The Liar's Club

My Uncle Zippy and I used to tell each other tall tales. We would be driving somewhere or watching television together and one of us would interrupt the silence. "Hey Uncle, did I ever tell you about the time I swam across the English Channel with a birthday cake on my head for the Queen?" He would get a twinkle in his eye and give a very sincere chuckle before launching into a retort that would top my opener. We'd go back and forth with that kind of cornball stuff for awhile until he would concede by saying, "My boy you are the president of the liar's club."
It was good fun. He was a fascinating man. Having spent most of his life in factories with other immigrants, he spoke a handful of languages. He was a living historian. We talked about the politics and social history of the 20s thru 70s all the time. And baseball, always hours of baseball. He could tell you the play by play of almost any game he ever watched live or on television. Once I took him to a game down in Oakland versus the Yankees. Ron Guidry was pitching for the Yankees. Zippy started talking about Guidry and Yankee pitchers back to the days of the Polo Grounds. Pretty soon he had about ten people ignoring the game and listening to his stories.
There were days that Uncle Pete wasn't at his best. Once in Reno we stopped at a gas station. We were done with the fill-up but Zippy wasn't back form the restroom as yet. My mom went looking for him. He was sitting in the front seat of someone else's car. Apparently when the owner climbed in behind the wheel, Zippy barked, "Who the hell are you?" My mom fetched him back to our car. At first I laughed, but it quickly became obvious that he was very embarrassed.
At his worst Uncle Pete would tell me he was dying. I mean you could really see that the pain of living was getting the best of him and he wasn't up for the fight. "I'm dying, Sonny. This is it." It would get me. I would choke back the tears and incite him to keep living. I'd ask him if he wanted to go to the hospital. "If you're dying, I'd better just take you." I'm not proud of that. At nineteen it was my best defense and it usually worked. Who knows how he really felt. For all the talking he did, he never mentioned his feelings.

nc