I think it's time to tell you the story of my sainted Uncle Ducky again.
Ducky was, without question, my favorite uncle. He drove a Studebaker convertible, pale blue with cream colored trim. We both loved that car. As an old man, Ducky succumbed to the ravages of diabetes first loosing a toe, then both his legs and was confined to a wheel chair. I remember wheeling him around at a family reunion while I hummed the theme from the old TV show Ironsides. That show starred Raymond Burr as a detective in a wheel chair. Ducky slammed on the brakes of his chair and looked over his shoulder to me with a wry glint in his eye. "There's only ONE Ducky in this family at a time. If you start behaving like me, they'll start to kill us!"
Ducky was in the Navy during World War II. He never saw any action, per se as he was in the Shore Patrol in Honolulu. Breaking up bar fights was his specialty. Ducky was, in real life, the character Ernest Borgnine played in From Here to Eternity but without the cruelty.
He carried the skills he learned in the Navy back from the war and into civilian life. He became a cop on the East Liverpool City Police Department. A big guy, Ducky stood 6'5" and weighed ion at a healthy 265 pounds, Ducky took no guff from perpetrators. His bar fight technique was to press his massive torso up against the biggest belligerent then slapping his paw like open hand across the pinned son of a *****'s face while admonishing him with a Scottish brough. "Now then! Why would ye want to make such a spectacle of yourself in a nice establishment such as this laddie?"
A mixture of humiliation and pain usually brought the excitement to an end. Ducky loved an old drive in restaurant down I the city's east end. Roger's had the finest burgers in the valley, a big maple barrel that dispensed Hire's root beer and hand dipped ice cream. Back in the day, as they say, you couldn't do much better for a lunch or a quick snack on a Saturday afternoon. Of course after the high school football games, Roger's was packed to the gunwales.
I asked Ducky if he ever had to brandish his service revolver. "Once." he said wistfully. Ducky got a radio call about some knucklehead who decided to rob Potter's Bank and Trust downtown. As big as he was, Ducky eschewed the squad car and raced on foot down to the bank. The frightened teller described the robber and told Ducky that he had fled on foot toward the river.
Ducky scurried down to the north bank of the Ohio and found the railroad tracks that carried freight and coal and steel along the river bank. Glancing to the south, Ducky saw the perp as he ran down the railroad siding.
Ducky took chase, amazingly closing the distance between himself and the bank robber. Then Ducky drew his .38 from its holster. "Halt! In the name of the law!" Ducky shouted. Now, Ducky had just finished a run of six blocks from the police station to the bank, and another four blocks down to the river. After chasing the robber along the ballast covered railroad track for yet another three blocks, Ducky was winded.
"Halt or I'll shoot!" Ducky stood and took aim. His arms raised and lowered with every breath he sought to suck into his burning lungs. The robber ignored him and continued his desperate run.
"that's the only time I ever fired my gun in action," Ducky told me. "I fired and his ear came right off! Damnest thing I ever saw!" said Ducky as he wheeled his Studebaker into Roger's drive in to buy me a root beer float.
. We don't know each other very well.
