Uncle Keith: Supplier of Terrorist Weapons

This is another letter to my family sent sometime in 1997. It is a little happier than the previous post. Please read it first before reading this one.

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Hi all, If you are wondering about the subject line on this, I'll explain. As you all know, I spent the weekend in California in their nice rainy weather with Jimmy. Jimmy took a shine to Tony's wooden rifle that Keith had made for him, so Keith made him one too. He had Tony give it to Jimmy. So anyway, we took the wooden rifle with us when we left today, but Sandra doesn't like guns so she wouldnt let Jimmy have it there.

I took it with me and at the airport I put it on the xray thing that check the bags and scared the crap out of the girl there when she saw the profile of a rifle on the screen. It wasnt very big, but it still scared her. They called over the supervisor who gave me this look like death and told me that I had to go back to ticketing with it and have them put it in a box and check it. They didn't have a box, so they put it in a plastic bag instead. It was actually kind of amusing.

Jimmy had a blast playing with his cousins. He discovered the cash of wooden weapons right away and soon a pretty intense war was going on with Jimmy, Robert, and Tony. Jimmy was having a ball and had me rolling most of the time because of the way he would run sneakily around, and yell and scream, etc. They were playing a kind of hide-and-seek game as part of the war. Once he heard the others yelling when the hider was found he would take off and go shoot them.

He also discovered the roller skates. They were the kind that look like running shoes on wheels. They were about 8 sizes to big for him, but that didn't matter. He got pretty good and getting into them. He really got into his skating too, he would swing his arms like the speed skating ice skaters do, it was really funny. I had him always stay on the carpet so he could manage to stay up. To add to that, he would wear Robert's bike helmet too. He really looked cute. He looked sort of like he was in a roller derby.

Jimmy was a sad little boy when he had to go home. He fell asleep about a block away from Keith's house and woke up when I was getting him out of the car at his house. He started crying as soon as he realized where he was, and was saying that he didn't want to go to his new house. Inside he was still crying and didn't want to let go of me and he said "I don't want to be here". We got the new puppy in on it and that helped a little, but he really didn't want me to go.

It was really foggy and rainy up there in the mountains, so that was interesting. Everything went fine getting to the airport and dropping off the car. When I got back to Salt Lake, I put my hand in my coat pocket and found the key to the rental car. DOH! When I dropped it off, I saw a sign that said to leave the key in the car, and I thought I had. The guy there closed the door and it was locked. I told him that the key was in it. When I got home I called, they said the car was still sitting right where I left it and that they would add $10 to the charge on my bill because they had to cut a new key so they could get it into the lot. They said not to bother sending my key to them.

So all in all the trip home was a bit interesting. I really enjoyed my time with Jimmy, it was a lot easier to deal with this time.

Well, Talk to y'all later,

Dave
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My brother replied to this email and said, "Good thing we didn't send him home with the hand-grenades!"