A life lived….every minute of it..
So, I’m about 4 or 5 years old, my Uncle Gil hands me a firecracker…. he says, “hold this with your finger tips until it goes out”
POW!! Damn that HURT… But he was my Uncle Gil… so I sucked it up…(pretty sure that i was screamin’)
He was 15 or so years older than me.. He was the wild child on my mom’s side of the family. Cars, girls, trouble & more cars… fast cars…race tracks… drag strips… bar fights…
He could build anything that he set his mind to.. one time he scammed a drone engine from the Air Force base and built a go cart around it… only problem is that it was so damn fast that no one could drive it..
He crashed a buggy one time and damn near killed his second (or maybe third) wife… So she left him.. The dude was non stop with the girls.. five wife’s and a handful of really serious girl friends..they all still love him.. maybe.. sort of.. Nancy was his girl…still is..
He got electrocuted on the job in Albuquerque in the late 70’s. He woke up in a body bag. LITERALLY! Ever since then he put his life in a slower gear.. still crazy as hell though..
About five or six years ago he learned that the voltage had cooked most of the organs and vessels in his lower half… didn’t do his heart any good either. His life for the last few years has been beyond painful.. more misery than he deserved..
He died the other day… it was a blessing for him.
He was ready…
To me he was Steve McQueen COOL…
If our lives are a collection of good stories, his life was bigger than most.