Memories of My Uncle Dale

My Uncle Dale passed away from cancer last week. Since then, I have thought about our unique relationship and would like to share a few of our stories together.

Ever since I was in high school I have received his top-of-the-line, hand-me-down shoes, belts, shirts, coats and pants. In fact, I was wearing some his running shoes just the other day. One of the last things he did before the radiation stole his mind was to earmark one of his shirts for me. Last summer Dale got a big kick out of me taking a lot of the apparel he had given me (the shirts still in their dry cleaning plastic bags) and donating many items to a thrift store in the middle of nowhere Oregon. The manager of the store said they were the first donations to ever come in dry cleaning bags!

Uncle Dale is the only man I have ever known who hung his t-shirts on hangers and ordered by color.

I used to love hearing his stories of going out to the discos (Slab Town!) in Portland and Beaverton in the 1970s, and the so-called “nut” and “bolt” parties. He loved to dance and I suspect he was a great dancer.

He loved Black music more than rock and roll. In fact, he detested rock music from the classic era. He turned me on to a Portland funk band Pleasure and bought me their album for a birthday or Christmas. I wished I had that record now and taking a trip back to Portland as a cool funk town. I finally have a turntable to play it!

He offered me the use of his convertible white Porsche to take my girlfriend to my senior prom at Oregon City High in 1982. I declined because I didn’t know how to drive a stick! I drove my date in a green Ford Fairmont, easily one of the worst cars ever produced in the USA, instead. What a fool! I should have learned to drive a manual transmission right then and there!

In 1976 or 77, he bought tickets to a Seattle Seahawks game against the Dallas Cowboys. It was the Seahawks expansion year and my family were diehard Cowboy fans. We rode the Amtrak to the King Dome and I recall it as if it was yesterday because it was the first time I had seen anyone drunk. The train was full of obviously intoxicated men going to the game and almost all of them had little portable mini bars with them, and were hitting the sauce hard right out in the open. No one bothered them. Ahhh, the 70s!

He got me my first real job, at the Oregon City Fred Meyer, the summer after I graduated from high school in 1982. He was then an executive or something with Fred Meyer and made a call or two. That was an interesting job to say the least, and I ended up working in the record department, and would often crank up the Stones, Thriller, or the Stray Cats to drive away customers. They had a turntable behind the counter if you can believe it.

As I have previously posted, my Uncle was an accomplished and long-serving high school and college basketball official in Oregon. I once accompanied him to a game in Gaston, Oregon, of all places, and it wasn’t wine country then, but pure rural hick and they really gave it to him about his coiffed hair and that they were not on the receiving end of any of his close calls. I think one of the parents or teachers even waited for Dale after the game, but he handled it well, and we headed away in one of his sports cars, laughing. Oddly enough, he didn’t recall the Gaston game for the oral history I compiled.

For years in my youth, he would give me and my two cousins a cologne called “Roar” at Christmas. It became a standing joke every time we unwrapped the bottle and we always roooooaaaaaared when we did. I have no recollection of what it smelled like, but I think I used it one time before a junior high dance.

So long Uncle. You were very good to me over the years.