My Uncle (my father’s older brother) has been working in Killington, VT for the last thirty plus years. As I have been living 3 1/2 hours south in Massachusetts for nearly as long, I rarely (every couple of years?) get to see him.

This weekend I decided to brave the 3.5 hour drive north to visit him with absolutely no plan. I didn’t know if he would be working, but thought it was probable, as he is a bartender at a routinely jammed hotel. Luckily, I happened to get the last room, so I was free to sit at the bar, watch my uncle work and chat here and there for a good portion of the weekend.

My uncle, like my father, is a people person. They both are entirely entertaining to sit with and listen to. I never noticed just how much they actually looked alike until this weekend. From the back, a dead ringer. From the front, pretty damn close, assuming that you ignore the small matters of my uncle’s earring and the polo logo tattooed on his chest. I also never took into account that I might be grouped into the same line with the two of them, but when my uncle introduced me as his nephew to a Scottish windbag named Arrogant McAsshole or something, the guy looked for a second, and said “Yep. Same big nose.”

Big nose? The same big nose? The HMS Scottland almost got it’s hull breached.

I listened to McAssole go on and on for at least another half hour about how the US can’t build ships properly, and how he won’t hire Americans, and how he just pushes his computers off a dock when he can’t figure them out. Coming from a city with a ship building history and capacity so large that it was a Soviet nuclear target, I was skeptical of this guy’s narrow views. I disputed his theories on Americans and corporate America for a while before coming to the conclusion that this guy fit his name perfectly. He pushes. Computers. of his dock.

Before him, I had the pleasure of talking to the self-proclaimed best pest control expert in southern Vermont. He talked endlessly not only about carpenter ants, but about where they live, where they come from, why god sent them, and what they like to do on Saturday nights with their little ant sweethearts. I was riveted for ten, if not twelve whole minutes, but politely listened for a good half hour. At some point, he randomly announced that he figured me to be about 38. I’m 30. It was then that I suspected that the guy might have been wasted. After he walked away, my uncle told me that he was sober, but did spend every day working with pesticides. Nice guy. He just loved his job more than anyone and had a hard time containing it.

When the talkers dispersed, I was free to listen to my uncle and people who knew him tell story after story, entertaining me for hours. I listened to stories of naked people standing on the roof, guys in bunny suits smoking joints, four day parties centered around a tricycle race, and a bunch of stuff that kept me in stitches. The odd thing about my uncle is not that people like him (he’s got the entertaining genes), but how well known he is. Everywhere we went, every person, not one or two, but every person, knew him. It’s a small community, so that should be expected, right?

What about people who have been away for a year? They knew him. A number of them did. I don’t know five people on my current street, and I didn’t know more than six on my old street: two of those were toddlers, two were the toddlers’ parents, and two were old people who literally screamed at me several times about the length and color of the wheat farm growing in my front yard. So, when I looked at him dumbfounded and sputtered out something about how everyone knew him and this was such a… a… community. He looked at me like, “Duh. It is a community.” It’s just something that I have never been a part of, and I’m dumbfounded by the prospect of its existence. And he seems to be a big part of his. We live in different worlds.

So, having not only a local guide in an area, but a popular local guide can be beneficial. You’ll get to go on a free guided snow shoeing tours with nice young ladies who guess your age to be FUCKING FORTY, you’ll be pointed to the best local eats, and if it’s my uncle, he’ll step in and pay for the whole thing. That was the kick in the ass.

I was all set to pay for everything, no problem. All I wanted to do was visit with my uncle. And that’s what I did. I have always liked him, and don’t really get to see him often enough. It was worth the drive, and worth paying for. Yet, he stepped in and footed the bill on not only my room, but on one of the best brunches that I’ve had. It was very unexpected, and extremely generous. But, that’s my uncle. He’s a great guy, and I can’t thank him enough.

Oh yea. I forgot to mention that I sat next to a ski bunny who was probably a knockout in her twenties, not bad in her late forties, who had really big, probably fake, boobs. The end.

Posted in Misc.