Uncle Bert

This is a personal story, more about me than about Uncle Wilbert and Aunt Ellen, but I will share it anyway upon Uncle Bert's death at 88.

I grew up in Des Moines.  My grandparents lived in Anita and Atlantic.  We would visit 500 Spruce to see my aunt and uncle and Bert, Mary Lou and Norman.  I imagine I visited when I was baby.  We would visit regularly while I was a child.

It was a learning experience to visit.  It was more chaotic than I was used to.   There were slightly naughty things around, like comic books and Mad magazines.  I don't remember why, but it seems like we slept there once.  I remember going upstairs late in the evening one night.

Dad said that if there was an emergency,  Donna and I would stay with Bert and Ellen.  Mom said that we would stay with Aunt Bev's family if the worst happened.  Either scenario was scary and different.   But, the idea of living with people who knew how to laugh and have fun had appeal. I felt both families were more normal than my own.

Grandma would sometimes be there.  Grandma sometimes acted concerned.  But, mostly I remember Uncle Bert or Aunt Ellen joking around with me.  Whatever catastrophes were happening any day I was there were not so serious that Uncle Bert and Aunt Ellen couldn't joke around.

I remember dogs.  The dogs were always the happiest dogs.  I remember helping to take the dog for a walk with Uncle Bert in Atlantic.  

My father, Aunt Ellen and Uncle Bert visited my house in El Cerrito 15 years ago.  We went to Pier 39 and ate at Bubba Gump's.  I got a picture of Uncle Bert modeling Forrest Gump's shoes and he got a picture of me. 

Bert saw my display of the three foul ball baseballs I had gotten at games, not quite catching but at least retrieving.  He took one of my "homerun balls" for a grandson.

My family and my father visited Ellen a week before she died.  She was still joking.  She also got upset at my father, which was her right.

We visited Bert at the Anita nursing home, too.  But, just once I think.  He was still joking, too.

In the 1990s, I started a record label which released about 20 CDs of local Twin Cities musicians.  I named the label "Bert Records" after my uncle.  I would tell people that Uncle Bert had happy dogs.

That is how I remember Wilbert Hoeck.