Don't Let Uncle Mike Get Drunk

Memories of my late true PA hillbilly uncle

Don’t Let Uncle Mike Get Drunk
for Chris K

So, everyone’s family has a black sheep or two. In my case, the family is so large, there are bound to be three or four. My mother is the youngest of 11 kids, daughter of a coal miner who died when she was two. To say the kids had a rough life is saying that the surface of the sun is warm. They were very close, and all but two of them stayed within a 25-mile radius of each other when they grew up. There are 28 first cousins, and scores of 3rd and 4th cousins. When we get together for family reunions, entire towns shut down. Really. I realized at age 14 that I had to move away from home in order to have a normal dating life. The line, “We’re only 4th cousins- we can date!” just somehow did not do it for me. I guess I wanted my family tree to have branches.

My family has so many black sheep, actually, it’s easy to spot the white ones. If you look real hard at family photos, they’re the ones trying to hide. Or run away. Or smart enough to be holding the camera. I grew up thinking that these people were normal, just a little “quirky”. Ah yes, College was a rude awakening for me.  It’s no wonder I ended up dating people who were a little too strange for everyone else. To me, they were great- I felt like I was right back home.

When my grandfather died in 1958, my grandmother was left destitute, with 6 children in the house, and 5 more or less on their own. The family pulled together. My Aunt Sharon, the middle child, was the one who perhaps bore the brunt of the changes. She dropped out of school at age 15, and went to work in the factories to support the rest of the kids. My Uncle Lanny, who will have many stories of his own, took to poaching. My Aunt Marilyn, being more sensible than Lanny, decided to work two jobs. Her oldest child was still at that time a few years away from being born.

It is not surprising that my Aunt Sharon, being forced into this adult role, was the first to marry, and I’m also not too surprised at the choice she made. I’m not sure how she met Mike, but I do know how she chose him. She was apparently creating a bit of a scandal, dating two boys at the same: Mike Homan, and a strapping young lad named Ignatious Bartusik. Poor Iggy didn’t stand a chance, horrible name aside. I am sure he was teased unmercifully, and from what I understand, you don’t have to actually have known him to know what he looked like. Whatever you can picture someone named Ignatious Bartusik looking like- you’ve got him pegged. Down to the pocket protector. This was the late 50's so imagine the outfit, too.

Mike was from an interesting family. They owned a mountain in Sugarloaf PA, and almost all the surviving descendents still live there today. They were as clannish as the Hatfields, except they didn't have a single other family to feud with. They were at war with the world, and each other. Today, the majority of them would be considered “mentally unstable”. Back in the day, they were just referred to as off their f*****g rockers. You could tell how anti-social any single family member was by assessing how far from the nearest road the house was. Mike was one of the most well-adjusted of these people, and he had the trailer closest to the road. A driveway even went to it. Of course, it goes without saying that the major source of income was moonshining. For a while, my mom and I lived ¼ mile from the Homan Clan Mountain. We had neighbors who were so poor they actually baited the road at night… and waited for results. I’m pretty sure they learned the trick from the Homans.

So Mike had apparently had enough of my Aunt Sharon’s havering between two boys. He did what any self-respecting Homan boy would do. While my Aunt Sharon was picnicking with the extended family and Ignatious down by Red Ridge Lake, Mike, in a jealous fit, stole money from the kitchen emergency fund and borrowed a motorcycle. He rode it to the lake, and used the bike to chase poor Ignatious into the water up to his neck!  He dragged the bike out of the water, and then proposed to my Aunt Sharon. She accepted his proposal for reasons none of us will ever understand. Except maybe "Homan" is a better last name than "Bartusik". The rest is history. Hilarious history.

My Aunt Sharon was the only one of the 11 kids who never had children of her own, and often, my cousin Mike and I were dropped off at her house while our respective parents, my mom and my Aunt June, ran errands. Sharon spoiled us to death She is such a kind woman, with a heart of gold and the patience of a saint. She needed that patience to deal with her husband Mike.

