My Uncle Gus's Wiener

Indiana, July 1970

When I was growing up in Rock Island, we drove six hours east to my parents' hometown in Indiana two or three times a year.  When we visited in the summertime, my mother's family gathered for a barbecue or picnic at Grandpa Prater's farmhouse: four uncles, five aunts, two cousins, and sometimes family friends.

In the summer of 1970, when I was 9 years old,  my Aunt Lynn brought a friend.  She was only 10 years older than me -- I remembered her with schoolbooks in hand, waiting for the bus -- and cool, modern, with an Indiana accent amid the Kentucky drawls, up on Laugh-In and the Beatles, even willing to talk about comic books with us (although she preferred Richie Rich to Casper).

While the aunts placed tablecloths on tables in the side yard, and put out bowls of jello salad and trays of deviled eggs, Lynn waited.   And waited.  And leafed through a movie magazine and waited.    Then suddenly a red pick-up truck appeared.  The world's coolest car!  It zoomed onto the grass beside the other cars, and Gus jumped out.

A teenager, tall and thin, with short brown hair and jug-ears and a head that was too big for his neck, wearing a red shirt with an orange ascot and  tight white pants.  Not very attractive, and his leering arrogance made it worse.  He looked at everybody and everything as if they were his private playground.

"Hey, Gus!" Cousin Buster called "Give me a nickel."  (His actual name was Joe, but I'm calling him Gus to avoid confusion with my Cousin Joe).

Gus had one waiting in his pocket, and threw it over in a flash of color.

"Can I have one, too?"  I asked.  "And one for my brother?"

"Big family, huh?"  Gus said. He flicked two more nickels at me.  I dropped them on the grass.   Buster scurried to pick them up,  and he threw them again.  I missed again.  He laughed.

"Well, keep working on it, Bud.  You'll be a slugger someday, and all the girls will be beating down the door to get at you!"

Girls?  I definitely didn't like him.

But Gus stuck around.  For the rest of the afternoon.

December 1970

We were back Indiana for Christmas.   When we gathered at Grandpa Prater's farmhouse to to exchange presents, Gus was there again!  He and Aunt Lynne gave me a present "together": a baseball glove.  Gross!

I definitely didn't like him.

We were staying with Aunt Nora, my father's sister, and on the day after Christmas there was a constant stream of visitors from Dad's side of the family: Aunt Nora's husband's brothers and sisters, miscellaneous cousins, some friends from town.  And, at dinnertime, to my surprise, Grandma Davis, with Aunt Lynn and Gus!

Wait -- Mom's family was Kentucky hillfolk, hardscrabble farmers and factory workers, lapsed Baptists, smoking, drinking, card-playing heathens.  Dad's family was middle-class, with aristocrats in their ancestry, nice houses, summer vacations, and mostly devout, "never set foot in a theater" Nazarenes.  How woudl my Grandma Davis know Aunt Lynn?  Or Gus?

(Later I discovered that Gus was a Nazarene, the son of one of Grandma Davis' friends.  She had known him since he was born.)

Dinner was pizza, which Dad and my Cousin Joe went out to pick up. Gus asked  for "mangos"on his.  He meant green peppers.

We played a board game involving bidding for commodities like wheat, rice, barley, and oats.  When Gus's team won he threw his cards down, butted chests with Cousin Joe, and began chanting "We're Number 1!"

I definitely, definitely didn't like him.  I started imagining him tied up, like in a Tarzan movie, with a gag in his mouth so he couldn't talk.

July 1971

I was 10 years old, and Gus was now my Uncle Gus.  He and Aunt Lynn lived in a big stone house in Auburn, about 5 miles from Garrett.  So now there was no escape.  

When we visited Mom's family, he was there. 

 When we visited Dad's family, he was...there.  

Plus we made an extra stop on our circuit of relative visits just so Mom could spend an afternoon gossipping with Aunt Lynn, while Uncle Gus "entertained" the boys.  Mostly by sitting in the kiddie pool in the back yard.   


I saw him in a swimsuit: pale, a scattering of chest hair, not very attractive.  But he obviously thought he was attractive, which made things worse.

I didn't like him, and when we went to the Trailer in the Dark Woods the next day, I told Cousin Buster so.

"Oh, Uncle Gus is ok," he said.  "He gives you a nickel every time you ask."

"Can't bribe me to like him.  He's too big, too rough, too..."  I didn't know the word 'heterosexist,' but that's what I meant.

"Weren't you in the pool yesterday?  Didn't you see his best part?"  Cousin Buster grinned and held out his hands like he was measuring a fish.  "Bigger than Uncle Edd's even."

"His wiener?  You're not going to make me go through a whole big thing to see Uncle Gus's wiener, are you?  I still have a bump on my head from last time." (See: Uncle Edd's Gun).

He shrugged. "No sweat.  If you don't like big wieners, I don't care."

I suspected that Cousin Buster was putting one over on me, trying to get me into trouble by bursting into Uncle Gus's room.  But a wiener is a wiener.  And maybe he did have a big one.

July 1972

During our visit to Indiana in July 1972, when I was 11 years old, we had a picnic at my Grandpa Prater's farmhouse.  Uncle Gus was there, of course.

The farmhouse didn't have a bathroom, just an outhouse in the barn, with old Sears catalogs to use for toilet paper.  Uncle Gus was a city boy....so.....

When he got up without explanation and walked toward the barn, I saw my chance.  I rushed to catch up with him.

"You got to go too, huh?" I said.

"Yep."

"The outhouse is gross, isn't it?  I mean, it stinks, and if you look inside, it's all gross down there.   I know a better place.  Outside."

"With all these people around?" Uncle Gus said doubtfully.

"They won't be able to see anything."  I led him to the backside of the barn, where a little alcove jutted out, making an L-shape.  The red paint was scratched and stained, suggesting that generations of boys and men had gone there to avoid the stench of the outhouse.

I unzipped my pants and held my wiener out.  Uncle Gus hesitated for a moment, stood beside me and started to unzip.  But before he got his wiener out, he looked over.   Of course, I didn't actually have to go, so nothing was happening.

"Stage fright?"  he asked.

"A little, I guess."

"I can wait until you're done."  He zipped back up and walked around to the side of the barn to wait.

Grr...

I definitely, definitely, definitely didn't like him.


Thirty years later, I had a similar problem trying to get a sausage sighting of Gus's son, my Cousin Graydon.