I’m about to pop a beer this Fourth of July
in honor of my uncle, Vernon Meyer.
Uncle Vern.
I’m sure most folks, at least the lucky
ones, have had an uncle Vern in their lives, and, if they’re even luckier,
still do. You probably know who I’m talking
about. “Uncle Vern” or "Ed" or "Mitch"--the uncle who stood
out from all the other adults in your life when you were young because he still
had a lot of the kid in him himself.
He was the uncle who, unlike so many other
adults, we actually wanted to see and
hang around with because he wasn’t one of the fussy brow-beaters. Uncle Vern made us feel not only accepted but special. He welcome us into his world which sort of straddled the line between childhood and adulthood.
He was the uncle who didn’t take life all
that seriously. He didn’t condescend to kids
but treated us like equals. He enjoyed
the fun things in life as much as we did and wanted to share them with us
“rascals.”
That uncle for me was Uncle Vern.
I’m thinking of my Uncle Vern this
Fourth of July because he shared his Fourth of Julys with my wife and me right
after Gena and I were married back in the early 90’s. We spent a string of Fourths with him and Aunt
Loueen and my cousins Wade, Mary, and Linda at their big, wonderfully cluttered
and messy house teeming with beer, food, and friendly dogs in the beautiful,
piney foothills of the mountains outside of Missoula, Montana.
How I miss those rollicking Fourths.
Homemade ice cream on the deck in prelude
to Vern’s Fourth of July Fireworks show.
(He bought as many fireworks as 12-year-olds do in their wildest 4th
of July dreams!) Then, later that night,
Vern saying, “Peter, grab a beer and let’s see what Mars is up to
tonight.”
And we’d have another half-dozen beers
though he’d switch to martinis sans
that pesky vermouth and look through Vern’s telescope at the stars.
Uncle Vern…
Damn, I miss that rollicking old guy,
Robert Taylor-handsome with his thick mop of wavy black hair that turned chrome
silver in his later years and which he’d always kept combed, from as far back
as I can remember, in an Elvis Presley bouffant.
Vern with that big, hearty laugh.
Vern pulling that Skoal tin out of his back
pocket, tapping it once with his knuckle, then dipping in and tucking a pinch
against his gum.
Vern and his bear hugs.
Vern and the little blue Ford tractor he was
always puttering around his yard on.
Vern and his retirement-years of
truck-farming and hauling produce into the Missoula farmer’s market every
Saturday morning in the summer. He
marveled at the green thumbs of the Hmong immigrants. (If Vern had a racist bone in his body, I
sure never saw it. He treated everyone,
strangers of every stripe, like they were family.)
Vern and his bees and his honey… Got swarmed on once, bit bad, and almost died. All the booze in his system probably saved
him...
Vern loved his dogs so much I thought of
them more as cousins than pets, and I still remember most of their
names--Taffy, Sandy, Roscoe. Nourished by all that
love, they lived damn near as long as horses.
Vern passing out drunk under the dining
room table with his dogs curled up taut again him.
Sure, Uncle Vern had a drinking problem--it
was one of those family scandals much whispered about in kitchens--and it
eventually killed him…in his 70’s! Drunk or sober, there’s not another person
in the world I’ve more enjoyed being around, especially on the Fourth
of July.
I saw Vern’s grave in the Bottineau, North
Dakota cemetery a few years ago, where most of my family on both sides,
including my mother, is buried. There it
was: “Vernon Meyer” carved into that
granite stone amongst so many others and all that green, green grass and the
vaulting blue sky and silence.
I almost laughed out loud at the joke of
seeing his name there. But Vern really is there, not in his kitchen or on his deck--buried under that stone.
A graveyard was the last
place in the world I ever expected to see Vern Meyer’s name. That’s how alive he was.
But that’s where is now.
Uncle Vern, I hope you’re having a grand
time with your Skoal and your vermouth-free martinis and binoculars and your old wooden ice cream
machine, talking and laughing with Cousin Linda, whom you’re with again, and
all your beloved critters. I tell you,
my arm aches just thinking about that damn ice cream machine and you peeking
under the lid and laughing that deep, rolling laugh of yours and saying, “Oh,
you’ve got a long ways to go yet, Peter!”
And then you’d laugh some more and sip your
beer and stare at eagles through your ever-present binoculars.
Pssshhhhhttttttt!
This one’s for you, Uncle Vern.
(The next one’s gonna be, too.)
[Here's Uncle Vern in his kitchen, my wife Gena listening raptly to another long-windy.]
[Here's me following in my uncle's footsteps, on his dining room floor...]
