The Return of Uncle Will

This is another mostly-true Day-After Halloween story.   I thought you might like to know what came of me and Uncle Will.

When I was fourteen … fourteen years three months, to be exact … I took a sudden interest in the contents of my father’s top dresser drawer.   It started simply enough.   Dad caught me smoking.    My Newport cigarettes, cleverly disguised in a Band-Aid box, went in the trash and the Zippo lighter I’d bought with 12 week’s allowance went in his dresser drawer.  I didn’t really like smoking all that much but the lighter was very cool with a dragon emblazoned on the side in red and black.    So, one Saturday night when I was baby-sitting my brother and sister, I decided I’d get it back.   And I discovered a treasure trove of my father’s keepsakes.    There were medals from the war and real bullets.   There was a

A Halloween Story – Uncle Will

I wrote this story for a Halloween meme back in 2010.   As they say in the movies these days, it is Based on a True Story.  Of course I took a little artistic license.  You know what that is, right?   Lying to entertain. Enjoy if you dare.

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We’re going to see Uncle Will tomorrow. I hated those words. Uncle Will was my father’s uncle, a disabled veteran. He lived in one of the ramshackle brick residential buildings at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, which was about an hour’s drive from our house in East Haven. Visiting Uncle Will was worse than boring … it was creepy. His room was painted a pale institutional green but under the yellow light of the single incandescent bulb in the middle of the ceiling, it looked more like pea soup. The hallways smelled of hospital cooking, urine and disinfectant. His room added stale tobacco and an old man’s sweat to the mix. He’d be waiting for us in his wheelchair wearing khaki pants, scuffed military-issue shoes and an A-style undershirt, yellowed at the armpits. He’d force a smile when we walked in. Hi, Frank, he’d nod to my Dad. Hello, Florence, to my Mom. Who’s this big guy?, to me, every time, and I’d have to tell him, I’m Buddy. Frank’s son. As if he didn’t know. He’d extend a hand to shake, skeleton fingers covered with papery skin that I’d try to touch

A Halloween Story – Buttface Billy

It’s a tradition here on Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog to tell a spooky tale from my childhood on Halloween.  Like my stories Uncle Will and Good Will Haunting, Buttface Billy is based on events from my childhood and is entirely true … except for the parts that aren’t.

When I was I was in fourth grade, we moved to a new neighborhood in East Haven, Connecticut. My Dad had worked two jobs from virtually the day he got out of the Army to scrape together a down payment and would continue doing so to make the mortgage. It was a small nondescript ranch on a wooded lot in a neighborhood of nearly identical homes. Most everyone was the same age and from some degree of what my Mom called middle class. From where I sit now, it was all lower-middle class but back then it was heaven, particularly for 10 year old boy.  Behind our house was a hayfield ideal for pickup baseball or football games and beyond that, several miles of woods. And best of all, there were other kids, mostly boys and mostly my age. Yeah, there were some 12 year olds who liked to push around us younger kids, but back then, nobody talked about bullying unless someone really got hurt. Besides, at the end of the day, we all got along … pushing and shoving one day would be teaming up for a game of football the next.

Uncle Will – A Halloween Story

I wrote this story for a Halloween meme back in 2010.   As they say in the movies these days, it is Based on a True Story.  Of course I took a little artistic license.  You know what that is, right?   Lying to entertain. Enjoy if you dare.

:
We’re going to see Uncle Will tomorrow. I hated those words. Uncle Will was my father’s uncle, a disabled veteran. He lived in one of the ramshackle brick residential buildings at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, which was about an hour’s drive from our house in East Haven. Visiting Uncle Will was worse than boring … it was creepy. His room was painted a pale institutional green but under the yellow light of the single incandescent bulb in the middle of the ceiling, it looked more like pea soup. The hallways smelled of hospital cooking, urine and disinfectant. His room added stale tobacco and an old man’s sweat to the mix. He’d be waiting for us in his wheelchair wearing khaki pants, scuffed military-issue shoes and an A-style undershirt, yellowed at the armpits. He’d force a smile when we walked in. Hi, Frank, he’d nod to my Dad. Hello, Florence, to my Mom. Who’s this big guy?, to me, every time, and I’d have to tell him, I’m Buddy. Frank’s son. As if he didn’t know. He’d extend a hand to shake, skeleton fingers covered with papery skin that I’d try to touch

Buttface Billy

When I was I was in fourth grade, we moved to a new neighborhood in East Haven, Connecticut. My Dad had worked two jobs from virtually the day he got out of the Army to scrape together a down payment and would continue doing so to make the mortgage. It was a small nondescript ranch on a wooded lot in a neighborhood of nearly identical homes. Most everyone was the same age and from some degree of what my Mom called middle class. From where I sit now, it was all lower-middle class but back then it was heaven, particularly for 10 year old boy.  Behind our house was a hayfield ideal for pickup baseball or football games and beyond that, several miles of woods. And best of all, there were other kids, mostly boys and mostly my age. Yeah, there were some 12 year olds who liked to push around us younger kids, but back then, nobody talked about bullying unless someone really got hurt. Besides, at the end of the day, we all got along … pushing and shoving one day would be teaming up for a game of football the next.

