Once a year the guys in my family have a get together at the ranch. By the time this article gets published we will have completed another year.

This is normally a two-day affair and is held the same time, same place every year. My brother, brother-in-laws, nephews and cousins on my mom’s side of the family start gathering at the ranch on Friday afternoon along with all their boys and usually leave Sunday. The elder among this crowd is my Uncle Marvin. I call him Marvin Dale. We both carry the same middle name. He passed it on to his eldest son, David Dale, and I passed it on to my son, Justin Dale. We also have Cody Dale and Richard Dale in the family, but I call all of them by the middle name of Dale just to aggravate.

I get to rag on him because he has ragged on everybody else before me. I’m simply passing on to him the same things he gave everybody else before I came along. The truth is both of us have very similar personalities and we can both dish it out but we can take it too!

The tone of our voices sometimes become high pitched and obnoxious and our laughs can be infectious. When we see each other across the room in a public place we occasionally greet each other from several yards away by calling out each other’s name. “Marvin Dale,” I will holler, “Clifford Dale,” comes the return and by then our wives are either poking on us to shut up or they have crawled under the tables to hide. I have noticed as of late though they both just shake their heads at each other in that silent, mind communicative state of saying to each other “they’re hopeless.”

There are three very distinct stories that I remember about Uncle Marvin I have wanted to print for a long time. I have been reluctant to do so, however, for fear of offending someone. But I have decided to be gutsy and let the cat out of the bag.

My first memory of him was while riding my Grandpa’s tractor. When I was little I would visit my Grandpa and Grandma at their dairy in Cypress. The also had a chicken farm. They lived right across the street from Tin Hall. One of Uncle Marvin’s duties was to put hay out, and in those days big round bales had not yet been invented.

Uncle Marvin would pull a trailer behind the tractor and throw the bales from the trailer while the tractor idled across the open field. He would let me drive, but would take his hands off the steering wheel. This caused great panic in my mind. Screaming and yelling I would holler, “Uncle Marvin, Uncle Marvin, help me, help me.” I didn’t learn ’till later years he was actually guiding it with his feet on the steering arms below the steering wheel.

The second memory was the time he fell through our attic onto our freezer chest in the utility room. I don’t know what he was doing in the attic, but when I heard the loud crash I was the first one in the room, and there he was on the freezer. Dust and sheet rock were still falling around him.

The third and best memory is the hard one to properly explain. During his growing up years as a young man, the style of clothing in his day was the white tee shirt and blue jeans. I call it the James Dean Look. Duck tails and slicked back hair. If anyone remembers, the guys all had a bad habit of wearing their pants real low. So low, in fact, many of the places where God done split ’em were exposed. If you don’t get my drift just look around at the guys of today. If it weren’t for boxer shorts, there would be enough cracks showing to break up an iceberg.

Well, Uncle Marvin had picked up my little brother and sister in each of his arms. As he entered the doorway of one of the rooms in our house, his arms were full of babies and his pants began to slide off. I can still see him protruding his hip against the doorway, hollering for help while trying to pin his falling pants against the side of the jamb. “Clifford, Clifford, help” obviously unable to walk, carrying babies and pulling up his falling pants all at the same time.

Somewhere, someplace in life I’m going to pay the price for this story, but next time you see my Uncle Marvin you may want to offer him an extra “hand of support.”

Clifford

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