Remembering Uncle Bud

One Sunday in the fall of 1993 I received a call from my Uncle Bud.  There was nothing unusual about this.  I was going to college 300 miles from home, and he would often call to say hello and check in on me.  After talking about the weather and my non-existent dating life the conversation inevitably turned to the Florida Gators football team.  If you knew Bud, you know that all conversations eventually led to the Gators.  He asked my opinion of the Gator’s victory from the day prior.  I told him that I didn’t watch the game, but from the highlights I saw on Sports Center they looked pretty good.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  He asked the question that was obvious in his mind, “Why didn’t you watch the game?”  I told him that I had been watching the Florida Panthers hockey game instead.  I wish I could adequately express to you the layers of emotion in his voice as he replied, “You watched WHAT?!?!?”   I heard confusion, disappointment, shock, maybe even anger in his question.  To Bud, it was incomprehensible to choose ANYTHING over the Gators, but hockey?  HOCKEY, are you kidding me???  I don’t think he could have been more baffled if I’d answered him in French, more shocked if I said I’d been watching professional bowling, more repulsed if I’d said I was watching the Octogenarians sunbath at a retirement home in Delray Beach.

My favorite picture of Uncle Bud

I took this at one of the many parties at his house

                              

In my defense this was the Panthers inaugural season in South Florida, and I may have gotten caught up in the hype.  Fortunately for me, Bud quickly forgave my indiscretion and continued calling me the rest of my time at school.  We literally never spoke of it again.

James Leo Hale was my dad’s older brother and to say he was a character would be a monumental understatement.  Bud just had a way of saying and doing things that were just somehow different than most others.  To this day when my dad tells me I’m doing something that reminds him of Bud I know there’s an insult there just beneath the surface, but it still makes me smile.  

My dad had two brothers and two sisters, and when I was growing up, I saw my extended family multiple times a month.  It stands to reason that I would have literally hundreds of stories and memories about Uncle Bud.  I could probably write a 300-page book of memories, but I’ll try to hit on just a few highlights that are important to me personally.  

Let me start by telling you just how goofy I am.  In the spring of 1989, we visited my Great Uncle David in Tallahassee.  During the visit David asked me “How’s your Uncle Jim doing?”  I suddenly felt that awkwardness you feel when an older person is confused, and you don’t want to embarrass them.  So, I lowered my voice and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have an Uncle Jim.”  Fortunately, my dad was nearby and said, “He means Uncle Bud.  His first name is James.”   So much for the older person being confused.  This 18-year-old didn’t even know his uncle’s real first name.   He was, and always will be just Uncle Bud.  

Bud in the Navy

When I was young it was common for the cousins to spend the night at each other’s house routinely.  I always enjoyed my nights with my various cousins, but what made spending the night with Cousin Grady unique was that you were also spending the night with Uncle Bud.  Meaning, he wasn’t the seldom-seen dad off in another room reading the newspaper and only showing his face at mealtime. If you were spending the night with Grady, Bud was involved and Bud was going to have a plan.

I distinctly remember one time I spent the night with Grady when Uncle Bud took us to the Cedar Hills dollar theater on the first night Raiders of the Lost Ark was playing, presumably 1981.  When we got to the theater the showtime he had planned on was sold out. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones interested in seeing the blockbuster for only $1.  So, Bud bought tickets for the next showing, probably 2 or 3 hours later.  To kill time Bud took us for pizza and then we walked around the shopping center.  We found our way into a T-shirt shop and Bud let me pick out any shirt I wanted.  Any shirt as long as it had a Gator on it, of course.  This wasn’t my birthday, but I got dinner, a movie, and a gift.  

Going to Uncle Bud’s house was always a good time, no matter what the occasion was.  When he first moved to Callahan, he had a large patch of undeveloped land on his property.  My cousins and I created a trail through the woods to drag each other around on a wheelbarrow in the dark.  After the property was completely cleared, he had a beautiful fresh-water pond full of huge catfish.  They were basically pets.  He allowed us to catch them with a fishing pole, but we always had to throw them back.

