Uncle Fred

The ride back was quiet. My normal comedic narratives seemed out of place, so I rode in silence. The black stretch limo was nice, but had an unhealthy feel to it. The smell of fabric spray, tweed suits and sweat assaulted my nose. I tried to remember the last time I rode in a limo, it was 10 years ago now, my 21st birthday. Some of my friends took me up to Windsor to the bars and casino that drew so many American tourists and their money across the bridge to Canada. Soon we arrived back at the funeral home and we helped our grandma out and got her into our dad’s car for the short ride back to her house.

My brother and I rode together and met them there. We had a light lunch and made small talk. The weather was good today, it was a nice service, he looked at peace. The sort of comments people make when someone dies that they hardly knew. That would be Fred. My Great Uncle. My paternal grandmothers brother. There were not many relatives on my dad’s side to begin with, but Uncle Fred was not known to any of us. He was a recluse. He lived in the city, but barely. His house was one of the first in the area. It was a simple wood structure with a dormer upstairs that nobody was allowed into. I had been there with my grandmother a dozen times growing up. She would take my brother and I along when she stopped in to check on him.

He had no phone so we couldn’t call, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. There was a potbellied wood burner in the corner of the living room. It served as both furnace and stove for the house. The kitchen had a hand pump well at the sink for water, something my brother and I always marveled at. How could he drink that sulfurous stuff. We always politely refused any offer of a drink from Uncle Fred. I remember when I was little I had to go to the bathroom while we were there and I had to go outside to an ‘outhouse’. It was the thing of nightmares. I was a teenager when the city made him tear it down and connect to the sewer line. He complained they were just after his money, they were always raising his taxes and this was being forced on him. Grandma called him ‘cantankerous’ and that he needed to have a sanitary line and ‘a good shower wouldn’t hurt you any neither’. I never thought about that one, but I do recall a large metal tub near the back door that upon reflection would have been big enough for him to sit in.

Uncle Fred was a bitter man. Untrusting at best, paranoid at worst. When visiting on those few occasions he tended to keep a suspicious eye on my brother and I the entire time we were there. It wasn’t like we were going to take anything, there was nothing to take! Fred had only one Earthly possession that we knew about. His stamp collection, and it was only while showing us those stamps we ever saw Uncle Fred smile. Uncle Fred was retired Army. He served in WWII and traveled all over the world while he served. Everywhere he visited he got the local stamps. His collection was amazing, 6 volumes, each one over 9” thick. “Stamps of the World” it said on the covers, Vol one through six. Fred would show us some stamps that looked like little paintings, works of art that belonged in a miniature museum. He would tell us stories of where each one was from, and for a while, he was a kind old man. Now with Uncle Fred passing, we wondered what would become of the collection. A few days later we found out as grandma was contacted by a lawyer. My second cousin and family wanted their share.

When I arrived at grandma’s my dad was at the kitchen table with a man in a suit going over some paperwork. It turns out Uncle Fred never had a Will of any kind, and when word of his passing got out, family that never set foot in Fred’s house showed up demanding a share of his “estate”. I couldn’t believe they would want to fight over an old wooden house with no insulation, a sink with well water and a rundown garage that looked like it hadn’t been open in decades, but here we were.

The lawyer finished with my dad and left. My dad went to my grandmother and I followed to see what was going on. He told her that he went over the paperwork and that there was nothing he could do. With no Will and no heirs then anyone with a family tie was eligible to an equal share of the estate. There was a date set for an auction and the assets would be divided up. My dad said that because Grandma took care of Fred and looked in on him for years that she could have the house. The house was just inside the city limits and away from any amenities so not a highly sought after property, and the house was not up to code in any way and would need to be demolished anyways. The cost would be more than the property was worth, so it was no wonder they let her keep it.

I was onsite with my dad when the auction house representative came to Fred’s to categorize and tag everything for the auction. It was scheduled for the following Saturday. We set up some folding tables to lay out anything of value we found. Of course the auction would be centered around the stamps. The initial evaluation estimated them at over a quarter of a million dollars. No wonder the roaches came out. The appraiser said if the volumes had been complete they would have been worth five times as much. For stamps, who would have thought?

