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OK...time to again hear about Uncle Oscar...I do need to make a corection tho, from those first post about Uncle Oscar...I believe I had stated that all the boys served in WW1...that is not accurate...some of the boys, the older ones, served in WW1...but Uncle Oscar was the baby of the family, and there was a least 20yrs between him and the oldest sibling...so to be correct, I should have said that all the boys, served in the military, and some of them, also served in WW1...believe in being accurate...

Now, in Uncle Oscars family, I cannot think of a single member who had a really bad temper...they were all quirky, and funny and lively in their dealings with each other, and altho conversations often grew quite loud, there was never any real anger...

But Uncle Oscar, every so often, would get really mad, usually about two different things...the first being, that he and Marion had some sort of very strong argument, and she would go off in a huff, back to the hubby, and Oscar were be on his own...

Sometimes he would just schluff the argument off, but other times he would stew, and get madder and madder...

The other thing which made Oscar really angry, was when things at work at the Chicken Factory/Hatchery, would go wrong....usually this involved one of the newer junior bosses, not thinking that Oscar was doing his job quick enough...keep in mind, Oscar had a permanent disability from his broken hip due to his drinking incident...one hip was visibly higher than the other, and he walked with a slight limp...given the level of medical technology at the time he broke the hip, I guess he got the best that could be done at the time...but he had the hip problem for the rest of his life...

Now he never considered this to be a disability...just that he could not maybe be as quick and as fast as others...he worked all of his life in that Chicken Hatchery, and did a fine job...he did not want exceptions made for him, just wanted those in charge to realize, that often he could not be as fast, as some new entry level junior boss wanted him to be...it made him very angry to be considered sub par by some and he would come home from work very unhappy and discouraged, and very angry....

So, when he was really mad or upset about either Marion or his job, he would disappear...for days...usually he would be gone 2-4 days depending on how angry he was and how long it took him to get over it...

The first time he disappeared like this, the whole family thought he was dead somewhere...they looked high and low, but could not figure out where Oscar had gone, or what had happened...I am not sure if they called in the town cop(for in this town, at the time, there was only one cop), or if they fanned out, combing the countryside, looking for Oscar...they never did find him...

Finally he reappeared, just fine and simply explained that he had to get away for while....he did not say where he had gone, and left it at that...

This became something that happened with Oscar once or twice a year...he would have had enough with things, and would disappear...never with an explanation of where he had gone...and soon the family came to accept, that Oscar was an adult, and he could do as he wished, without their having to worry about him...

There was always one of Greatgrammies daughters or daughters-in-law staying at the big house, and apparently Oscar took care to inform his job of his absence, so he knew things were taken care of...

Many years later, when we were visiting New Jersey, Uncle Oscar piled me and my little brother and my dad into his car and said he was taking us for a ride...my Mom stayed back at Greatgrammies house, yakking with the women folk...

Well, Oscar drove for a long while on the main road, and then he got off that road, and we were now on small backroads, going back into the hills...pretty soon we were on nothing but little dirt roads...

When we were almost to where Oscar was taking us, he told us that he was going to show us where he went when he disappeared for days, but that we were not to tell anyone else about this...My dad and Uncle Oscar had a very special bond....altho my dads mom was Oscars sister, and she had grown up there in New Jersey, my dads father was from Philadelphia, and that is where he worked, so when these two married, they set up housekeeping in Philly and that is where dad was born and raised...but dad spent his summers back in New Jersey, living in the big house with Greatgrammie, and Oscar...and Oscar taught dad all about fishing, hunting, boating, chewing tobacco, and well, taught him lots about life...so there was a very special bond between Oscar and my dad, and that is perhaps why Oscar trusted Dad and us kids with his secret...

Finally we turned off the dirt road, and into what looked like a very small town...there were little cabins, little stores, little bars, a few trailers, lots of kids, dogs, cats, and many people, all seemingly hidden back there...

To this day, I have no idea what that was all about, who those people were, and what they were doing there...it seemed to me over the years, that these folk were either felons on the run, or people who considered themselves to be on the fringes of society...they obviously had some sort of contact with the outside world, as they had food, and liquor and pop in the little bars, but they just seemed to me to be a group of people who wanted to live on the fringe of society...they even had a little church and a little schoolhouse...

We stayed there for a few hours...dad and Oscar went into the bar for a while...me and my brother played with some of the children and their pets, under the supervision of several women...

And it was to this little place, that Oscar would go, when he disappeared from great grammies big house...he would stay there for a few days, and then return home...where he met these people originally and how they came to accept him up there a few times a year, is still a mystery, as Oscar showed us this place, but was not forthcoming with any details...

This little place had no name that I know of, it was not on any map, yet it did exist...its one of the mysteries from the life of Uncle Oscar...

The next installment, will tell of how, since the family accepted these disappearances, how one time it actually backfired for poor Uncle Oscar...