Of Bud’s four siblings, three of them had birthdays in March, so as I kid, I always looked forward to the inevitable party.  The party wasn’t at Bud’s house every year, but to me the most memorable ones always seemed to be.   One that sticks out in my memory is the year everyone spent the night at his house.   Some slept in his house, but many slept in campers and tents strewn around his back yard.  Let’s be honest, the appeal for a sleepover when you’re an adult is that you can consume mass quantities of adult-beverages without having to worry about driving home.  At some of these parties, a few of us under 21 may have even snuck a few beers.    There’s an unconfirmed rumor that Uncle Bud may have slipped me a drink or two after the sun went down. 

The mischief in this photos just oozes from the page

Some of my favorite memories of all time involve watching the Super Bowl at Bud’s house.  He would run an extension cord to the fire pit so we could watch the game while roasting oysters.  During one of the Dallas / Buffalo Super Bowls, I’m not sure which one, I remember it was extremely cold.  Some of the men, who shall remain nameless, cashed in their man-cards and stayed indoors with the women.  Those of us who braved the cold had a monumental time.  As the night went on and the sun went down the temperature really dropped, so Bud pulled out a beat-up old metal coffee pot that we could sit right on the fire next to the oysters.  When it was ready to drink, we passed around the coffee but realized that Bud hadn’t brought out a spoon for the sugar.  After a round of arguments over who would go get a spoon, we gave in and just tossed handfuls of sugar into our coffee.  Best coffee I ever had.  

Another great memory I have with Bud came at the Gator Bowl game on December 31, 1993.  Uncle Bud called me a few days before the game to ask if I wanted to go.  I wasn’t particularly a fan of either Alabama or North Carolina, but a game with Uncle Bud on New Year’s Eve sounded good to me.  Especially since it would be historic because the very next day the stadium would be all but demolished to renovate for the upcoming NFL expansion team.  I remember being happy that Bud had thought of me for his extra ticket.  I honestly have no idea how far down I was on that list.  Was there a list?  If so, was I number one or number ten?  It didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now.  This was just a few months after the infamous hockey call, so I was happy to even be on the list.  

When I graduated from college in 1994, I had aspirations of breaking into the media.  Bud, of course, steered me towards a career in sports.  He once told me that I should try to get a job in sports talk radio because I “have a face for radio.”  It took me a few moments to realize that he didn’t say I had a voice for radio, but a FACE.  It was a fantastic line and I still use it today.  In fact, you could say I have a face for blogging, right?

Bud with his cousin Peg in Newfoundland

                                                     

One night in the early-90s the extended family met for dinner at a pizza restaurant in Callahan.  When we walked in a few family members were already there.  I went to sit down at the first chair I saw, but Bud caught my eye and said, “Come sit down here by me, my boy, so we can talk about sports.”  That’s it.  That’s the end of the story.  You need to know my temperament and mindset to understand why this memory is important to me and why it even qualifies as a memory.  I always assume that people don’t want me to talk to them or sit next to them.  It’s why I’m usually quiet and often sitting alone in social settings.  I’m the guy that can walk into a gathering and see a friend across the room who’s been to my house 50 times, but I’ll still go sit somewhere else because I assume he’d prefer to talk to others.  So, Uncle Bud wanting me to come sit next to him was and still is a big deal to me.  I don’t know what we talked about.  Maybe baseball.  Probably the Gators.  I just remember that I was touched that he called me down to his end of the table.

I could go on and on and on.  I could mention how we went to the first Jacksonville Bulls football game together.  Or the Gator Orange and Blue spring practice games.  Or how as a practical joke he bought Uncle Claude a compass after he got lost on a vacation in the 80s.   Or the dozens of times he pulled up to the baseball card shop where I worked inexplicably driving his camper.  Or the time he caught a dishrag on fire as he and Aunt Mary aggressively took turns pushing and pulling a pie in and out of the oven, debating if it were done. 

I honestly think of Uncle Bud every day.  It’s impossible not to since I have a son who looks so much like him.  And every time I do think about him, I think about fun, and laughter, and quite literally the best times of my life. 

When I was a teenager, I was riding in the back of a truck down a dark dirt trail at Camp Blanding with the expressed goal of looking for deer.  At one point one of my cousins made a comment that the whole thing seemed kind of lame.  Another older family member chimed in and said, “You should appreciate it, not all families do this kind of thing.”   I am very fortunate to have grown up with an extended family like the one I had, and I truly do appreciate the good times.   Especially the times with Uncle Bud.