When we were little our parents would pack us all in the back of the station wagon to head to Pennsylvania for certain occasions. Easter egg hunts and double Thanksgivings were often the gatherings. But my favorite was the mid-summer festival that was the fourth of July, We would pack up our illegal fireworks and our rockets’ red glare and head out to the country. The real country. We spent a lot of lovely time on Elm avenue and Ogden avenue, but to us this was just country suburbia. It was neat, but there were certain things that could only occur in the real PA country. And we longed for it.
The real country was Aunt Boo and Uncle Ed’s house of course. The wilds. The free country. Where you could load your .22 and, as Aunt Boo said “shoot all day long”, and we did on many occasions, but the fourth of July was the best. Uncle Ed was the law, but there was no law in the country. Climbing through the woods up to the strip mines, returning with wooden “Danger: Blasting” artifacts; the rules of suburbia, even Clearfield suburbia, were not in effect when we were in the country. It was Valhalla for us little kids and I think, looking back, for the grown up as well. I recall many a night when silly songs would be sung by the Mom’s and Dad’s who were younger then than I am now.
Everyone knows the story of me throwing a three foot long, lit sparkler at someone (I swear it was Neil, he made me so mad and I can see him ducking as i whipped it at him, but some think it was at Matt or Eddy I was aiming for) and missing them and it flew into the HIGHLY FLAMMABLE overgrown brush on the edge of the property that went up in flames immediately. We were about fourteen seconds away from burning all of Woodland down and re-exposing the strip mines above when Uncle Ed came crashing down to save the day and beat out the spawning brush fire with his own boots.
It was the only time I saw him slightly concerned, the one time he didn’t have that happy smile on his face.
But that’s not the story I want to tell you.
I want to tell you a story I suspect none of you know. I don’t think.
It was at one of the events in the country, I don’t know which one but we were young (Myself, Matt and Eddy), and it was early on in the festivities. Uncle Ed had just gotten home so he was all geared up in his uniform and gun and before he could change he called the three of us over and told us that yesterday he had caught a rattlesnake and that the best way to kill a rattlesnake was to put it in a freezer.
And it was in the deep freezer in the basement.
He went inside to change and we were thick as thieves, planning our adventure to the basement to see the snake.
It was many, many years later that I realized he was setting us up, and he was so knowingly deliberate and thoughtful about it that made it such a memorable moment for me.
It seemed like a daunting task to us all. I can’t put an age to it but Matt and I were young and little Eddy was with us.
Like a fearless group of adventurers we crept down the steps to the basement. I wasn’t even sure what a deep freezer was, it must be a country thing, I thought.
But eventually we tracked down the big white rectangle and figured, that must be it. We crept up quietly as everyone else enjoyed themselves upstairs, outside. We had to see the snake. It was a rattlesnake.
(I want to point out here I have no idea if there even are rattlesnakes in PA and I refuse to look it up. Uncle Ed said so, so it was so.)
Finally we made it to the freezer and slowly opened the top. Sure enough there was a tightly curled up rattlesnake right at the top of the freezer.
But it wasn’t frozen.
It started rattling, and we looked at each other quickly unsure of what to do.
But what it did next shook us.
It hissssssed at us, and I dropped the lid as we screamed and ran away.
But on our way I caught a glimpse, through the basement window above the freezer, of Uncle Ed, leaning over with a rattle in his hand and a grin on his face as we tore out of the basement as he laughed and laughed.
Rest in peace Uncle Ed, you will be missed.
