{"id":518,"date":"2016-05-31T09:00:52","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T13:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=518"},"modified":"2016-05-31T09:00:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T13:00:52","slug":"freaky-uncle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=518","title":{"rendered":"Freaky Uncle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/god-told-me-35.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-519\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-519\" src=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/god-told-me-35-233x300.jpg\" alt=\"god-told-me-35\" width=\"503\" height=\"648\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/god-told-me-35-233x300.jpg 233w, http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/god-told-me-35-768x990.jpg 768w, http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/god-told-me-35-794x1024.jpg 794w, http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/god-told-me-35.jpg 1646w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 503px) 100vw, 503px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We never spoke about Uncle Dixon. Our whole family tip-toed around the subject&#8230;but I could tell there were powerful feelings just under everybody&#8217;s skin. \u00a0He was a horrible pariah.\u00a0 The black sheep of the family.<\/p>\n<p>We kept him straight-jacketed in one of the padded cells in the catacombs below our cabin.\u00a0 He was never allowed out in the light of day (lest one of the neighbors spot him), only after midnight on stormy nights and always tightly chained, gagged and bound in one of those psycho metal hockey mask get-ups.\u00a0 He got wheeled around in a steel cage on a hand truck under constant, heavily armed guard.<\/p>\n<p>As if that wasn&#8217;t bad enough&#8230;Uncle Dixon\u00a0was never allowed to go wilding with the rest of the family, never allowed to invade homes, to rape and burn and shoot folks in the face with shotguns or dismember them with his best machete before skinning and roasting them on the Bar-B-Que for the family feast&#8230;..how sad and dull.<\/p>\n<p>I felt bad for him.\u00a0 What possible meaning could his life have?\u00a0 I always wondered what awful thing he could have done to deserve such treatment &#8211; until I overheard Pappa Ripper telling old cousin Head-Stomper that Dixon was a pacifist, an atheist and&#8230; a vegetarian (whatever that was).\u00a0\u00a0He also said\u00a0that he had NEVER murdered a baby in his whole life &#8211; actually refused to do it!!!\u00a0 Eeeeew!\u00a0 What a Freak!?!<\/p>\n<p><em>***Every family has at least one crazy relative that makes Thanksgiving an unforgettable event rivaling any ten episodes of The Jerry Springer Show&#8230;.and worth 6 months of therapy.\u00a0 I think my illustrator, John, serves that role in his family.\u00a0 John&#8217;s illustration is from our book,\u00a0&#8216;Bludgeon the Clown&#8217;, scheduled\u00a0for publication in 2017.\u00a0 -Marsha<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We never spoke about Uncle Dixon. Our whole family tip-toed around the subject&#8230;but I could tell there were powerful feelings just under everybody&#8217;s skin. \u00a0He was a horrible pariah.\u00a0 The black sheep of the family. We kept him straight-jacketed in one of the padded cells in the catacombs below our cabin.\u00a0 He was never allowed &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=518\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Freaky Uncle<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[125,150],"tags":[105,128,176],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":527,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}