This was the first picnic I’ve been to since Uncle Pete became famous… so I had to spend some time explaining who Uncle Pete was. Aunt Marge was sure there were no Pete’s in the family…
Uncle Bill did pass along some more stories. Including one about Uncle Tom and his buddies. Uncle Tom worked at a gas station part time (owned by one of the relatives) and used to hang out there with a bunch of his friends. One day they decided to topple planters…. At least in that part of town around Berwyn in Chicago, a lot of the “brownstone” houses had big brick porches, with heavy planters on the ends.. So they picked one street, and every 4th house was “yours”.. and they ran up the steps, dumped the planter on the way up, and then down, and dumped the planter on that side of the porch. Then went back to the gas station to listen to the police on the police radio there…. Again our family lucked out, and we do not have Uncles in jail.
The other story he talked about was what they would do to drivers along Cermak. Two guys would get a dummy, then wait on the side of the street until a car came along. Once it started getting close, they would dash across the street with the dummy between them. When they were in front of the car, they would drop the dummy, and continue their dash. Uncle Bill thought it was strange that some of the drivers where not happy about the chance to test their brakes and their heart all at the same time… ~:-)