Fortunately this is not the only photograph that I have of my uncle Alex Wylie and myself as it is blurry :-( He was a tall, handsome man. How I looked up to this man and loved him! He was the greatest.

Uncle Alex was known for not being very fond of children. In fact mothers in the area made a point of keeping their kids away from his farm. During this visit I can recall his wife, my aunt Gladys, telling me that my uncle Alex would be home soon with the cows, and that I was to be very careful around him and not be a nuisance as he didn't really take to young children. Within the hour Uncle Alex came home with the cows, put them in the corral and came to the house. As he came in the kitchen door he looked down on me, and I looked up to him. For some reason or other he smiled, I smiled, and he reached down to pick me up. We were best buddies from that moment on. I went out with him to the barn to watch him milk his cows, the old fashioned way - a 3-legged milking stool upon which he sat, a galvanized pail and his own 2 hands. No sooner had he started than his old male cat came up to us cautiously. It stayed about 6' away from us, and it whined and caterwauled as only a hungry cat can when begging for food. Uncle Alex said hello to the cat, pulled a cow's teat sideways and squirted a stream of warm milk at the cat which promptly opened its mouth and caught the milk. I was in awe!!! I had never seen that happen before. It was an awesome sight to me.

Later Uncle Alex took me to the swine barn. I made the mistake of calling the animals "pigs", and Uncle Alex quickly corrected me, "They are 'swine', not pigs!" Boy, did that get my attention. I've never forgotten it...lol... He motioned me to follow him into the swine barn and showed me his big sow and her 8 piglets. I must admit that I was a wee bit afraid - that was a huge sow!!! One of the piglets fouled the floor of her pen with some excrement. The old sow immediately pushed the excrement over to the far side of the barn and into a trench where it would be washed away by a flow of water. I was very amazed at her behavior. Then my Uncle Alex gave me some sage advice, "That old sow is cleaner than a lot of people that you will meet later on in life. Don't forget it." I haven't forgotten it, and he was right.

The next morning Uncle Alex had to go into town, Bourget. He had an old model T Ford that he had to crank by hand to start. He showed me how to start it, and we were off like...well, Uncle Alex was a very careful driver...we were off at the speed of about 10 miles per hour. As we were driving along another car was coming toward us on the road. Uncle Alex slowed down, pulled over to the side of the road and waited for the car to pass on by. He turned to me and said, "You may think that I'm being overly cautious, but I've never had a car accident in my life, and I'm not about to start." Suffice it to say that our trip into town was almost uneventful. I say "almost" because Uncle Alex knew what I enjoyed. He bought a pack of gum, and we had a good chew together :-)

Aunt Gladys was from my Anderson side of the family. She was my grandmother's sister. Unfortunately she was also a diabetic - the Anderson curse, as I call it. She was a lovely woman who used to do a great job of spoiling me :-)