reading

I was packing up, getting ready to leave College Station after finishing my Masters in Physics at Texas A&M, when I came across an essay I wrote for my freshman English Lit. class. I got an “A+”. Here is what the professor wrote on it:

“Galen, it appears your essay reveals more about the psychologically stunted family and less about Uncle Phat. In some ways the story is more about this. This would make a great novel someday Galen. I really enjoyed it. Solid job.”

Psychologically stunted family. Solid job.

The first sentence in the essay was “this is a true story". Either she missed it per my paper being the 30th+ one she graded while drinking her beloved 'signature white', or she didn’t realize the true story was about my own family; or she put it in the third person to spare outright calling my family a bunch of wack-jobs. I don’t know…but I do know it was only after I wrote that essay I could put Uncle Phat’s disappearance into some kind of perspective.

This story is about my Uncle Phat, our (his) trip to Houston, Texas to "look at an engine"; or maybe it's about his incredible car. Maybe it is about my “psychologically stunted” family. Let's face it, it's about all of the above. I'm still figuring it out but no matter how vast my literary sweep, I know background is needed.

My name is Galen Calcoun (or "cocoon" as everyone calls us). I grew up in Mapletown, Indiana, nothing special rural suburbia. Uncle Phat, a.k.a. Mike was (is?) my dad’s younger brother by two years. My dad’s name is Mitch. Mike and Mitch were the only kids of Earl and Minnie, my favorite grandparents. (Grandpa Earl died just a couple years before our trip). There are only two sons in our family as well--me and my younger brother Nate. We are also separated by two years. Nate and I were (still are) your classic nerds; skinny, glasses. Junior and high school we were both in chess and math club. Nate played some basketball.

My mom's name is Georgia. Her maiden name is Parker. I am part of a large family but it’s all on my mom’s side. She has four brothers and three sisters. I have a ridiculous number of cousins. Growing up with a ridiculous number of cousins meant endless chaos (still does): Frisbee's landing in bowls of cake batter, broken windows, broken teeth and glasses, cracked skulls, dog shit on the carpet, candles melted on to books, blood stains on good shirts, grass stains on good pants, broken lamps, ruined pots and pans, lost flashlights, hats, jackets, towels, bathing suits…We pretty much had it all, and it was pretty much all on my mom’s side.

Dad, Nate, and I were (are) pretty mellow in polar contrast to my mom. Growing up, Mom would make-up stuff to bitch about. Dad would roll his eyes when she’d go off about the big catastrophe of money going through the laundry, or the earth-shattering implications of lids not going back on tops of peanut butter jars, milk left out on the counter. Stuff like this--really small stuff. She could never find much to latch on to then Uncle Phat came along to save her but I'm jumping ahead. Dad told us he had no idea why Mom stomped around complaining about how "crazy" our family was except maybe since she was used to constant chaos and melodrama growing up, she had to create some in our family to feel at home.

Then and now my dad worked as a copier repairman. He started out with a big company, then started his own business. He got so busy, he had to hire a few people. He never brought up Nate and I taking over his copier repair business because we were always going "off to college". (If anyone would take it over, it would be my cousin Dirk). We knew Dad didn't want us to turn out like our cousins. Lately, my dad's been talking about selling out and retiring, plus the technology is changing. A copy machine no longer does just one thing. He figures it's time. My mom's retired. She worked as a nurse for 20 years so of course, smoked. She's been quitting since I was born and still is.

So while my dad was a successful small business man, his brother, Mike, Uncle Phat, was, well…My dad tried to hire him and while he probably would have made a great copier repair guy, Uncle Phat liked to talk but not just any talk, "literary talk" as my mom put it, intellectual stuff, philosophy, politics. Every time Dad sent him on a job, instead of fixing the copier, somehow he'd always find someone to "get literary" with meaning he would end up spending most of the time in some kind of discussion. Inevitably, Dad would get a call from the client the next day not to send the same repair guy.

