Meeting Uncle Ted
I hear the ice cream truck coming down the street and remember meeting Uncle Ted.
The way I remember, I was ten years old and running with friends across the asphalt to the Mr.Softee truck. It was summer and soft ice cream was a new-found treat, something to compete with The Good Humor Man. As I waited my turn, the ice cream man looked at me and asked "What is your name?", when I told him he asked which house was mine so I pointed. "I am your Uncle Ted." he said. "I don't have an Uncle Ted." said I assuredly. "Sure you do, go ask your mother."
"Hey, mom, the ice cream man says he is my Uncle Ted!"
"Oh, my sister Rosetta's husband."
"Your sister who?" "Where do they live?"
"Babylon." (a couple of towns over).
Years later, after my Uncle Ted died, I saw my Aunt Rosetta; she offered me his Spanish tapes. He dreamed, she said, of moving to Mexico and living with a particular indigenous people. Somewhere in Copper Canyon I think. She thought this silly, I thought I would have liked to have known this man.
Maybe this blog has been done, I don't track the blogs much, I probably repeat myself like in "real life". But, here's to Uncle Ted and the other dreamers I never knew. I wish I could recall his face.
