REGARDING UNCLE DAVE

 

ISSUE SIX: December, 2020

REGARDING UNCLE DAVE

by RON PAVELLAS

1. Roseville, California

 

“Ned, it’s Rob on the phone. It sounds important.” Marge Bosco was in the kitchen preparing dinner.

“OK, Marge, I’ll take it in the computer room.”

Jeez, just what I need right now, more important news.

Ned rose wearily from his recliner in front of the dormant TV and headed into the next room. He sat at his desk, picked up the headset and punched a button.

“Hi, buddy, just a second... I’ve got it Marge. You can hang up now!... What’s going on? It’s too early in the year for a visit.”

“Mom died,” Rob croaked in Ned’s earpieces.

“Jee-sus! When, uh, where are you?”

“I’m at the house. And that’s just the end of the story. Dad and Uncle Dave died two weeks before mom went.”

Ned could hear pain in Rob’s voice, something he had never heard in the twelve years of their friendship.

“Christ! Were they all in an accident or somethin’?”

“It’s a long story. Look, I’ve got compassionate leave from the company for a month. Can we get together? I hate talking about this stuff on the phone.”

“Sure, Rob. Let’s see, it’s Wednesday... I’ll book a cabin at the lakes and we can meet there on Friday afternoon. Let’s spend the weekend there. I’ll take off work Friday and Monday. There shouldn’t be trouble getting a place this early in the year. I’ll take care of it. Just show up, OK?”

“Yeah, thanks buddy. I’ll be finished with everything here at Mom’s house by tomorrow. Signing off now, see ya Friday.”

“OK, Rob.”

Ned took off his headset, punched the off button and leaned back in his chair.

God, everyone’s got troubles. I’m not the only one.

He pushed down hard on the arms of the chair to rise up, feeling like an old man, and walked into the kitchen.

“What was that all about, hon?”

“Man, Rob’s in a world of hurt. His dad, mom and uncle have all died this month.”

“My goodness, how awful! Was it an accident?”

“Don’t know yet. I’m gonna take off for the Lakes and meet him there so he can unload. He’s always been the strong one, and this time I’ve got to be strong for him.”

“Are you going to tell him about... you know?”

“Nah, this is all about Rob right now. And Rob’ll tell me all about the accident, or whatever it was. I’ll get someone to cover for me at the shop. I’ve got a lot of vacation time on the books.”

“You could use the time away, Ned.”

“I’ll call the lodge right now and have them hold a cabin for two. Thank God it’s too early in the season for most tourists.”

2. On the road to Virginia Lakes Resort

 

Ned’s Jeep Wagoneer was always ready for a fishing or hiking trip. Before leaving Roseville the following morning, he stopped by a strip mall to buy whisky, beer and groceries.

He had around five hours to think while driving east from the middle of the Central Valley over several high passes in the Sierra Nevada, and ultimately to the resort at nearly ten thousand feet on the lee slope of the mountains.

Good to be getting out of the Valley. It always feels cleaner in the mountains. Nothing like somebody else’s bad luck to make you get your own situation in perspective. Jeez, with all his oldsters gone, I’m the only sort of relative Rob has. How long since we’ve been together at the Lakes? Too many years. No fishing this time. Just whiskey and talk, I guess, unless Rob’s got his usual surprise for me.

Ned wouldn’t get the familiar mountain feeling until after getting well past Placerville on US Highway 50, somewhere between 2500 and 3000 feet of elevation.

There’s the smell of the trees, and here I am again. Too bad it has to be when things are so down for Rob and me. Man, so much has happened since we were in the Coast Guard. It’s like we were children then, the mischief brothers. Now we’re grown up with all the responsibilities and troubles of the world to deal with. But those days of boats and Alaska and danger welded us together, closer than brothers. I owe him my life. Maybe this time I can be the one to sort of save his life.

The road continued to rise, through several tight turns, toward Echo summit at 7400 feet.

God, it’s good to feel my lungs start working for the oxygen. I wonder what Rob will do now? Will he just stay in New Orleans or will he come back home? I’m the only one he’s got on the West Coast now. What If I never see him after this? Christ, I shouldn’t get myself deeper in the dumps with this kind of thinking.

Even though the past winter’s snow and ice was cleared or melted off the road, Rob knew to be careful about wet spots and the sudden appearance of big rigs dancing over the center line around tight curves.

I guess Rob still hasn’t settled down. I wonder which way is best? Well, we’re different, that’s all.

Ned pulled over to the side when he reached the first summit. He got out to stretch his legs to breathe deeply of the thin air. Sitting on a large boulder above the wet ground he ate a sandwich Marge had made for him. He opened a thermos and gratefully drank the strong coffee.