Uncle Phat talked about important stuff we should probably all be talking about but no one does so no one can understand someone who is intellectual outside of what my dad called "the proper context". Dad said maybe Uncle Phat belonged in a "different setting", say academia or working for a school of some kind. Dad said Uncle Phat had always "been like that" and "he couldn’t help it". This is just "how he was". The only two people that understood him were my dad and me. When I think about it, it’s no wonder Uncle Phat didn’t leave earlier.

Uncle Phat gave it lots of shots. Here are the different jobs he attempted: copier repair man for my dad (my dad had to fire his own little brother), waiter, car parts courier, pizza delivery guy (of course), flag man for road construction, bartender, medical assistant, manager for a car parts store, manager for a shoe store…I'm sure I'm leaving some out. It got to the point where no one asked him where he was working because by the time he explained himself, he was nearly out the door anyway. He went to the local community college for a few semesters; took biology, history, and philosophy. He joined a basketball team. (God he was terrible; he said he quit but I know they kicked him off). I guess he even tried to have a girlfriend for awhile but none of his relationships ever worked out. The girls were probably bored.

Maybe some people are just born losers or born unlucky or have low metabolisms…and well, yea, he was fat, but he was the kind of fat like he couldn’t help it. My mom said he had the physique of a gourd or an eggplant and even if he lost 50 pounds, he would still be round.

He did seem to fail at nearly everything he tried to do outside of being “literary”--he was always reading a book, carrying a book (then there was the 'library' in his car but more on this later). I know now this was his downfall with my mom’s side of the family=basically a bunch of dumb rednecks.

He did like to take walks and fish. He liked to take long drives to places with views. So did I. We did these things together--and we talked. I didn't like talking about stupid stuff all the time either and this is all the cousins did. My mother loved gardening. We always had fresh vegetables every summer but being a nurse and busy, one way Nate and I earned our allowance was to weed the garden. Nate hated it but I didn't. I could think. Sometimes Uncle Phat would come over and we would work in the garden together and talk. Uncle Phat was interesting and I learned a lot from him. I think too, I was worried I might turn out like the cousins. Talking to Uncle Phat elevated me somehow, took this fear away from me.

We had a few family traditions, like our all-American picnics and ball games every summer. Uncle Phat tried…he would sit down at a picnic table with a bunch of relatives from my mom's side of the family but within ten minutes, be sitting by himself--or with Dad. Eventually, he and Dad took to walling themselves off from my mom's family at our picnics and ballgames. They would park themselves at their own picnic table some distance away, and stay there all day; a defensive maneuver, yes, but this also insured a great seat when the entertainment started later per the end of any 'family get-together' that included my mom's family: drunken antics, fights, and yes, plenty of melodrama. By the time I was born, he had already been christened' "Uncle Phat", courtesy of Parker melodrama.

I already mentioned Dirk. It’s pretty safe to say Dirk is a dick. My other dick cousin that hangs around with Dirk is Dwayne. They are tweedle dumb ass and tweedle a-hole. Dirk is a 'Goodtime Charlie'--kind of dumb but charming in his own stupid way. He makes people laugh. He's also really good-looking. Girls always fell over him and still do, even with a wife and two kids. He is still working for my dad--one of the best copier repair guys, and the clients love him. Dwayne is more the logistics guy--orders parts and supplies for the business. He's a tad smarter than Dirk which isn't saying much. Both of them could be cold-hearted assholes when it came to my Uncle Phat.

It was at one of our infamous picnic baseball games. Uncle Mike (he was still Uncle Mike then) had just struck out (again) and cost the team the game. Dirk told him he couldn't play in the family ballgames anymore--ever. He called Uncle Mike a "fat ass", then a "reptile". He told Uncle Mike to "open his goddamned eyes"; then he called Uncle Mike a "toad". You see, Uncle Mike had this habit of squinting or even closing his eyes when he was upset. You could tell when he felt strongly about something because his eyes would be closed while he was talking to you. (We could never figure out how he could squint and see at the same time…nictitating membrane?). This was complicated by the fact that he also wore glasses so of course, people were always suggesting he should get new glasses. His weight plus the squinting habit made Uncle Mike the object of ridicule his whole life. This time, something snapped in him or maybe Dirk just went too far. The way my dad tells it, it was one of the few times he remembers his little brother getting violent.

