25. Story: My “Uncle”(?) Ralph. Photos: Quail Creek Gig & Caribbean Gardens. Song: “Bridge Over Troubled Water”

Just before opening day of the ski season when I was still working, and living at Branywine, I happened to walk past my dad talking on the phone while he was sitting in his big office chair, and contrary to his angry reaction whenever he saw me inside the lodge at all during any work day, summer, or winter, in this instance, he looked at me smiling unusually. He even gestured me toward him as if he was going to hand ME the phone. While maintaining his surprisingly encouraging smile, however, he then held his index finger up haltingly. Obediently, I froze in my tracks just like the way in which I later taught my dog hand signals like stop, halt, and wait. He even used finger commands when he needed a kleenex, and I was surprised to see how employees would leap to be the quickest to comply when he would flutter his fingers whenever he felt a sneeze coming on. He expected kleenex to be handed to him instead of simply reaching for it himself regardless of the fact that our mother kept tons of boxes of kleenex close-by, and always within his reach. I had already adapted to his all too familiar “sneeze alert signal”, but I soon realized how other employees, too, had learned about his “sneeze alert command” – to race, and retrieve a kleenex quickly enough for him to sneeze his earth shattering, incredibly identifiable, loud sneezes.

I usually tried my best to avoid my father’s threatening looks by staying away from him, especially during the work day, but when he saw me walk past while he was on the phone, he had a “wide-eyed happy just-heard-some-wonderful-news” look, followed by an expression that conveyed to me “I’m-going-to-give-you-a-present”-type-look. I didn’t know it, then, but my father was orchestrating something with someone on the phone who was going to pretend that he was an uncle of mine who I had never met! My dad covered up the mouthpiece of the phone with the palm of his hand, and said, “There may be a possibility….“Well”, I’ll just let you talk to him yourself, about the POSSIBILITY ONLY….that I’m going to let you visit Florida with an uncle you never knew you had… your “UNCLE RALPH!”. Then dad said, “But you don’t have to decide about going right now”, and when he handed me the phone, I heard a gruff gravelly voice say, “Hello, is this Doug?”, and, “This is your uncle Ralph.” He continued talking….“Yeah, your dad tells me that you like fast cars. I’ve got a Ford Shelby race car, a yacht, and I belong to a nice club you can go to when you want. And, if you’d be a wanna to, your daddy says you can come down on here and stay just like spring break. I own a bunch of places down here, and you you can stay right close to the beach in your own trailer! Ya ever been to Tampa, Doug?” All I could say in my normal 1960’s lingo was, “Wow, sounds cool!” Then, my “Uncle” Ralph says, “But hold on now, ‘cause you don’t have to be deciding right now… maybe you could think about it first?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I asked who would be picking me up at the airport when I got there, and Ralph said that he’d pick me up in his Ford Shelby. I’m certain that my dad was fully aware of how I envisioned this as being a once in my life vacation opportunity.

I imagined kicking back in sunny Florida, opening the door to my own place on the beach each morning, and being able to see the water come crashing down onto a beach filled with hundreds of beautifully tanned beach beauties all lying in the sand. I hardly needed to ask any more questions to decide. I was thinking that my father might never be in this type of mood ever again, and thought that my chance would be gone if I didn’t decide quickly. While I was seriously considering trading going to Florida for skiing I delicately asked, “Do I get to go out on your yacht, and go to your club, too?” I distinctly remember there being a muted pause while I was briefly imagining what his club’s golf course would look like (were he and his wife laughing hysterically together?) when he answered, “Well of-COURSE you can.” That sealed the deal for me. That was it, I was in. I didn’t need to think about it any longer. It was an easy sell. I gave the phone back to my dad while we were both on the same wavelength. I was so excited, that I was reeling in happiness. I remember thinking, “I’ll soon be on my way to paradise”.