Trick and Treat

As Muri and I were driving into L.A. this weekend, we noticed how many huge Halloween stores like Spirit Halloween had sprung up in empty stores and warehouses along the freeways.   Parking lots were packed and crowds … mostly adults … wandered in and out of the buildings.  In those stores that had window displays, 90% of the costumes in the windows were for adults.  Of course, for the kids, there were countless so-called pumpkin patches, really low-grade amusement parks with inflatable jumpers and slides and petting zoos surrounded by piles of pumpkins selling for five times what one costs at Target.  Here in Socal, every real amusement park from Disneyland to Knott’s Berry Farm has a frightening Halloween Haunt aimed at teenagers and young adults.  When Halloween arrives on Thursday night, we’ll have only a dozen or so Trick or Treaters, half of them junior high kids who have hardly bothered to put on a costume.  The rest of the kids will be Trunk or Treating at local churches or Trick or Treating at the shopping center.  On my way home from my Thursday night meeting, though, I’ll have to be on the watch for inebriated, costumed adults on their way to and from parties.  Nothing ruins a Halloween like being hit by a French maid and a Zombie in a Beemer.  So, here on the Top Sites Tuesday before Halloween, my Two Thoughts are on Halloween back in the good old days.

Nightmares

Did you have nightmares when you were a kid?  I did.   According to WebMD, nightmares are most common in preschoolers (children aged 3-6 years) because this is the age at which normal fears develop and a child’s imagination is very active.  Nightmares may involve disturbing themes, images, or figures such as monsters, ghosts, animals, or bad people.  Yep, I had those.   How about recurring nightmares?  I had those, too. There was the Aquaboo Elephant, a miniature elephant with electric eyes who hid behind my bedroom door and woke me long after my parents went to bed with its signature call … aquaboo, aquaboo, aquaboo.  Sounds funny now, but some nights I was afraid to sleep for fear of those eerie eyes.  Are you still with me?  How about nightmares that occur exactly once a year on exactly the same day, the day your creepy Uncle Will died?   Nightmares that leave a memento hanging from your bedpost, the scariest dog tags in history?   Remembering those nights still quickens my pulse and ices my blood, even though the dreams stopped fifteen years ago.

Monday Smiles – Halloween 2011

So, it’s Halloween again. Last year on Halloween, I posted a story based on a real incident from my childhood for Top Sites Tuesday’s Spooky Story Theme.  It was a big hit and even garnered a request for a sequel. So, here it is again …. meet Uncle Will:

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We’re going to see Uncle Will tomorrow. I hated those words. Uncle Will was my father’s uncle, a disabled veteran. He lived in one of the ramshackle brick residential buildings at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, which was about an hour’s drive from our house in East Haven. Visiting Uncle Will was worse than boring … it was creepy. His room was painted a pale institutional green but under the yellow light of the single incandescent bulb in the middle of the ceiling, it looked more like pea soup. The hallways smelled of hospital cooking, urine and disinfectant. His room added stale tobacco and an old man’s sweat to the mix. He’d be waiting for us in his wheelchair wearing khaki pants, scuffed military-issue shoes and an A-style undershirt, yellowed at the armpits. He’d force a smile when we walked in. Hi, Frank, he’d nod to my Dad. Hello, Florence, to my Mom. Who’s this big guy?, to me, every time, and I’d have to tell him, I’m Buddy. Frank’s son. As if he didn’t know. He’d extend a hand to shake, skeleton fingers covered with papery skin that I’d try to touch

Good Will Haunting

This post is a request.   Fellow blogger AY of Babble Break and her sons enjoyed my mostly-true Tuesday post Uncle Will so much that they requested another spooky story for Halloween.   So, Uncle Will is back for a Halloween visit.   You may be sorry you asked.

When I was fourteen … fourteen years three months, to be exact … I took a sudden interest in the contents of my father’s top dresser drawer.   It started simply enough.   Dad caught me smoking.    My Newport cigarettes, cleverly disguised in a Band-Aid box, went in the trash and the Zippo lighter I’d bought with 12 week’s allowance went in his dresser drawer.  I didn’t really like smoking all that much but the lighter was very cool with a dragon emblazoned on the side in red and black.    So, one Saturday night when I was baby-sitting my brother and sister, I decided I’d get it back.   And I discovered a treasure trove of my father’s keepsakes.    There were medals from the war and real bullets.   There was a

Uncle Will

We’re going to see Uncle Will tomorrow.  I hated those words.  Uncle Will was my father’s uncle, a disabled veteran.   He lived in one of the ramshackle brick residential buildings at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, which was about an hour’s drive from our house in East Haven.   Visiting Uncle Will was worse than boring … it was creepy.   His room was painted a pale institutional green but under the yellow light of the single incandescent bulb in the middle of the ceiling, it looked more like pea soup.  The hallways smelled of hospital cooking, urine and disinfectant.    His room added stale tobacco and an old man’s sweat to the mix.   He’d be waiting for us in his wheelchair wearing khaki pants, scuffed military-issue shoes and an A-style undershirt, yellowed at the armpits.  He’d force a smile when we walked in.   Hi, Frank, he’d nod to my Dad.  Hello, Florence, to my Mom.  Who’s this big guy?, to me, every time, and I’d have to tell him, I’m Buddy.   Frank’s son.   As if he didn’t know.   He’d extend a hand to shake, skeleton fingers covered with papery skin that I’d try to touch