He Tickled Me Until I Cried

I still am sensitive to being touched (or fear of being touched) in the area of my ribs!

My Uncle Keith would come to visit us or we would visit my grandparents and see him. He was still in high school when I was born.  He took delight in hearing me laugh, so he tickled me, a lot!  I had five uncles, but he is the last one.  He is one of the smartest people I know.  I am still amazed by his mastery of a wide variety of technical subjects.  Remember, there was not a Google, or internet, or personal computer to aid in knowledge acquisition.  It was HARD work to get knowledge, before the internet and search engines.

Soon after graduating from high school, he used to dismantle windmills, once a fixture on every farm, to get the steel for "making things." He also painted barns and I remember as a child seeing him dangling from a barn in a rope swing, spraying red paint.  He is a pilot who, the story goes, more than once deliberately stalled his plane to learn more about airplane stalls from the inside out.  Failure was not an accepted end result and he built a thriving and successful manufacturing  company, which is one of the top park equipment manufacturers in the country.

Nicknamed "Kay" by his grandmother, most of us in the family call him just that. He is my father's youngest brother and the only one of the four still alive.  I never forget about him, especially when anyone, including my doctor, gets anywhere near my ribs.   And still I admire him and love him.



Happy Fathers Day, Uncle Kay!

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