I got off the plane in Florida with my Martin 12 String guitar and case, a small clothes bag, and the clothes on my back. I remember standing on the curb, next to a uniformed soldier, waiting for “Uncle” Ralph, who was picking me up, when he pulled up in his Ford Shelby to the soldier, first. The window rolled down, and a large gruff man pointed at the soldier, and asked in a gravelly voice… “Doug?” The soldier shook his head, “no”. The Ford Shelby lunged a few feet forward, and the man pointed at me, and said, “Doug?” I eagerly nodded a yes(!), at which point I saw him look up and away from me, in disgust. I heard a long audible groan, “UGH, long hair.”, and then a sarcastic, unwelcoming, “GET IN.” This was 10:30 AM, and he immediately drove to his local bar because, obviously, now, he had to have a drink. This bar was on a canal, and there were two large buoys and a life preserver over the front door with a sign that read, “The Club”.

It was 10:30 AM, and there were no customers other than Ralph. I don’t think that the bar was even open, but the front door was unlocked. Ralph walked inside, and straight over to the bar, leaving me behind, standing in the middle of the darkened room, which had scattered chairs and tables that smelled like stale beer and ashtrays. A man appeared, emerging from behind the bar, and “uncle” Ralph ordered what I learned was his usual, saying, “Double Scotch straight up, chaser of beer”. I stood in the middle of that room, thinking that this must be the “club” that he was talking about on the phone. Then, he startled me (while I was noticing that they had a little stage in front of the scattered array of tables and chairs) by barking over toward me, saying, “Drink?”. I said no thanks. After he chugged his drink, he proudly proclaimed to me, “Yep”, and since there were no customers that early, (AFTER BURPING A HUGE, LONG, LOUD, BELCH), he finished with, “this is MY CLUB”(!).

I started walking away from Ralph toward the partially opened side door and the light outside, in the effort to go where it wasn’t so smelly and SCARY. I turned toward him just as I saw him point outside and remark, “And right out there is where I keep my yacht” (with an audible tinge of sarcasm attached onto his word “yacht”), followed by a quick hiccup, and a failed attempt to conceal what was obviously his private look toward the bartender, who suddenly turned his face around and walked away. Ralph started slapping the rear of his pants a few times. Then, he started back slapping the air with his hand toward my direction. I didn’t understand what he was really doing, or especially, what the meaning was by all those hand gestures, until he back slapped his huge hand much more demonstratively a few more times, then pointed for me to keep going outside. Picking up on what he meant, I stepped outside under an overhang, and down onto some wooden planks which were actually a walk-way with railings on a canal. I walked over to the rear bar’s thatch-covered wooden planked patio in the back, and again saw the two of them through the patio’s arched rear entranceway. The boat in the canal looked permanently docked, and I wondered if it was seaworthy. Then, when I saw “uncle” Ralph guzzling down another double shot and chaser of beer while he still stood at the inside bar, he loudly barked out, “Let’s go… NOW, you get to see where you’re going to be sleeping tonight”. I saw them as they looked at each other, and after both of them simultaneously laughed heartily, I followed who my father had convinced me was my “uncle” Ralph, outside.

As we got in his car, he was explaining that everyone who was a member of his “club” we had just been to, actually had a part-ownership with the “yacht” which was an old tugboat parked in the canal just outside the rear bar, and he added that it wasn’t sea-worthy at the time because it needed repairs. As we drove, he said that we were going to his trailer court. He told me that I’d be sleeping in a very comfortable bed in a trailer, and that I wouldn’t have to walk very far to the bathroom, because it was right next to it. Upon arriving, he parked at the office (which was where he and his wife lived), then he walked me over to where I’d be sleeping during my stay. I immediately discovered that my bed was in the back of a pick-up truck, and it was a square bed compartment built into the back of it. He jokingly called it his home-made, “six-pack in the back”. He quickly left, and as he walked away he pointed to the trailer court bathroom only a few feet away from the pickup truck and said, “I’ll come get-cha’ for dinner”. I climbed into the back of the truck, and sat on a lumpy mattress where there were two side screened windows with curtains, and a hand crank to open and shut for air. I immediately noticed the smell of dogs, followed by discovering that the blanket was full of dog hairs. Then, when the wind changed a little, I could smell the bathroom from his pick-up which was parked immediately outside the cement bathroom entranceway. Seeing that the blanket had dog hairs all over it made me start wondering about bugs, and I started worrying about the dangerous Florida bugs which I had heard about, called scorpions. This wasn’t at all what I imagined my trip to Florida was going to be like, but I was learning.

