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My uncle, my mama’s baby brother

I didn’t even know about until he comes

back from ‘nam and rolls up to the curb

at our little house in Jackson.

I was playing on my bike, musta been seven or eight,

and he says, go tell your mama Vernon is here,

I looked at him and that drop top deuce and a quarter,

all gold and shiny, and hopped off my bike and ran inside,

“mama, there is a man named Vernon looking for you”.

She nearly dropped a plate,

luckily she was sitting at the table.

Her mouth wide open with the one word

“Vernon” trying to come out.

She runs to the front yard,

and be now Vernon was on the porch,

she hugs him screaming and bawling,

they said you were  dead,

I know, honey, they always getting things

mixed up and wrong, but I seem to still be alive,

they laugh, they cry some more,

and mama tells me who he is and he offers

to take us for ice cream in the big golden Buick.

I didn’t yet no nothing about big blocks

and dual four barrel carburetors,

or even horsepower, but I loved the way the big ole car

glided out and took us to the Dairyland Dreamland

and how we ate at a concrete table so as to not

get ice cream on those beautiful wide seats.

Vernon didn’t stay long, he was headed to California

or Florida, somewhere with beaches full of pretty girls,

but he told my mama he was sure none

of them would be as pretty as her.

She smiled and believed him,

she was pretty, maybe it was true.

I never saw him again, but for one afternoon,

 Vernon held me spellbound and to this day,

he is my brave war hero, who comes home to live

the freedom he fought for, long before it got complicated 

about who and why we were fighting,

he was lean and ramrod straight

and he drove that big golden Deuce.