I done it, Darrol. I found Unkle Walt! Well, to tell it true, he found me.
I was down to Genral Delivry, like I been evry day, to see if there was anythink from home. Sure enuff, there was a letter sayin’ Walt called to say sell off all his stuff, ‘coz he ain’t comin’ home.
You can imajin the flap folks was in thinkin’ the old geezer had flipped his biskit fer good or was bein’ held against his will by a pack of internashunal terrists or the like.
So I’m readin’ this and thinkin’ maybe I ain’t the man fer the job, when all on a sudden someone says, “Well young feller, I hear you been lookin’ fer me.”
And theres Walt with a grin like a Halloween punkin, lookin’ fer all the world like a kid of 65. And the get-up he’s got-up in, my Lord. White pants, blue jackit and one of them peaky hats like in Mack Hales Navy.
“Grab yer gear,” he says. “Yer comin’ over to the house.”
How shud I know that comin’ over to the house meant drivin’ to place called Okie Bay and gettin’ on a boat the size of a small destroyer?
When I ast how much the tickets was, he jest laffed. “Don’t need no ticket,” he says. “It belongs to The Widdow.”
Seems the kinfolks had’nt otta worry about Walt bein’ in the clutches of a gold digger. Turns out his lady pal is doin’ OKay, thank you very much.
Her late hubby worked fer the railroad, but he sure as heck was’nt carryin’ bags. Since he shuffled off the coil 26 years back, shes been hard pressed to spend what he left as fast as it keeps growin’.
Two drinks after we set sail, we pull up to an island smack next to the US boarder.
“She ownly owns the haff of it,” Walt says. “But theres no body on the other haff.”
One of the crew helps us walk the plank with our stuff, and theres a tall lad on the dock with a golf cart to fetch it and us up to the house.
“Bruce here is The Widdows gardner and tennis teacher,” says Walt. “His wife Emma-Lee does the cookin’ and cleanin’.”
Did I say house? A small hotel, more like, with a genyuwine swimmin’ pool out back.
And thats where I meet The Widdow, decked out in swimmin’ togs and dark glasses, sippin’ at somethink tall and green.
She was brown as a cackle-berry and trim as a movie star. I wud of took ‘er fer 60 tops, if Walt had’nt allready told me she was born the day the market crashed in ’29.
And the very first thing she says is, “Now are’nt you the hansom young thing? If you clean up as good as The Skipper, maybe you can stick around a spell.”
Wellsir, it may be somewhat of a hardship, but I reckon I’ll do jest that.
Yer pal,
