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.
After several of the young men would try unsuccessfully to move the weight, Uncle
George would sweeten the offer by allowing two or three of them work together to move it.
This was an even safer bet for him because there was room for only one finger in the ring
and all of them trying to get around it to pick it up would just get in the way of one
another.
He was close to sixty years old when I was a kid but he always betting on some feat
of strength. I was at his blacksmith shop one time when a man rode up on a horse. They got
to talking about how big the horse was and Uncle George offered to bet that he could pick
it up and carry it across the street. Before the betting was over, there was quite a bit
of money involved.
Uncle George took the saddle off the horse and placed a sort of harness on it. The
harness had a ring about mid-point on the horse's side. Then Uncle George slipped a
harness over his shoulders which had a hook in the back to match the ring on the harness.
He backed up against the side of the horse, engaged the hook and bent forward, lifting the
horse right off the ground. He carried the horse across the street, put it down and
collected his money.
Not only would Uncle George stand out in a crowd because of his size, but he
usually sported a full beard and scraggly hair down to his collar. Had he been born a
couple generations later, his appearance would have fit right into the counter culture of
the hippie generation. On the rare occasions when he pulled off his bib overalls, got a
shave and haircut and put on a suit, he would have passed as a lawyer, banker or even a
senator.
I suppose that he was trying to escape from the pressures of family life through
his guise as an old prospector. It was his way to momentarily escape to a life normally
associated with solitude except that it brought him notoriety instead of the seclusion
that he sought. It was around the beginning of the great depression when he began marching
in Guymon's Old Settlers Reunion parade as the Old Prospector. I never understood what
prospecting for gold had to do with the pioneer days of the Panhandle of Oklahoma but he
would load all sorts of prospecting gear on his old jackass and lead the parade through
town. He received so much national publicity that parades all over the nation were asking
him to appear. Probably the most notable parade in which he ever appeared was the 1938
Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. He lived the life of the Old Prospector in the same
vicarious way that Mark Twain lived the life of a precocious foundling through his stories
about Huckleberry Finn.
The thing which always impressed me the most about Uncle George was his sense of
humor and love of practical jokes. He was the sort of person who could find humor in the
most bizarre ways. His wife's brother, who was about two sandwiches short of a picnic,
lived with them for years. George never did anything which would hurt someone, just drive
them crazy. Since Boliver was already a bit slack twisted, no harm seemed to come from
playing a joke on him now and then.
There was only one bathroom in the house and with all the people who lived there,
getting in when you had the urge to go was usually next to impossible. Not being able to
get into the bathroom was no problem for his goofy brother-in-law because he would just
head for the barn when he needed to go. In fact, if it wasn't too cold, he seemed to
prefer going behind the barn instead of using the bathroom in the house.
One day George saw him unhooking his bib overalls as he went around behind the barn
and just couldn't pass up the opportunity to play a joke on him. The wind had blown the
dirt from under the back wall of the barn until there was about six inches of space
between it and the ground. George got a shovel and when Boliver squatted down to do his
thing, George slipped the shovel under him. When he finished, George pulled the shovel,
complete with its contents, back inside the barn. When poor old Boliver turned around to
admire his accomplishment, there was nothing on the ground. Figuring that it had to be
someplace, he began a frantic search of his overalls, finally pulling them off and shaking
them.
There were times when George would go to great lengths in order to perpetrate a
practical joke. One time he rigged up a coffin with batteries, an electric motor and an
off-center weight which would shake, gyrate and make a thumping noise when the motor ran.
He hooked the switch to one of the handles so the thing would start when that handle was
lifted.
He dressed up in a black suit and hat and took his trick coffin down to the loading
dock at the railroad station. When the train pulled in, he was standing there with his
Bible in his hand and a most soulful look on his face. When the porters stepped off the
passenger cars of the train, he asked them if they would put his poor, departed brother on
the freight car for him. When they didn't seem to be all that willing to pick up the
coffin, he put on his most pathetic look and began to read something out of the Bible
about helping your fellow man. I'm sure that what he was saying was far more out of his
head than from the scripture.
