip toes.