Ralph and his wife lived in their converted trailer, which was both the trailer court office, and their home. After a pleasant lunch followed by a pleasant dinner in the rear of their extended trailer, I squeezed into the back of the pick-up again, this time in order to try to sleep, but it was extremely cold that night, and I remember having a really hard time falling asleep because I was too cold. During he night when I had to use the bathroom, I discovered that stepping down onto the linoleum floor in my bare feet was so cold that it felt like I was stepping onto hot coals. It was so cold that it was painful for my tender bare feet to do. I thought about having to actually get used to it being colder sleeping there at night than it ever was at that same time of year in the trailer behind the ski lodge back home. Again, I thought that this wasn’t at all what I imagined my trip to Florida would be like, but I had already learned to try to make the best of things, regardless of the circumstances.

“Uncle(?)” Ralph had explained about (and cautioned me) about how most of the inhabitants in the trailer park were a religious sect that inter-married, and were very private people. He warned me to be especially sure NOT to talk to any of their women. And, on my first day, (after my freezing night in the pick-up truck), I noticed that there was a woman with black hair, standing right outside my window just a few feet away between the bathroom and the truck. She was a large and heavy-set woman with very short jet black hair. I remember because she had a very short black skirt on with fish net black spaced squared stockings over her huge legs, and she was washing some other black things in a big wash bucket.

During my second evening’s dinner in Ralph’s, and his wife’s trailer, they explained to me about something, in order to clear up any misunderstanding I might have had over the phone, when Ralph told me that the beach was right across the street. They explained, this time, that it was the BUS-STOP TO THE BEACH they were talking about, not the actual BEACH itself. I remember noticing both of them chuckling under their breaths when Ralph explained that seemingly insignificant detail to me while even Ralph was visibly trying to remain calm, but serious. Then, they cautioned me while explaining that the only ‘close-by’ bar which anyone could go to, had a recent stabbing – (Adding that it actually happened the night before I arrived). After dinner, “uncle” Ralph loudly bragged about his wife’s home-grown peaches, and I was actually afraid to eat them because I suddenly feared for my very life. They were cut in halves, and his wife proudly put them on the table for me for dessert. I noticed that they were off color… and I quite respectfully said (because I really didn’t want to even TRY them), “Thank you very much, but I really don’t care for any peaches.” Ralph’s wife responded saying, “Oh here, I’ll pour some of this sweet cream on them, and they’ll be delicious!” Before I could even blink, she poured cream on them, and she put the creamer back in the middle of the table. I said, “Oh no please, no thank you.” Ralph took my statement as an insult. (Looking back, it was obvious that Ralph needed another drink.) He said, “You don’t like my wife’s peaches?” I said again, “Thank you, but I really don’t care for any…” Ralph demanded I eat the peaches! He interrupted, “EAT THE PEACHES!” When I clearly indicated, again, that I wasn’t interested in eating them, Ralph slammed both of his giant fists on the table spilling the creamer, which sailed into the air with all of the cream, and spilled all over the table. This time he shouted, “EAT THOSE G.D. PEACHES!” In that split second, I realized all of the following….1) This was NOT my actual “Uncle”, and he had no blood relation to me whatsoever….2) “Uncle Ralph” had probably received payment from my dad (obviously just to get me out of his way)….3) Once Ralph received his payment, he could care less about his responsibility with me….4) I wondered if my dad, or anyone else even knew this “Uncle Ralph” at all…And finally, 5) in those brief seconds, my life, my safety, and my limbs were all in very possible danger.

With those thoughts racing through my mind, I instinctively jumped up from the table, removed myself from what I felt was a dangerous situation. I bolted out of their trailer. I ran to the pick-up truck to grab my guitar, and went to the bus-stop which Ralph had made a point of describing exactly where it was for me. And, just like the time when my own father had timed his rage to run me out of the house while telling me when I was age 15 that he never wanted to see my face again, I happened to catch a bus almost immediately, again, and I rode it all the way to the end of the line… the bus depot in Ft. Lauderdale. I had learned on my way about the upcoming “Miami Pop Festival” happening the very next day, and that’s where I decided to go. So, with the few dollars I had, I bought another bus ticket, and was soon off again… me and my 12-string guitar, determined to get to the Miami Pop Festival, described on the next page’s story: “The Guitar” 1968 FL. Pop Festival-Hallandale, FL..