They lived in a trailer down by the "crick". They drew their water directly from the creek, through a hose with a screen at the end. There was a partially dug well in the yard. Partially done was the story of Mike’s life. Walking through the backyard was surreal. Here was the garage, over top of which he was building the apartment for them to live in. There was no roof, but he had the carpeting laid down. He got it on sale somewheres. He’d been working on that apartment for 17 years. Over there was the camper he was building- out of an old Jeep Wrangler. The frame was covered with various kinds of siding, and there was a wooden house door screwed into the 2x4 frame. There was a window, with shutters. And, like a grotesque joke, a urinal off the side. On the outside. It has everything they needed for a trip across the country, except tires. And so on. Mike was a classic putterer.

Mike had a sister Mary, who was so high-functioning she managed to move away from the clan and live in a city. Her son Chris is my age. Chris would often join us in exile at the Homan Mountain Homestead. He had spent much of his childhood there, and was apparently scarred for life. “Don’t let Uncle Mike get drunk and talk to you about the chickens”, he kept telling me, mysteriously. Chris and I were great friends. We got away with it by saying we were cousins, even though Mary was sure we were going to get married. I remember going to tutor Chris in Algebra, and Mary asserting, “You two are going to grow up, get married, and give me so many grandchildren, and I’m going to be so happy”

To which Chris replied, “Mom, can I pass Algebra first?” We still laugh about that. I’ve known Chris since I was 2 months old. Still, it was a long time before I learned what he was talking about with the chickens. He refused to tell me the story himself.

My best memories of Mike and Sharon were the spectacular 4th of July parties. Mike never worked a day in his life, and he was as distrustful of the government as, you know,  your average hillbilly mountain man. For whatever reason, though, he loved the Fourth. One could say he lived for it. He spent most of the year planing for the shindigs, when he wasn’t puttering with the Jeep. Or the apartment. Illegal fireworks and moonshine were stockpiled for each year’s event. Pigs were slaughtered. A salmon fishing expedition to Canada supplied more grill fodder. Burgers were prepared by the gross. An entire row of sweet corn was harvested. And the people arrived in waves. I have no earthy clue where they all came from. Mike could not possibly have known this many people. I think they just showed up, as word spread. Something like, "you gotta see this to believe it" The roadside filled with vehicles and the yard filled with people. The hooch flowed like water. The kids were smart enough to run away to play in the stream.

As the day wore on, and the sun went down, disapproving Homan Clan relatives came traipsing out of the forests, and slowly integrated into the festivities, after consuming sufficient amounts of Homan Family “water” for the courage to tell off the invaders.  Fireworks started flying in every conceivable direction except up. Roman candles were fired through the windows of passing vehicles, on purpose. Shotguns were fired off into the air, presumably to remind people they were technically trespassing on Homan ground. Jug bands played, complete with washboard and washtub instruments. Drunk revelers passed out on giant wooden spools, in bahtubs, in the creek, at the side of the road, and in the laps of other men's wives. Let me tell you, Mike knew how to throw a PARTY!

Invariably, around midnight, Mike would be lit enough to jump up on the nearest picnic table, wearing just his boots,  threadbare boxers, and a battered felt fedora; harmonica in hand, pheasant feather in hat, to dance us all a jig. Arms flapping, knobby knees sashaying this way and that, his whiter than white torso glowing in the moonlight. Harmonica blaring wrong notes. Garbled singing. Laughing like a Dionysian, while bottle rockets whizzed over his head as his relatives tried to hit him with them. My poor Aunt Sharon hid in the house crying every time, vowing that she'd finally had it- this year was the last party. Then, they’d do it again the next year.

When Uncle Mike was sober, he was actually a lot of fun to be around, even as kid. He showed me how to catch crawfish, and how to bait my line for catching brookies. He cooked all the food for him and his wife. My Aunt Sharon, God bless her, is a sweet soul, but somewhere there is a register of the 10 worst cooks Pennsylvania ever produced, and her name is on it. My cousin Mike and I remember watching them make microwave popcorn, shortly after getting their first microwave oven. It went something like this:

“What the hell you doing?”
“Mike, leave me alone, I’m reading the directions”
“What the hell you doing that for? Just stick the bag in there and turn it on”
“I don’t want to burn it”
“It’s popcorn. How badly can you f**k it up?”

We did indeed learn firsthand how badly you can f**k up popcorn.

