I am an old guy now, thanks to a 40th birthday last week. Nothing really seems to change, I don't get to retire from the bulletin or get any special honors or anything. I just get to be a year older. Kieran and I celebrated by going down to Boston and having a lunch at a Chocolate Buffet. We ate chocolate cake, pie, tarts, mousse, even chocolate soup. He suggested I write the bulletin today on having "too much of a good thing", but even he will admit that there just doesn't seem to be any way you can have too much chocolate. We didn't eat ourselves sick but we did eat a LOT of chocolate!

If you had sharp eyes you would have seen that my great uncle died the week before last, in fact exactly seven days before my birthday. It was mentioned here in the bulletin. He was the last of his siblings to go, I believe, the other 5 brothers and his sister already passed away. Born in 1913, he was 90 years old, and I knew him pretty well. He was my grandfather's brother (duh, I did after all say he was a great uncle) and the two of them left the "family" religion - Mormon - and became Christians together. Instead of staying with the rest of the family, the two of them moved from a teeny tiny town in West Virginia to a small village in Ohio. Gerald, that's his name, became a welder and started his own business. He did very well and retired and all that, which seems so very long ago to a youngster (at 40!) like me. For all of my life that I can remember he's been an elder and preacher at the church I grew up attending. However, he had poor health the last handful of years of his life and wasn't able to preach full time, but he did deliver a lesson now and then. He wasn't spry, and if there is one thing I will never forget he said when I visited him a few years ago it was that he had lived too long. (Incidentally my grandfather, well into his 80's, told me the same thing before he died) Uncle Gerald was a fun loving guy who was always pulling your leg and having a laugh or two with you, but still he knew that it was time to call it quits. He was ready to go, and he was looking forward to it. I didn't see him at the end, but my memories of him both old and oldest will always be fond. After all, think about it. I'm 40 this year, and he died at 90. He was 50 when I was born, 10 years older than I am now!

Goodness knows I had my own fun with him, and pulled a prank on him now and then. I mentioned once in a bulletin a while ago how he would come in to the meeting house on Saturdays and draw quite complex and elaborate pictures, in chalk, on the blackboard and then slide it up out of sight, ready to be pulled down at the right moment in a sermon. And how there were these two cousins who were mowing the church yard grass and came inside for a drink of water and happened to make a few "enhancements" to a lesson... and at least one of these boys got a good spanking from his father who apparently didn't have the same sense of humor (can a dad say that about his own dad? Sure!) Uncle Gerald had drawn a picture of the earth (he had a chalk drawing tools, such as a compass, and so could draw perfect circles. It was one of his favorite things to draw) and souls flying up to God and Heaven, and some being sent down to hell and the devil. He had a sword in there dividing the two, which was the word of God, and an open book with names written in it. Only, the bad souls had devil horns on their heads, and the sword dripped blood, and I can't remember perfectly but I think my brother's name was underneath one of the bad ones and my name was mysteriously under one of the good ones. You get the idea. I think one of the souls was riding a bike, one was driving a car, and so on. Uncle Gerald was kinda stunned for a moment then thought it was a good joke. I told you he had a good sense of humor! Dad, well, he didn't think it was so funny.

But it was uncle Gerald who baptized that boy later in life, at age 18, and in spite of some mistakes now and then that boy didn't turn out all too bad.