Uncle Al.
Of course he had blue eggs. They kind of went with everything else in his colorful life.
I wrote this today after noticing all the treasured "artifacts" in my home that I received from Allen's house many months ago. This morning, I finally unpacked all his fancy silver utensils and made the decision to just use the damn things rather than wait for a "special occasion" to arrive. EVERYDAY is a special occasion, Gawd Dammit!! While I was taking the shiny, antique goods out from their fancy fabric carriages, I fanned them all out on the quilt his friend Charlie had constructed that used all of Allen's ties as a sunlike design in the center. Allen is everywhere.
I was always fascinated with Uncle Al, and his partner, Al. They were always a magical couple, but not always available, so it was a special occasion to see them. We called them Al and Al, which made me giggle at times as a kid from the coincidental name matching.
Uncle Al was a painter, a botanical artist, and quite a collector, as I discovered after he passed away. He had graduated from UCLA and later lived in West Hollywood with his partner for decades. His house was like a museum full of abstract statues and cool art on the walls. Vines covered many outside walls of his home, and he always had a German Shepard that was brilliantly trained to behave and always be by his side. I'm sure his dog even did the dishes when we weren't around.
After his partner died of cancer in the 80s, Uncle Al eventually moved up to the Guerneville area in northern California. His home was in a reclusive Occidental forest, and he began managing a "Food For Thought" antique store for years. He made lots of interesting friends, creatively stayed busy, rode motorcycles, and went everywhere with his dedicated dog (except maybe on the motorcycle).
Allen died unexpectedly while walking his dogs on Dillon's Beach by his home near Bodega Bay. The shock of his death is still hard to grasp as I write this almost two years later. In trying to organize his estate, I travelled up to his house several times with my brother and dad. Each time, we discovered so many amazing pieces about Allen as we went through all of his belongings. One evening, as we paged through all the hundreds of amazing books he had, we found so many cards he had used as bookmarks that kind of told a story. Each card had a thank you note written to Allen for something he had done for or with another. Of course, we had no idea who any of these cards were from, but it was really special to see how many people loved Allen.
As exhausting as it was, we discovered things like his partner's Eagle Scout certificate and a trunk full of his dissertation papers (which, at least, I thought was cool). We also came across many costumes for the parties he attended, boxes full of random things for art projects he had intended to make in the future, letters from family members, including one from me back when I was in college. He kept everything.
We made trip after trip donating so many items valued much more than what they would be sold for, but we had no idea what to do with anything. I would say, after all was said and done, we took over 15-18 truckloads of really nice items to the thrift stores or consignment stores. On one donation trip, the back of our truck was full of really great books. FULL. And while we were waiting for the local Occidental library to open and take our donation, we walked over to have breakfast, and secretly hoped that someone would steal all the books out of the truck while it was unsupervised. Alas, no such luck, so the library scored big that day. On another trip, we discovered that because of the amount of donations coming in due to the Santa Rosa fires, many places didn't have room to take our items. Nothing like driving around an unfamiliar city with several trucks overloaded with furniture, clothes, statues, decorative gourds, and everything else while looking for a place that would take these donations. Hence the beer breaks in the afternoon.
During our work at his home, the time the 3 of us spent was really bonding. We'd arrive, look around and all defeatedly say, "It doesn't look like we've done anything from the last time we were here."
There was just so much stuff! We worked so hard together and had extensive conversations about life and all our experiences together and separately. Each morning we would get up, make a plan for that day, and get to work. During one trip, after meeting with realtors, we decided we should freshen up the yellowed paint in the main room, and as we started moving furniture we discovered that when Allen had painted years ago, he decided to paint AROUND some of his larger pieces of furniture. Well, he did live alone, so we tried to give him a pass, but it was just one of the many crazy things we discovered as we went through his home, file by file, piece by piece, and hour by hour. We'd work all day, stop for lunch breaks and beer breaks in the evening, and then work well into the night each day that we were there.
So how do the blue eggs tie in? Well, on his 6 acres, he had the coolest chicken coop I'd ever seen. And inside this coop, were many of the fluffiest chickens I had ever seen. These chickens laid eggs that were sort of a teal blue with a cool pinkish color on the inside. They were fascinating. I had remembered visiting Uncle Al with my husband on a road trip several years back, and I saw these blue eggs in a basket. I had thought to myself, Huh. Is Uncle Al so bored that he's dying his chicken eggs? Until he clarified that that's how they looked from whatever kind of chickens he had.
Whew! I thought, and How cool!
Alas, the man with blue eggs, the uncle who always had a toothy smile for me, and the man with more vases and decorative wood boxes than anyone I know, is truly missed. Aside from the beautiful quilt from Charlie, the memories spent in his home with my family, and all the knick knacks I have around the house now, his memory lives on in my heart.
