Uncle Carl

My uncle Carl died awhile back. I haven’t quite figured what to say about it. Carl was a man: a sod shack Texas redneck (literally) who loved hunting and the outdoors. When I was a kid he intimidated me and when I grew up I took a liking to him. We were never close, but I liked him. One thing that always struck me was how much in love he and my aunt Rita were. Every year Uncle Carl would load his family into the car and drive the AlCan higway to Alaska. He told me it cost him a windshield every summer. They’d hunt and fish and live in the wilderness of the last frontier. It’s the kind of thing a man does. They lived in a huge, beautiful old house (which I once tried to fill with water from a garden hose—I still don’t know why) in Portland Oregon, one of the most beautiful cities in America. He provided a good life for is family, which is also the kind of thing a man does. At the reception after his funeral (which I couldn’t attend) people left taking Bonsai plants he had grown—his most recent hobby. It is cool when someone can give life to others even in death. As the saying goes, “here was a man.”