My Favorite Uncle

With all the hoopla of a new world order behind us and the uncertainty of the world before us, people are cautious.  The prognosis is bleak for a worldview and thus caution prevails as our way of life tumbles.  Cautious people procrastinate and worry of failure. 

Beverly Sills, famed opera singer, observed, “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”

That statement reminds me of my uncle Clifton.  He was my favorite uncle on the Hopper side of the family.  He lived with us when we lived in Illinois.  He rode a Harley, raced stock cars, drove in demolition derbies, and flew airplanes.   Now, you know why he was my favorite uncle.

He was the reason we lived in Illinois.  He got daddy a job at Beloit Iron Works.

Uncle Clifton ran away from home when he was sixteen.  He lived in Bessemer for a short time running moonshine and racing cars with the boys from Hueytown, the ones who would later become Alabama Raceway and NASCAR legends.

He left home because Granny Hopper would not let him play sports or participate in any activity that might harm him due to a heart condition.  No one knew where he was for years until one day, he appeared at our home in Chilton County.  Daddy did not recognize him, and he did not know daddy.  He was looking for daddy when he stopped to ask where the Hoppers lived.  After that meeting, we packed and moved up North.

After three years there, we moved back to Sweet Home Alabama.  Uncle Clifton married Aunt Maxine and for several years could not have children.  They adopted Jim, eighteen months later adopted Mike, twenty-one months later birthed Bill, and later Alice.

Somewhere along the way, my adventurous and dashing uncle became over cautious.  Reckon having kids did that to him?

One day years down the road, my cousin Bill approached Uncle Clifton with a great idea about VCRs.  VCRs were new and Bill suggested to Uncle Clifton that they buy VCR movies and VCR players and rent them to people.  Uncle Clifton told Bill that that new-fangled invention was a fade, and it would be a bad investment.  You know what happened there and now it has gone the way of the Dodo.  When I think of it, I could have been related to the billionaire who created Bill’s Blockbuster or The Hopper Movie Gallery.

A little later Bill, the persistent entrepreneur, had another scheme.  He told Uncle Clifton about paintball guns.  Bill wanted to open a store that sold paintball guns and accessories.  Uncle Clifton said that it was another fad and that it too would pass.

Like the VCR rental, paintball and accessories were the craze of young people everywhere.  Bill did open a store and had success with the store as a part-time venture.  He had paintball guns that were like something out a science fiction movie.

Bill, the perennial entrepreneur, consulted Uncle Clifton with the idea of buying a tract of land and building a course for hosting paintball competition.  Bill envisioned hundreds of people from all over the state coming and competing in paintball wars, battles, and mêlées.  He dreamed of family events, national competition, and maybe worldwide competition.  Uncle Clifton talked him out of the venture.

Uncle Clifton, on one his spontaneous excursions, visited me at Gallion, Alabama.  It was not unusual for him to make a trek from Illinois to Arizona to Louisiana to Alabama to Illinois visiting kinfolk.  He was not too cautious, just with his children and his money.  On this particular visit, he spoke of Bill’s potential as an entrepreneur.  He said that the next time Bill had an idea that they were going to run with it.  On Uncle Clifton’s next spontaneous excursion, he had a stroke near Joplin, Missouri and died in the hospital. 

Being too cautious prohibits many blessings.  Philip is an example of being too cautious in the Bible.

When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?  And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.  Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.  One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him,  there is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?(John 6:5-9 KJV)