Life is the new death

When the car swung around the corner, lights hit Uncle Jake who seemed to be wrestling with something on the front lawn. My father jumped out and ran to help subdue what looked to be a burglar dressed all in black. My father always was a man of action, so he pounced on the burglar and knocked his front teeth out – his own front teeth, that is. The burglar turned out to be a life-sized Halloween character draped across a surface of an unforgiving concrete sidewalk. What my father heard next made him forget the teeth he now held in his hands. And I take that back. The Halloween man was bigger than life size  My uncle was dragging it out to the curb. He planted it firmly on the edge of the lawn and retreated to get another Halloween character of equal size. It was July so we were a little confused. With a stern face, he proceeded to tell us about a note he had received from a neighbor. He has no idea who as he didn’t see them put it in the mailbox. The note read, “You are not in a trailer park any more. Your front lawn looks like a bad imitation of Halloween. O and you might consider a privacy fence in back.”

 My Uncle Jake lived most of his life in a warm climate, the kind of climate you want to be out in all the time. It was conducive to a certain kind of outdoor living that doesn’t happen back here in the Midwest. Where he came from, everyone did their living outdoors. Here, we do our living indoors. So I guess it was a culture clash.

 To me, Uncle Jake was the funniest human being on earth. And I found out I wasn’t the only one who thought so. He always knew just exactly what part of any situation was the kernel of nurture, the very essence that would make a joke funny. He had a keen eye for décor too. He could buy a few sticks of furniture at a garage sale, drag it into a room and have it looking like he had hired a designer to come in and do the most extraordinary things with very little.

 Well, in any case, my Uncle Jake was not one for lying down. By the time he got through, his front lawn celebrated every holiday of the year but in a slight shakeup. The skeleton sat on Santa’s lap. The elves were spanking the Easter bunny, and the Thanksgiving Indians were celebrating Valentines in a way I can’t talk about. I was asked to write about my favorite holiday and I have to say, they are all my favorite as long as Uncle Jake lives. We went and still go to his house every holiday cause you just never know what’s going to explode out of that plot of earth and no way are we going to miss it. They were always so unpredictable, I can’t single out one of them as my favorite, so, yow, I have to go with ALL. I loved all our holidays the most. There was nothing like them.

 And they only got more fun. In the next four months, three houses on Uncle Jake’s street put up For Sale signs. Eventually even more people moved out and the word must have got around because after that, only fun people bought the houses around Uncle Jake. Party people. Everyone began to get to know each other. We were like a big extended family. They were always having neighborhood barbeques. No more latch key kids either. The adults at home during the day took care of that. I had more mothers and fathers whenever I was at Uncle Jakes, but I didn’t mind. It just made me feel included.

My Uncle Jake at this time is 83 years old and he’s not slowing down a bit. He claims he looked around one day and decided the world needed a new paradigm to help break up all those crusty old thoughts about aging. When he first moved into that neighborhood, I never saw people in their yards, back or front. I think they resented my Uncle for being younger than his age. They couldn’t tolerate his display of having fun when they had given up on it so long ago. At 83, my Uncle rides go-carts like a demon. He loves speed boats and camping, He learned many of today’s dance moves and always gets up to dance soon as the music moves him. And boy does it move him. But that was Uncle Jake. He cried unabashedly in movies but fiercely protects his own with a vengeance, having been in his last fight at the age of 79. Jake won. The other guy was 62. (Continued tomorrow - 09/22)