My Uncle Mel

Uncle Mel was always my favorite. I felt more than a bit of kinship toward him, so I did worry that the cleft in my chin would turn into the deep prominent dimple of his chin. Mel and his wife Margaret had honeymooned at Niagara Falls. I saw the photographs. Well. Niagara Falls became my future destination. I heard a story about his tying a brick around a bad tooth and throwing it out the window of the bedroom on the second floor of the farmhouse when he was a boy. Apparently, he tied the brick around the wrong tooth. Ouch! In another story, he and my mother were up on the roof gorging on pickles. Something my mother said caused him to jump off the roof (she was a bit of a devil). Vaguely I remember hearing that Uncle Mel had suffered from a great depression and received a record number of shock treatments in the state of Indiana. At his funeral, I noticed his eyebrows. They looked exactly like mine.