Loading freight wasn't part of a Porter's job and besides, they weren't all that
thrilled about picking up a dead man, but since he looked like he might be carrying a fat
roll of money in his pocket, the prospect of a hefty tip overcame their fear. Four of the
porters gathered around the coffin, picked it up and started carrying it along the loading
dock toward the freight car. Suddenly, a thumping noise came from inside the coffin as it
began to shake in their hands like something in it was alive. They screamed, dropped the
coffin and dashed for the safety of the Pullman cars.
On Halloween night a few years later, George took the coffin down to the funeral
home, opened the back door of the hearse parked in the driveway and left it leaning on the
bumper like it had just fallen out. The kids making their rounds of tricks and terror that
night naturally found the coffin and did the only logical thing for boys to do, they
decided to steal it. When it began to thump and shake, they dropped it and ran to the
police station with the story about a man coming to life in a coffin. By the time that the
police got there, George and the trick coffin were nowhere to be found.
One Saturday morning the driver of a truck loaded with frozen whole tuna stopped by
the blacksmith shop to see if Uncle George would weld the truck's front bumper back in
place. The mount for the bumper had broken and he had it tied up to a headlight with a
piece of bailing wire to keep it from falling under a wheel. He told Uncle George that he
didn't have any extra money to pay for the repairs but offered to give him four of the
fish as payment for the welding.
When the welding job was finished, George wrapped the fish in newspaper and laid
them aside to take home that evening when he finished work. Unfortunately, the next time
that George thought about the fish was on Sunday morning. After laying around in the
summer heat for a day and a night, there was no question that they were well past the
point of being safe to eat. However, George was never one to let a good thing go to waste
so as soon as he finished breakfast, he went to the shop to get them.
The Guymon city park had a small muddy lake in it with a few ducks swimming around,
but everyone knew that there were no fish worth catching in it. Kids would fish there
occasionally but all that they ever caught was some little things about five inches long
which swam around with their eyes and mouths sticking out of the water, as if gasping for
air. These things which seemed to be more closely related to salamanders than fish so the
kids called them gasper-goos. Even if they had been big enough to eat, they tasted so much
like mud that the ducks wouldn't even eat them.
When the preachers finally let their flocks go at noon, most of them would descend
on the park for a picnic. When they arrived on this particular Sunday, they found George
sitting in the shade of a tree, watching the bobber on his fishing line. It was such a
strange sight to see an adult fishing in the lake that they just had to find out what was
going on.
When they asked George if he was catching anything, he answered by lifting his
stringer so they could see the big fish that he had on it. This set off an immediate
frenzy of fishing and soon dozens of people were throwing hooks into the water. They
baited their hooks with all the usual things like chicken livers, worms and grasshoppers.
True to form, all that any of them caught was those little gasper-goos.
Every time that George thought that their enthusiasm was beginning to wane, he
would pull up his stringer to check his catch, setting off another frantic bout of
fishing. After about an hour of catching nothing but these little mud-cats, some of the
frustrated anglers asked George what he was using for bait. He replied, "Raw
turnips."
Since few people bring raw turnips to a picnic, they all rushed off to find some
for bait. When they switched to chunks of raw turnip on their hooks, the even stopped
catching the little gasper-goos. After another hour or so of enjoying his joke, George
figured that he had pushed the scam about as far as it was going to go, so he gave them
one last shot. He jumped to his feet and began to thrash his fishing pole back and forth
like he had just snagged another big fish. As soon as he had everyone's attention, he
dragged in the dead fish that had been on his line all the time, put it on the stringer
with his other spoiled fish and took them home to feed to the hogs. I doubt that anyone
ever noticed that the fish on his stringer were already dressed. |