A few years later, my Aunt Sharon needed surgery on her neck, and she was in a cast and sling for several weeks. She had to take time off work, and spend that time cooped up in the trailer with her husband. She escaped to my mom’s house daily for long visits to get away from him. Each day it was, “Oh boy, let me tell you what Mike did this time!”

Mike could barely care for himself, let alone another human being. All of the Homans are also bizarre germophobes. Mike was totally perplexed as to the best way to care for his wife, when she needed his help dressing, or bathing. The women in my family have breasts that come in two sizes: barely there and mountain size. My Aunt Sharon is built like a mountain. She complains that each one weighs 15 pounds. They probably do. Her story to me and my mom of Mike having to learn how to put a bra on her had us in tears. We almost pissed ourselves when she went on to describe how Mike, who never understood what a deodorant stick is for, was shocked to learn she wanted it applied after he had already struggled and fought for 20 minutes to mash her cantankerous breasts into the bra cups. He thought the idea of putting the surface of the stick to the underarm was gross beyond measure, so instead he carefully applied it with his fingertips. My Aunt Sharon fell out of bed from laughing because it tickled so badly; then she had to go back to the doctor to ensure she hadn’t torn any stitches.

It turned out that the reason my Uncle Mike got so angry whenever my Aunt Sharon tried to read was that he himself had never learned how.  When he turned retirement age, he was eligible to collect Social Security from the Army, as he had served about 3 months before getting kicked out. The problem was, he had no work experience to show income from anything past the Army. He was hired by a PennDOT road crew to hold the interchangeable SLOW/STOP sign for road construction, and lasted all of two weeks. My understanding is he walked off after almost causing an accident, and told the foreman exactly where to put the sign, how deep, and at what angle. I’m not sure if he was ever able to collect his retirement or not.

When we were in the fields, it was fun to be around Mike. Stuck in the house with him, like when it was raining, he’d start telling stories of his childhood. If he drank beer while telling stories, you had to watch out.

They started innocently enough. There was the story of the geese, which Mike’s family plucked every fall while still alive, then covered with hand-knitted vests to keep them warm during the winter.  That was a good one, and can be told in polite company to much amusement. The drunker Mike got, though, the more off-color his stories became. I learned more for example, about my uncle’s early sexual experiences than anyone ever wanted to know. Uncle Joe was Mike’s surly cousin, and apparently his partner in crime. He lived up in the woods, well away from the closest roads. As Mike got dri=unk, he would invariably just start to ramble:

So me and Uncle Joe was harvestin’ Cubanelle peppers one summer. We was mebbe 12 years old. Joe’s brother, now dead, come out and tells us to try somethin’. “Here- cut the end off this here pepper” he says. Well we did, and of course the inside is hollow. That b*****d then tells us, “This feels just like p***y, only better. You gotta try it”

So Mike and his cousin DID try it, shoving their pre-adolescent manhoods inside the hot peppers, and immediately ran screaming to the closest creek. “You never saw two boys run faster in their entire lives!”

What perplexes me the most is not that they tried it, but that they admitted they tried it. My poor aunt. I wonder how many more stories there were like these that she had to listen to though the years? Dear God, what could their sex life have been like?

Uncle Mike died four years ago of lung cancer. Not surpisingly, he had a two pack a day habit. He might have survived longer had the doctors found the cancer earlier. In the annals of “things that could only be believed because my Uncle Mike was involved” is the fact that the doctors biopsied the wrong lobe of the wrong lung, because the tech was holding the X-rays upside down and backwards. Twice. A year after the tumor showed up on the first X-ray, he was finally diagnosed after a third biopsy.  He died after wasting away to 80 pounds and in a lot of pain, and it was a relief for all of us when he finally passed. He was a unique man, for sure. He died smoking a cigarette. After he passed, my Aunt Sharon bought my grandmother’s last house, and moved in with her sister Dorothy (who can cook) to start over without him. To this day she won't actually say if she misses him or not.

She tried to sell the property with the trailer, but for two years the Homan Clan ran every realtor off with shotguns.

