Photo by Phyllis Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, as one who misses his littermates, envied the keeper as he and Phyllis checked in with the keeper’s “little” brother Orville with lunch at Elizabeth and Hucks, Orv’s daughter and son-in-law.
Reminiscence ran as deep as it gets, and just when an older brother’s authority gets cancelled out was vague, as usual. Orv with his Lt. Colonel military career to the keeper’s “enlisted man” status obviously thought he put the issue to rest a long time ago. To his credit he did not insist that the keeper salute him and call him “sir” at family reunions, but the keeper’s long-time identity of him as a sometimes useful but more often nuisance little brother was sorely tested. The presence of their sister Norma might have helped to define that. Maybe next time they get together.
Now as old men, it was delightful to run through the litany of aging issues and get down to the serious business of being boyhood brothers back on the farm: “Orv, remember the time you were the test pilot in my runaway motorized coaster wagon and you crashed where Mom and Dad saw the whole thing and they scolded me for putting you at risk?”
“And did I pay back the money I borrowed? As a “kid brother” you always seemed to have money and I was always broke.”
“My older-brother advice at this point, Orv, is to consider your recliner to be that beautiful Indian motorcycle you once had and that I envied and I remember the day you gave Grandma Stokes a motorcycle ride.”
“Go, little brother!”
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