A Strange Tale...

I went to B&N yesterday picked up a 3 new books, read one and am half way through another, so I guess I'm out of my funk. But I don't feel like blogging about books.

So, I've decided to tell the tale of my Communist, Socialist, Capitalist, Conservative, Crazy Uncle instead.

My Uncle Rog is my mother's brother, born into a slightly eccentric, but pretty average middle class family. If he didn't look just like my Grandfather, the family would have thought he was switched at birth. Growing up in Brooklyn, he refused to be a Dodger fan, he was a rabid Giants fan. He once fell off the Ebbets Field wall and broke his leg sneaking into a game. One of his childhood friends was the radical, if not crazy, chess champion Bobby Fischer.

In the mid 60's Rog joined the Navy, and somehow spent his entire tour in Europe, mostly Spain and came home a Communist. Not the card carrying kind, but rather a loud talker who hated anything American. He would go on at length about the Utopian paradise that was any Communist country. His best friend was another one of my uncles, who was a radical anti-communist, a Yugoslavian dissident who escaped the country under a barbed wire fence. Their arguments were legendary.

He would vacation every year in Spain or Portugal and while in Spain met a lovely Finnish woman and brought back to the States to live and eventually married. In 1980 they went to the Moscow Olympics, they drove from Finland to Moscow. And came home and announced he was no longer a Communist, that Communism didn't work, and he was now a Socialist. After visiting the Soviet Union he realized that utopia doesn't exist, he was horrified by the poverty in utopia, but the "state" still has a responsibility to take care of its people.

I remember the first time my husband met him, I think his reaction was "Ass...." and then he asked "What does dear old Rog do for a living?" When I answered, "He's a commodities broker on Wall Street." he, my husband laughed his butt off. "A Communist Stock Broker", I then reminded him he wasn't a communist stock broker, but rather a Socialist Commodities Broker. Yes, a Socialist, Capitalist Pig.

He is a health fanatic, and an incredible athlete, who drinks like a fish, even while training for the New York Marathon. He has an opinion about everything and announces what he thinks when he thinks it. At my wedding he announced that "All Navy wives are whores." Of course, the idiot said this to my husband's cousin who at the time was a Chief Petty Officer. How fisticuffs were averted, I'll never know.

Well, eventually his wife left him, went back to Finland for a hip replacement and never came back. Since, he lost his wife back to Finland's Socialist health care system, he wasn't too thrilled with Socialism.

I guess living by himself, in a small house in the Jersey suburbs, commuting to Wall Street, did something strange to the man. He came for a visit and announced "Rush is right." As in Rush Limbaugh. He's taking all his money, moving to Costa Rica to live like a King. What Rush has to do with taking his money and moving to Costa Rica, I'm not sure.

But, before leaving he decided my Dad needed a trip to San Francisco to see the Giants play the Mets. We don't know what happened, but when someone mentions dear old Rog, my father usually mutters something foul under his breath and refuses to talk about Rog or the trip. One can only imagine what the man might have done in public.

Now, he lives in Costa Rica, in an armed compound, not his, he rents it. Drinks local beer, lives like a King and has discovered Sidney Sheldon is the greatest writer of all times. I told you the man was crazy.

Have a good one, and happy reading.

Tara