So Dirk was blowing his mouth off at Uncle Mike when Uncle Mike grabbed Dirk by his T-shirt and slammed him up against the chain link fence by the dug-out:

"First of all, Dirk, Dick, a toad is an amphibian, not a reptile, you MORON. So which one is it? Am I a reptile or an amphibian? Second of all, never ever call me "fat" again,” Uncle Mike hissed into Dirk's smirking face.

When Uncle Mike start squeezing his apparently strong fat fingers around Dirk's neck, Uncle Mike's eyes fully shut, my dad and the other cousins intervened and put a stop to it but it was too late (especially as far as the younger cousins were concerned). He would never be "Uncle Mike" again. Like a tattoo seared into his forehead, it stuck. From then on he was always Uncle Phat: P—H—A—T. From this also came other endearing nicknames like "Reptile", "Lizard", "Toad" and biologically impossible variations thereof-- "Reptile Toad", "Amphibian Reptile". It didn't matter. All that mattered was it was mean as hell and it stuck.

Aside from Dad, of course, I was the only one of the entire family that befriended Uncle Phat but then again, he befriended me. I read something somewhere about the positive influence a "random person" can have on a kid, and it isn't always who you would think; it can be the janitor, or a teacher you started out hating then you walk out of class at the end of the semester transformed; or it can be some random relative, close or not…I think my "random person" was Uncle Phat and maybe I was Uncle Phat's random person. This is why I am writing this book right now about how he disappeared. Aside from me and my dad, no one else seems to care.

Summer of 1990 was pretty quiet. I was 15. Nate was off at math camp. I was hanging out at home which was stupid because I got stuck with all the chores. It was a Tuesday morning in July. I was in the garage fiddling with the lawn mower engine. Mom and Dad were working. The day before, I had almost asked a girl out, Gina, then I chickened out; I was feeling pretty inadequate. My cousins were off swimming in the river and I declined to go. They were all so wild and goofy, sometimes I just couldn’t take it. Uncle Phat pulled into the driveway in Ruby, his Ship. I knew something was up when he wandered into the garage, then didn't say anything--just stood there watching me.

He asked me when Mom and Dad would get home. Later. Fiddling with a paint brush, he asked me what I had going for the next week or so. Nothing. Then he asked me if I wanted to go to Houston with him--THAT MINUTE. "My mechanic put me in touch with a guy that has an original engine, same as Ruby's. Guy said it only has 70,000 miles on it. We'd be looking at it plus doin' some other stuff."

"It's not going out. It's fine but Ruby's going to need parts, maintenance. It's hard to find decent engine parts for an old car especially for what he's asking. He'll bring it up here too. He has a truck and family in Ohio. Guess his wife wants it out of the garage." He hesitated then commanded "but we gotta' leave now Galen."

So I’m a 15 year old teenage boy who has barely been anywhere and my uncle of 42 years pulls into the driveway in his beautiful car and asks me if I want to go to Houston, Texas. Summer was sucking and would only continue to suck until school started. Going from a sucky summer vacation back to sucky school is, well, horrible, so within an hour, Uncle Phat and I were on our way to Houston, Texas to get a spare engine for the Ship. I left a note for them. We'd be in touch.

Ah, The Ship. The humongous, gas sucking, splendid Ship. Despite being some kind of family pariah, a regular toad if you will, Uncle Phat did have one very phat redeeming phactor--his 1970 ruby red, 435-cid, V-8, 370 Buick Electra 225 with a white convertible top. The thing spread out like a football field, a boat on wheels. Uncle Phat called her Ruby. The cousins called her "Ship of Phat", "Phat Chance", the "Bookmobile", "The Library", the later two because books tended to accumulate in his car, mostly library books. I don't know what it's called when someone has an addiction to books --Bookaholic? Whatever it's called, Uncle Phat had it. Books on the seats, books under the seats. Books on the floor. Books on the dash, in the glove compartment. He couldn't control himself.