Uncle Mark and Aunt Ethel were always in my life and I have many fond memories of them. Mark was Dad’s brother and they would come to visit us, my parents, younger brother Jim and me, every year. When they came they would always tell Jim and me that we were their favorite niece and nephew. That made us feel special and we loved seeing Uncle Mark and Aunt Ethel.
My uncle was known to be tight with his money and it had become a family joke. Each year he would tell Jim and me that he would take us to the Dairy Queen to get ice cream cones. Back then ice cream cones only cost a nickel each so the joke was that uncle Mark was one of the last of the big spenders.
Uncle Mark would put my brother and me in the front seat of the car with him and we would leave to go to town. On the way, he would always tell us, “You better behave or I’ll jerk your arms off and beat you to death with the bloody ends of them.” We knew it was his way of joking with us and it always made us laugh.
He loved to tease and joke. He also loved to tell stories and he was a great story teller. He and Aunt Ethel were good sports and, even though they had never had their own kids, they instinctively knew how to treat us and we had a lot of fun with them.
On one visit, when I was twelve or thirteen, my folks decided to take us all into town. We lived seventeen miles northwest of Austin and had several acres of land with a house, and a barn with pasture for our horses. I don’t remember why we went to town but I well remember what happened when we returned home.
It was a beautiful, warm summer day and we got home in mid-afternoon. We parked in the driveway and walked toward the front door of the house. On the front porch a skunk ambled toward us. As we approached the porch, the skunk kept walking towards us. At first, I thought it might be someone’s pet because it wasn’t afraid of us at all.
Then Uncle Mark stepped ahead of our little group and walked right up to the porch calling, in his usual jocular fashion, “Here, kitty, kitty.”
The rest of us stopped and became quiet. We couldn’t believe what Uncle Mark was doing and we didn’t know how it was going to end.
Uncle Mark and the skunk approached each other on the porch until they were about a foot apart. That’s when the skunk realized what was ahead of him. In one swift movement the critter turned around, lifted his tail, and fired. Immediately, the skunk took off running and disappeared around the corner of the house heading toward the pasture.
Uncle Mark froze. Dad rushed to unlock the front door. Aunt Ethel suddenly became quite vocal, “Mark, what on earth do you think you’re doing?” And the air was filled with the aroma of the fluid that now saturated Uncle Mark’s trousers and his good leather shoes.
Dad ran into the house to get his rifle. Aunt Ethel would not let Uncle Mark inside but told him to take off his shoes and socks and leave them on the porch. Although Aunt Ethel was no longer shouting, she kept up a lengthy monologue, questioning Uncle Mark’s reasoning abilities.
Dad ran back outside and took off after the skunk. Mom told Aunt Ethel she would wash the trousers right away and might be able to de-scent them. Aunt Ethel let Uncle Mark inside to immediately remove his pants and take a shower. Jim and I stayed out of the way and enjoyed the show.
Later, we learned that Dad had dispatched the skunk. We all knew skunks don’t wander around in the middle of the day and approach people so we understood it could have been rabid.
Aunt Ethel calmed down. Uncle Mark was allowed to stay in the house. The trousers came out okay. No one could figure out how to get the smell out of the shoes; I don’t know what happened to them. Fortunately, Dad and Uncle Mark wore the same size in footwear so my father gave his brother one of his extra pairs of shoes.
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