Stories

Telling stories in my family is not a tradition or habit but rather, a way of life. You are considered good company for your ability to sit and listen, encourage at the right moment and appreciate a good tale. You are also considered good company if you can tell a good story. I will grant you that the people in my family have a habit of ending up in interesting situations that warrant being retold. However it may also have something to do with a mindset that allows one to see the good story in a situation. At any rate good story telling is such a familial establishment that at a very tender age my cousin Gregory (somewhere between 3-6) refused to come downstairs for a family gathering and when asked why, proceeded to burst into tears while claiming "He had no good stories to tell!" I feel strongly that more people should hide from public events due to this reason...but I digress.

My Uncle Ray (Gregory's father,) was an inveterate story teller. He had a repertoire of stories a mile long, that was constantly being added to. Classics, all of them. He led an interesting and adventurous life, even if he may not have seen it that way. He grew up in Philadelphia in a large family (14 brothers and sisters if memory serves, all of whom feature in his tales,) and held a multitude of jobs. He was primarily a school teacher but while he was in school and during the summers he would take these crazy jobs, i.e. roofer, camp counselor, butcher, milk factory worker, and he once told me he worked in a nail polish factory. I thought he was kidding, now I'm not so sure!

One of my favorite stories that I would beg him to tell was a story about the milk factory. I will attempt to do it justice, but I can make no promises.

They would come in these big trucks, you know the kind with the round tank on the back, and deliver the milk. Drive in, from all over, and deliver the milk. I worked in this factory in Philadelphia and it was summer and it was hot. I had to do this one thing. When they delivered the milk I had to hook up the truck to the pipes and the pipes to the big vats in the factory. So one morning a guy comes to deliver the milk. Well I've been there all night, I'm tired and it's hot. The windows are all open, these big windows way up on the wall. So I hook up the truck and get things going. I think everything's fine when I hear from down on the street "Ray! Ray! Ray...the milk!!" I look out the window, and I see milk shooting (Zingo!! the noise the shooting milk apparently made) out one of those high windows on to the street! I hooked up the truck but not the pipe to the vats, when the milk started pumping in it pushed the pipe towards the window! All the cats in Philadelphia lived on that block for a week.

My Uncle Ray was the best of company.