Seems like troubles fade away above six thousand feet. But these’re two different worlds, and I’ll have to return to the other one.

The last fifty miles of the trip are like a roller coaster, around three thousand feet down a twisty road to the junction with State 395 and back up the same amount at the junction with Virginia Lakes Road and then a  right turn, up to the resort at well over nine thousand feet.

Ned parked in front of the lodge at two P.M. expecting Rob would be a few hours later. He recognized the old guy with a gray ponytail who took his payment and gave him the two keys, but he seemed not to remember Ned. It’s been a long time since.

Ned’s cabin was really a new and fancy apartment, one of a bunch sitting side-by-side with a few feet between. The real, older cabins were on the other side of the resort, near the trail head to the lakes further up the mountainside.

He moved his gear and food from the Jeep to the cabin, put the food the fridge, set the whisky on the table between the two chairs in front of the TV, and sat down.

3. Virginia Lakes Resort, Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest

 

          “Hey, wake up in there, Ned boy. We’ve got some drinking to do.”

          Ned awoke from his doze and scrambled to open the door.

          “Man, you’re gonna scare the fish away with all that bangin’ and shoutin’.”

          The two friends clasped each other’s shoulders, looked at each other for a few seconds, then embraced.

          “You look like shit, Ned me boy”

          “Yeah, and you’re beautiful too, you old sea turd. “Ya’ wanna eat before drinking, or drink then eat?”
          “I haven’t eaten all day. Whaddaya got?”

Ned had brought large, thick steaks and a bag of fries. He grilled the steaks outside and put the potatoes in the cabin’s oven. Like old times, thought Ned, grateful that it was too early in the year for mosquitoes and other annoying critters.

“Have a beer while the food burns. It’s in the fridge.”

The sun had dropped over the high ridge to the west just as the two men finished their meal. The air rapidly chilled, so they went inside. Ned opened the bottle of Glenlivet and poured the golden liquid into two water glasses. He handed one to Rob as they sat in front of the TV.

“Ok, pal, it’s time. What happened?”

          Ned was alarmed to see Rob’s face sag, seeming many years older than when he had last seen him. Rob took a gulp of whisky, closed his eyes, and seemed to go into a trance for a few minutes. Ned waited, not daring to break the silence.

          Gradually, Rob’s face tightened, he sat straighter and turned to Ned to say, “Ned, me boy, I’ve got a long story to tell, so sit back and keep pouring this most excellent booze.”

          Ned engaged Rob’s eyes and merely nodded. Rob continued.

“We moved to the foothills from the Valley when I was 14. Dad chose the place because it was about an hour’s drive to his job in Sacramento, but it was still far enough away from the city and the goddam suburbs. Back then he was a lobbyist for California’s almond growers, and he was a good one too. I know you’ve heard a lot of this Ned, but I never put it all together in one stream.”

“Go ahead, Rob. I’ve forgotten a lot of your family stuff, and some never took during the high whisky times.”

4. Uncle Dave

 

Dave Spangler was completely different from dad. Dave was fifteen years older and had a different mother. Dave was rough and dad was smooth; Dave was talkative, and dad wasn’t. What they had in common was their dad, the grandpa I never knew. According to dad, Dave was like grandpa: an outdoorsman, a traveler, a storyteller.

They both loved grandpa and I guess my dad loved Uncle Dave mostly because he was so much like their dad.

Another thing they had in common was fly-fishing. Grandpa taught his sons the art, although Dave had had more of Grandpa’s teaching, being older.

I lived with mom and dad until I was seventeen. That’s when I joined the Guard and met you and pretty much left the family behind. But for three or four years before I left home, I saw Uncle Dave often.  He never married and had no children of his own, or none that anyone spoke of, but he seemed to know a lot about women. I think my dad didn’t know as much as Uncle Dave, or at least he didn’t talk much on the subject.

I always liked to see Uncle Dave and loved the surprise of him magically showing up just when he was needed.

Mom liked to see Dave too. The whole house seemed different when he arrived. We had more interesting food, there was more conversation and laughter and music, even dancing. Dave filled the house and beyond. Certain neighbors would show up, even if just for a short front porch visit.

I never knew what Uncle Dave did for a living. He was always on the go, helping folks one way or another. He had a lot of talents, like house construction and car repair, and seemed confident in everything he did.

Anyway, in the summer of 1956 when I was fourteen, Uncle Dave showed up. Dad had promised to take me fishing here at the lakes, but his work suddenly got in the way, so Dave showed up to fill in for dad.

We spent two weeks here. We even hiked up to Moat Lake, the highest of the seven, to hunt for the elusive golden trout.

