Monday, October 20, 2014
So I have a couple of memories to share about Uncle Phil, one in general and two specific. When I was young Phil was that fun guy who treated you with respect and almost as an equal. He was always explaining and showing how to do stuff. He had that cool citroen car, the exotic accent, almost James Bond like, but he wasn't. He was also a little absent minded, I remember him forgetting a windbreaker at a restaurant in Windsor on the way back from a tigers game, no big deal except his passport was in the pocket. Grampa Stu just had a delivery guy he knew pick it up. Another time Grampa Stu had this beater car parked beside the house that he wanted sold. The battery was dead but a normal set of jumper cables wouldn't reach so Phil parked the running car within 6 inches of the back bumper, attached the 2 cables via a drain pipe so he could connect the positive terminals and gave me a set of leather gloves and a broken, rusty sawblade to hold between the bumpers to complete the connection( back when bumpers were metal and men were men ). I was in the 12-14 age range and was quite excited that this provided enough power for the car to turn over but also that eventually the saw blade started to heat up with the smaller end glowing. Alas, it never did start and assume that eventually a tow truck was involved but as you can tell it certainly was a lasting memory.
