Fast And Free

My uncle was fast. Very fast. When he was a child he ran so fast that no one would race him because they had no prayer of beating him. My mother told me that in order to get someone to race him he would promise to run on his feet and hands similar to the way a monkey walks but with his hands palm flat on the ground. He still won by huge margins.

Apparently he was fast from the moment he was born. He had two teeth from the beginning. When he about two weeks old he managed to roll off my grandmother's bed and landed on the floor. Try to explain in this day and age how a two week-old baby broke his arm!

My uncle liked to party. Remember this was back in the 1950's. It wasn't legal for teenage boys to drink beer but it was more a "boys will be boys" attitude. Of course he didn't like getting up to do chores on the farm after a good Friday night. I always laughed when Grandma would take a ladle of water into his bedroom and douse him with it to wake him up.

One day I was being quite obnoxious and I got on his nerves. Finally I made him so mad I went running into Grandma's house to get away from him. There were buckets of milk all over the kitchen waiting to be run through the separator after milking the cows.

In crashed my uncle hot on my trail. He was looking for blood. I started backing slowly away as he advanced on me. He came forward, I inched backward. Before Grandma or Grandpa could stop this dance, I backed plop! into a bucket of milk. It was the only time I remember Grandpa being angry. And he was furious.

That milk was sold to someone for sale to the public and had to be kept clean.  Grandpa was fastidious about the milk and I had ruined a whole bucketful... with some help from my uncle.

As I said before my uncle was fast. He played in any sports event that was available at school. He excelled at track. He was entered in all the running events... mile, half-mile, relay, dashes of whatever size, hurdles. You name it he ran it. He set records in our state that held up for years. I was told the last one was finally broken in the 1990's. Remember he did this in the 1950's.

Yes. My uncle was fast.