Dave’s car was a late ‘forties Olds panel truck. It held everything Dave needed to fix anything from a car to a fishing reel. It smelled like fine oil and sisal twine. I liked it. Traveling in that truck felt like living in a well-stocked cave.

We had one of the old raw cabins over on the other side of the lodge. After checking in, mid-afternoon, we stowed our gear and provisions, including a lot of beans and salt pork and settled in for the evening. We cooked-up some of the beans which Uncle Dave had already pre-soaked to get most of the farts out and got ready for an early start the next morning.

I right away loved the air here at ninety-seven hundred feet, and the night’s rest gave me time enough to adjust to the elevation. I was already used to the sensations I’d gotten when the car ascended the mountains.

Just before dawn, Uncle Dave was awake and boiling the coffee water over the wood stove. This was the silent part of the day. We ate bread and cheese and apples and drank our coffee with no more than a few grunts. The last of the coffee was for sitting on crude chairs outside the cabin, positioning ourselves to watch the peaks above us receive the first burst of sunlight, then watch the light slowly crawl down the slopes toward the valleys and canyons.

“Time to go, sonny boy. Those fish don’t like the high sun.”

The hike to Moat Lake is not long, perhaps a few miles, but a straight incline for twelve hundred feet, so we were both huffing and puffing by the time we got there. It was all quiet in the early sun. There were some birds, a few trees surrounded by many large boulders, lots of brush and frequent rocky clearings with patches of melting snow scattered around.

When we reached the lake, we quietly assembled the rods and reels and lines. The tricky parts for me were in choosing the right fly and in the casting. Dave was a master at casting. His fly always landed, softly, just where he wanted it. Dave was about to demonstrate when he whispered forcefully, “Oh no, there’s women here.”

“What’s wrong with girls?” I asked him. “They’re fishing, just like us.”

“They ain’t girls, they’re women, boy. Girls ain’t yet got the knack to bother a man to death, and one of these gals look like she’s got enough time in her rating to be chief petty officer of bother.”

“They really look serious about fishing, Unc. Look at the beautiful fly rods the two of ‘em have. And that older one can really cast.”

“When there’s more than one it’s even worse. They’ll compete to see who can bother a man most. It could be we’re in luck and these are woman-lovin’ gals, just having eyes for each other. Let’s hope. Now hand me that little fuzzy gray and blue fly there in the upper left corner.”

Before I get to the rest of this story about Uncle Dave, Ned, I’ve got to explain something else about my family.

Grandpa was of Pennsylvania Dutch stock, which really is German, and his first wife was from Ireland. These were large and lusty people and, from what I overheard as a kid, they blew apart when Uncle Dave was around ten years old. Grandpa took Dave with him to California and Dave never saw his mom again.

Grandpa’s second wife, my dad’s mother, was the granddaughter of a Basque sheepherder who emigrated from Spain to the Central Valley and had a slew of kids, all of them small boned and petite. Most of the kids became farmers, some of them wealthy. Dad apparently took after his mother, at least as far as size goes.

Grandma helped grandpa raise Uncle Dave and, later, dad, pretty much by herself because grandpa couldn’t stay in one place very long. Grandma didn’t have to give much mothering to Dave because he left home at sixteen to join the Navy. Grandma helped him lie about his age.

I know the least about my mom. Every time I asked her about her side of the family all she said was “let sleeping dogs lie.” I know that mom was a waitress in Auburn when dad met her. She was a good-looking woman all her life. She kept herself trim and was always feminine, even though she dressed modestly and with no jewelry. Without trying, she seemed to at the center of things, even when Uncle Dave held court at our home.

Well, back to Uncle Dave.

We fished really well that day and we both caught and released a brown and a few rainbows. Only Dave got a golden. What a beautiful fish that was. We just sat there a while, silently admiring it before Dave put her back.

We lost track of the women while we were fishing, and at the end of the day they were nowhere around us. The hike back down to the cabin was easy and a happy one, but we picked up the pace a bit because the sun was about to drop behind the ridge.

Back at the cabin we cleaned up and put on fresh clothes, then took a walk to the lodge buy some perishables and snacks.

There were small groups scattered around the main room of lodge, some playing cards, others just drinking and talking. There were a few family groups too. The two women we had seen at the lake were drinking beer, looking relaxed and not in any serious conversation. Their eyes were looking out at the others in the large room as much as they were looking at each other.

“Uh, oh, Billy Bob. These are not women’-loving women,” Dave said.

We went to front desk to arrange for what we needed and couldn’t help but pass close to the two women. On the way back from the desk, and before I could figure anything out, we were sitting with them. Even at that young age I could feel the magnetism between Dave and the older of the two women. It was in their eyes and in little movements I couldn’t pin down.