The furniture would be disposed of along with the wardrobe. They were old and worn and had no value. They were not even good enough to donate. We went through the pockets and found a couple dollars in change. Most of it old, but not old enough to be valuable. In the dresser we did find a coin collection. Nothing anywhere near the stamps, but a handful of gold five and ten dollar coins that would be good at auction. It took less than a half hour to go through the entire downstairs.

We turned our attention to the dormer. Dad went up first, I started up behind him followed by the appraiser. Dad went through the door at the top of the stairs and froze. I came up short behind him unable to see anything and the appraiser cleared his throat behind me. My dad spoke very quietly. “Turn around and go back down. Walk gently and head outside.” My dad was an engineer. He was not one to joke around and there was a seriousness to his voice that nobody questioned. When we got outside my dad took out his phone and called 911. When he asked for the bomb squad to come to the address my jaw dropped. The appraiser was on his own phone and I just stood there listening. I heard my dad say something about WWII, munitions and black powder. He hung up just as the first police car showed up. The police spoke to him and then as more police showed up they stopped at the corner and blocked the intersection with their cars. At this point, I had to know what was going on. I asked my dad what was up there? He raised one eyebrow and said “Stamps weren’t the ONLY thing Fred brought back from the war.”

The bomb squad arrived and put on their gear. Up the stairs they went to assess. Down they came. Back up they went with a large metal steamer trunk looking container. We were sent down the street to stand behind the police cars blocking the intersection. About 30 minutes later they came back down with the trunk, very slowly. They loaded the trunk into the back of the truck into a heavily armored chamber and once it was locked they let us come back to the house. “You were right to call us.” Said the driver of the truck. “Those were live, and very unstable. It’s a miracle they never went off.” My dad asked if they looked for any other explosives and they assured him they inspected the rest of the attic and it was clear. After the police took a statement and dad showed them the paperwork from the courts they all left and the appraiser came back. My dad told us that the bomb squad took a case of live WWII fragmentation grenades. These were the ones that looked like pineapples, and because they were vintage they were full of gunpowder. When gunpowder gets old and especially if it was hot they would sweat. That sweat was nitroglycerine. At any time over the years it could have just exploded taking out the house and everything in a fifty yard radius around it.

Up in the dormer we found that Fred spent years sending things home from the war. There were German rifles, uniforms of soldiers, some stained with blood from either a knife or gun wound. Trophies from Fred’s time in the war. The appraiser got to work. We helped carry stuff down and laid it out on the tables.

Next we hit the garage. I expected to see an old car or perhaps a Sherman tank after the attic. Instead we found a still. Fred was making his own moonshine in the garage. There were close to 50 jugs of the stuff. Nothing else stood out. They couldn’t sell the still or the moonshine so we agreed to remove it all to a dumpster and the appraiser and my dad headed back into the house. I hung back for a moment to look at the still and maybe sample the goods. It was exactly what it sounded like. Liquid fire. Strong stuff. I poked around the garage. Old lawn equipment, garden tools that were more rust than metal, old oil cans and spider webs. One thing stood out. Above the workbench behind the still was a cupboard. The door was painted over and stuck. I grabbed a screwdriver from the workbench and started on the door. I pried it open and it was empty. Not really surprising but when I shut the door I heard something. It was a dull thud. From the back of the cupboard a small black notebook fell onto the workbench. It was leather and it was old. No lettering marked the cover. I opened it and saw that it was a kind of diary. It was in German. I couldn’t read it but it seemed important or it wouldn’t have been hidden like it was. I slipped it into my back pocket and rejoined my dad and the appraiser.

They were just wrapping up. The entire contents of Uncle Fred’s life laid out and tagged, were being boxed up to go to the auction house. The day of the auction came and it was quite the crowd. I sat with interest as it all sold. After all was said and done the sale went well. As a direct relative I got a check a few weeks later from the law office handling the case for a cool $20,000. Thanks Uncle Fred. The notebook you ask? It was a handwritten diary. There was a name on the inside cover, Adolf. Yes, THAT Adolf. I wonder how Fred got this, and what else he had hidden away. Oh, and thanks for the house grandma.