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Show WE ATE RABBIT and punk, which is a doughish bread that doesn't rise. (Yotta try it some time, for two solid weeks.) When Uncle Ira died he certainly cer-tainly went straight to Heaven, because he never did anything really wrong in his life. But I'll bet there was some commotion com-motion the first time he stepped out and started teetering and shrieking on Cloud Ten. You wanna hear about some more of my relatives? Now I've had brothers-in-law who . . .but let's wait a week. See you around. Mac. LAST WEEK I mentioned here an uncle who lived on a ranch in Wyoming. There were a few snide doubts that I ever had an uncle or any other relatives except those one might find under a wet rock. So I better tell you about my Uncle Ira. He was a characterand char-acterand you must not judge all my other relatives by him, although he was one of the best. He was an odd-ball. Tall and skinny, he studied to become a preacher, and he didn't care much which denomination, just as long as he could preach the Gospel. AFTER HIS graduation he worked his way to Europe on a cattle boat, and then spent several sev-eral years vagabonding around the country. When he got home he had picked up enough "foreign" "for-eign" ways that he couldn't find a church to back him, so he just went out on his own. Sort of soap-boxing, as it were. When I first knew him he drove around in a tiny two-cylinder two-cylinder Brush (who remembers remem-bers that one?) and it was so little that the Wyoming cowboys used to jump their horses over it. Occasionally he would hold services in a school house and he was, please believe me, one of the old time Bible-thumpers. He constantly teetered back and forth, heel to toe, and the effect was almost hypnotic. His voice was high and thin and quavery, and the longer he shouted at the devil the more nearly it became a shriek. Somebody said he was trying to scare the hell out of folks. His little cabin beside Owl Creek was made of sagebrush, honestly. When it rained the cabin leaked, but Uncle Ira never seemed to care. Two walls were lined with books, and that's where I read half of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Snowed in, during a two-day Christmas vacation which lasted last-ed two weeks. |