Uncle Fred Was a Caveman

A Memoir by Karen Kay Remus
(C) 2017

Dad called me for lunch.  It was back in the days when I was in junior college, and Dad was in his parent's cellar. He had access to the phone upstairs, but for the most part, he was a cellar dweller.

The lunch meeting occurred at a local restaurant, although we probably could have eaten free roots in the cellar.

Dad had dressed in his baggy old hobo clothes and hat.  On a previous occasion, he had shown me all of his hats, neatly displayed in a row on his cellar cot, explaining what each hat implied to the public and why he wore it.  

For example, "This is my 'poor old man hat.' I wear it when I want people to feel sorry for me."  It was an ancient, plaid, "ivy cap" (the technical term)--like a beret with a bill--that was faded, dusty, and would indeed, make any wearer look poor and old.  Or, depending on other factors, such age and accompanying attire; just crazy.

At the lunch meeting, over his usual potato soup, Dad opened by loudly spouting an embarrassing litany of bigoted opinions that made me cringe and wonder how I could be his genetic progeny.  Then, it actually got interesting.

He lowered his volume and told me that when he was a little boy, living in a working class neighborhood in the Midwest, his mother took him on a train trip to her native Missouri to meet the relatives.  His mother had 13 siblings and had been dirt poor.

So sometime in the 1940's, little Don and his mom took a rare train trip to Missouri, where he met, among other relatives, Uncle Fred, who lived in a cave.  Yes; you read right: a cave. Uncle Fred had undoubtedly furnished the cave in accordance with the latest issue of Better Caves & Gardens. 

Dad also mentioned that Uncle Fred had been trying to treat a foot infection with magnets.  I did not inquire further into this line of discussion, since we were eating lunch.

The moral of the story is that I have shockingly recent caveman ancestry.  I have no interest in exploring my personal genealogy any further, because at that one meeting, I learned everything I cared to know from my strategically-hobo-dressed father who, at that point in history, chose to live in a cellar.