We quickly learned these were sisters, half-sisters, about twenty years apart in age. They had a complicated family, too, but the details escaped me. It seems this was a chance for the two sisters to get to know each other better, having never lived together. The older one was about Dave’s age, somewhere in her forties Both were good-looking brunettes with fine features and a friendly way and looked like they could have been mother and daughter.

Dave introduced me as “Bill,” which the first time he had called me anything except Billy or Bobby or Sonny. After that evening, he never again used these boyish names on me.

Well, to cut this part short, Dave and Sue, the older gal, got pretty close and I think they saw each other for a while after our fishing trip. Helen, the younger one, was too old for me and her to keep in contact, but she was friendly and warm. We even had a few heart-to-heart conversations that really gave me a lot of insights about women. I guess you could say she was my first teacher in matters of the heart, but only a little about sex. We did a little hugging toward the end of the stay and she gave me a fantastic kiss before I never saw her again. Boy, did my young pecker leap up like it never did before.

The bottom line for me in this remembrance is that Dave was like catnip to women and was always having to deal with the results of this attraction. And I think this is why he warned me from being too forward. Just to let them come to him, or to me, as he was trying to teach me. Because, it was clear, even back then, that I am more like my Uncle Dave Spangler than my dad.

5. What Rob’s Mom Told Him

 

Well that’s the story of me and Uncle Dave. Now I’ll get to what I learned from Mom before she died.

Mom phoned and got hold of me as I was working on a tug out of New Orleans to tell me that dad and Uncle Dave died when their car was run into by a logging truck, and that she was going to have a small ceremony right away. She said she wasn’t feeling well enough to make a big production out of it. There wasn’t time enough for me to get ashore, pack up and get here for it. But I wangled a leave within a week.

What I didn’t know till I got there was that mom was about to go too, and she was holding on so she could tell me some stuff. This was a very bad time for me, pard, but I stayed away from feeling too sorry for myself because I wanted to be strong for mom.

She was still at home but had a hospice worker visit every day to help her. I sat with her for the last few days and she started asking me questions about how I thought my life was going. I told her I was doing okay, making good enough money as first mate and story-telling jobs during the off-season, but this wasn’t what she was talking about. She wanted me to see the pattern of my life. My grandpa, my uncle and I all had the same life pattern. Of course, I saw she was right, but I asked her how it could be important.

Pour me a little more, will ya’? Thanks, Ned.

This is what she told me: she said my dad was, and always had been, sterile. He shot blanks. Couldn’t make babies and that I was the natural son of Dave. And even dad knew this! Not only that, but both men were in love with Mom. I guess she really loved Dave, but she knew Dave could never be the stay-at-home husband and father she wanted. Mom loved dad too, in a different way, and they married.

They wanted babies, but soon learned dad couldn’t do his part. Dad loved mom so much he wanted her to be able to realize her need to be a mother as well as a stay-at-home wife. And he wanted to be a father to her kids, or kid, as it turned out.

So, they made a deal, the three of them. Dad went away on business and Dave got Mom pregnant. But it’s not weird, not at all. They all loved each other don’t you see? And the deal worked. Dave saw me as much as he could, he taught me things dad didn’t and dad taught me things Dave didn’t. Mom said that after Dave got her pregnant, Dave and Mom never again had sex together. She was dad’s, completely, after she got pregnant. That’s’ how they all arranged it.

Well needless to say, this news turned my head around a few times and we both cried about it and about everyone’s death and old memories that now made more sense to me. After mom told me this, she was ready to die. She was never more beautiful.

---

 “That’s it, Ned. Nothing more to tell, other than I’m still working on the surprise and strangeness of it all. But the more I think about it the more I think somewhere inside I’ve known it my whole life. Not about the deal they had, but that Dave was my father.”

Having said all he needed to, Rob sat back and refocused toward his old friend. He saw that Ned was teary-eyed and pale and seemed to be trembling.

“Wow, Ned, you look real strange. I’m sorry to put this burden on you.”

With a shaky and hoarse voice Ned said, “It’s the right thing to do Rob, and I’m proud to be your friend. It’s just that I’ve got something to tell you too.”

“Well, hand it over, pal, it certainly is your turn.”

“Margie and I just found out that I shoot blanks too.”

 

RON PAVELLAS’s education occurred in San Francisco, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Berkeley, four years in the US Navy, Berkeley again to gain a master’s degree in Public health. From age 28 through 65 he worked in hospitals and medical organizations, mostly as the chief executive. He started writing poems in 1995. Upon retirement he moved to Stockholm where he associates with writers in English. He has self-published three small books of poems and a family history/memoir. He publishes several blogs in a variety of written forms (goto pavellas.com).