Uncle Eddie

Aunt Lessie bummed a ride to west Texas with us one summer when I was a little boy. And you pronounce that, 'Ain't Lessie'.

I'll never forget it. It was our annual trek to the Holy Land: Fabens, Texas. It's about 25 miles from El Paso, right on the border to Mexico. It's a tiny, dusty, poor little town. I was born there which is the most important thing I know about Fabens. I see it every time I open my passport.

Now I’m not going to lie to you it was hot. Way too hot to be driving a car without an AC but you make do with what you have. I’m guessing that car would get up to 160-170 degrees around 1 in the afternoon. I got a sunburn just from riding in it.

So we left early every morning. At dark thirty. But around 8, when the grocery stores opened, Aunt Lessie would always ask my dad to pull over so she could get some prune juice. She had to have it…every morning…sort of like a sleeping pill for some people at night, I suppose.

The thing of it was, although I didn’t realize it as a little guy, Aunt Lessie had money. My family? Not so much. Today, if she were still alive, I would call her lucky...because she'd be 114 years old and rich. She just carried it in $100 bills. That’d be like a $1,000 bill today. And she’d give it to my Dad and he’d always refuse it because he knew nobody could cash it. So, he bought her prune juice every morning, It didn’t matter that everybody else thought it was nasty, or that she was already bumming a free ride, he had to pay for her quart of prune juice too.

Finally, one morning he just said, “Give me your hundred dollar bill and we’ll go to the bank and get this thing cashed." Aunt Lessie and her prune juice…and elixir I guess. Anyway, we’ve got lots of Aunt Lessies at in our lives…even some Uncle Eddies. And if you can't find one?

Guess what? It's YOU.

Think about how you interact with others. And what they'll remember about you. And how you treat them. I read somewhere that we should love others as we love ourselves. Now how can you pass that up? I think that is worth remembering. Don't you? If you're lookin' there's always hope.