Before Mike got sick, he did regale me and my cousin Mike with the chicken story. At the time we were mortified, but now, looking back, I’m kind of glad I have someone this colorful in my family history. It lets me chill all dinner tables with the “my relative is stranger than yours” comparisons, for one. And it lets us thumb our noses and waggle out asses at convention. It is a great way to ensure I'll never get another bad date from the latest loser. It is good material for my first novel, if anyone would believe it. And so on.

So you need to understand a little about chickens to appreciate this. They are, of course, birds. Which means they have feathers, and beaks, and wings. Thay have an anatomical feature known as the cloaca, which is an opening that serves as the animal’s solid and liquid waste disposal center, and also passes eggs. Look carefully at the size of an egg from your refrigerator before you read any further. Now understand that a chicken also has a body temperature of 104, so their insides are very hot. And slimy.

My Uncle Mike was very drunk. Drunk enough to tell the chicken story. I was 14, My cousin Mike was 12 ½. Our illustrious uncle stood up from his chair to tell the story, and made appropriate hand and full-body gestures while describing the events of the tale. You have to imagine them while you read this.

"So me and Uncle Joe, we used to have all sorts of fun when we was kids. We got in all kinds of trouble. We drank Uncle Dick’s moonshine and threw Mary in the dung heap. But we never got in as much trouble as the day Mom caught us at our favorite game.

We was about 16, and we’d sneak off to the barn and grab us a laying hen. We each had our favorite. Mine was this pretty little Rhody Red named Gertie. We’d hold her just so- like this- and stroke her back real nice so she’d relax and start purring like a cat. Then we’d carefully unzip our flies and just stick it in and go to town. We'd see who could last longer. You had to hold on real good ‘cause she’d be all flapping and hollerin’ and squawkin’ and tryin' to get away, but man I tell you there ain’t nothin’ that ever felt so good as f****n’ chickens out behind the barn on a nice hot summer day…

And then Mom caught us one day, and put an end to that"

 

I swear that story traumatized me so much I remained a virgin two years longer than I might have otherwise. And let me tell you- in my line of work, I sometimes have to carefully palpate inside a chicken’s cloaca with two fingers to check if she’s eggbound. I can tell you how damned upset those birds get with just that little amount of “invasion”. I can only imagine. I can only shake my head and imagine, as much as I try not to imagine.

 

Chris was right. DON'T let Uncle Mike get drunk and tell you about the chickens. You really don't want to picture it for the rest of your life.
 













 

Author's Note

Don't ask me if this is true. If you have to ask, you don't get it.

Reviews

[fauxcajun]

The chicken story is crazy all right, but it was the pepper story that got me to shaking my head / Among other things Uncle Mike regaled this story with / You have a very unique way of telling a story of humor / It is like you are on a stage as a stand-up comic / I thoroughly enjoyed this, and I must agree, Uncle Mike was a character / After saying that, I come form the state of Arkansas and I have a few weirdo's in my family also / In fact some of them have the audacity to call "me" weird . . . Enjoyed it . . .

[SR Urie]

Miss Marie,
I appreciate your sharing such an endearing slice of prose and a hillarious use of the bovine dish that I will have some difficulty in consuming for a great deal of time to come. I'm a tad busy but I'm looking forward to reading more of your work. Keep writing ma'am. You're very good at it. BZ

[Emily B]

wow, truth IS always stranger than fiction . . . especially when you start talking about hill clans, raining was right, this could definitely be drawn into a larger work, love the humor

[raining]

What a story. Well, true story.

this is done with such humor, you need to turn it into a novel....I come from a similar sized family, twelve in my immediate family, my cousins, ten in theirs.. we were the last family in franklin county toi have slaves back then, were given a land grant by king george 3, there are grave yards with "my people" and their stories all over the place.... i grew up in a small town. excellent rendering and the story is so well crafted... bye raining

[W.k.kortas]

As someone who spent a great deal of time in the mountains on the other side of Pennsylvania, I can vouch for the veracity of this tale. It is superbly paced and constructed, and an absolute joy to read.

[DC Gentleman]

Oh my...

wow..

I love the way you think...

simply love it... !!!

[Through the Gateway]

Oh. My. Sweet....

Holy....

*Ohmyfreakinholycrapinyougottabekiddenmedeityofyourchoice!* I don't know whether to laugh, cry or scour!