My fascination with trucks probably started with my Uncle Dude. As far back as I can remember, he would come get me on a random summer day, and take me off to the jobsite du jour. I would spend the day watching (and when I was old enough, working alongside) the crew moving houses all over San Diego County. He started out with an old Army truck to pull the houses. It was so low-geared that when it was hooked up to and pulling a house, I could walk faster than the truck was moving. We were all excited when he bought his first diesel truck, I ran to jump in it and burned the crud out of my hand grabbing the exhaust stack. But Dude and trucks and cars were always tucked together in my mind. Dude was on top of the automotive trends...Cadillac convertibles, the first muscle cars, first VW bugs, and first economy cars, always lecturing me on the whys and wherefores of everything mechanical. I worshipped him.

But it wasn't always so. The first four or five years of my life I was scared to death of Dude. He was a big man. I was living with my Grandma in an Craftsman style bungalow in San Diego. Dude would walk through the house singing Hank Williams' latest at the top of his lungs and the whole house would shake, the glasses in the cupboard would tinkle together and the dishes would rattle. He was a big man; he had a big voice, a huge presence, and a gigantic smile. When he moved up-state and I went into the Army, we kind of lost touch with each other for a while. I saw him at a family reunion at Lindo Lake after a few years and was surprised to see that we stood eye to eye and I even had a couple pounds on him. I said, "You must've gotten smaller". And he said, "You got fat". Of course, he said it with a smile.

One year while I was in high school, my Dad and Mom, The Chief and Betty Lou, went to Northern California for a couple of weeks. There was some family emergency or something but it was during school so my sister and I didn't go with them. They borrowed one of Uncle Dude's cars and left my sister and me with my Aunt Essie. They left me their '55 Chevy to drive my sister and myself to school. I thought that was a GREAT idea and it was working out real well until I tore out the clutch drag racing with my buddy. I limped the car to the house, called my aunt for a ride and sat contemplating my fate. About a half hour later Uncle Dude pulled in the driveway and I figured life was getting shorter by the minute. While Dude was examining the car, our neighbor walked over and said he had seen me limping in and asked what was up. He offered to do the repair for nothing if we got the parts and that worked out great. Dude had already taken my sister to my aunt's house, so we could have some one-on-one quality time on our way out to Lakeside. Dude knew a lot about cars and as it turns out, a lot about teens, too. All he asked was, "Was ya racin'?" It never crossed my mind to lie to him. That would have been unthinkable. I just said, "Yeah". His reply was simply, "Ohhh". The rest of the ride was totally silent. In all my years of riding with Dude, he had talked constantly to me, teaching me about mechanical stuff, telling me about family history stuff, always filling my head with his voice. I really loved his voice, that Okie-cum-California twang, a deep resonant voice with a squeaky quality at times. A laugh that would make Emmett Kelley smile. But "Ohhh" was all I got that day. It was a lecture of infinite quality. It carried with it the unbearable weight of the disappointment I had caused, I was so crushed with the embarassment and shame of it I could barely breathe. When we got to Essie's house, he put his arm around me as we went up the walkway. When we got inside, Essie asked what happened, Dude told her the car had broken down and repairs would be made and we would have it back the next day. To the best of my knowlege, Dude never told anyone about my confession.

Uncle Dude was by far the most influential man in my life next to my dad, The Chief. He was always around, looking out for Betty Lou (my mom and his little sister). He was eighty years old the last time I talked with him on the phone; his voice was as clear and strong as it had been when I was a boy, and his laugh was just as priceless. He could be abrupt, sometimes bordering on cold. He could be fierce; I'll tell you about that another time. He could be threatening, scary. But there were times when he would walk into a room filled with contention and threat and bring quiet and confidence with him that settled everything down. He always made me feel real.