My Relations

I had a great-uncle who played professional baseball in the thirties. He is best known for standing at the plate, pointing at the right field bleachers and saying, “I buried a body over there”, then hitting a ground ball and being thrown out at first base.

My great-great grandfather invented the telephone but then waited two decades for someone else to invent it so he could test his.

My aunt’s cousin was a magician. He would ask people to bring handcuffs to the performance. He’d allow himself to be manacled; then, he’d be put in a trunk. Within the thirty seconds that he was in the trunk, he would free himself from the handcuffs and then lock them around his wrists again…

A distant relative on my father’s side was elected to be governor of Oregon by the citizens of Indiana.

One of my great-grandmothers fought for the rights of women to totally dominated by their husbands. She was among the first Republicans.

My nephew tried to drive a jet-ski to the moon, but he only got as far as rehab…

I had another uncle who was part of a crack squad of troops who attacked Italy during the Korean war.

My great-grandmother wrote a novel set in an undetermined period while vague events were occurring all around a core set of characters that had no names. It was truly a timeless classic.

My mother made the President’s List while going to community college; fortunately, Nixon would resign before he could do anything to her.

A relative of my mom’s was a great detective in Canada. His most confounding case was a body found in a room with the door locked from the inside, no weapon and a simple note that said, “NO MORE CHEESE”. The windows had been nailed shut and the chimney had been bricked over. The hands, feet and head of the victim were removed to make identification harder. Also, the torso, arms and legs were removed to make clean up easier. It was just a throat, lying in the middle of the floor. And, there was just one additional clue: A bloody ‘R’ written with the victim’s very own throat before he died, or immediately after. The detective determined no one could’ve left the room, had the door nailed shut to keep the killer from getting out and burned down the house.