Favorite Uncle Dave: The Puzzle

Discovering a new cousin has gotten The Great Plotnik to dive back into his old Family Tree notes and photos, and the Puzzle. The Puzzle is that Plotnik's grandfather had five brothers and a sister, but never spoke one word about them while he was alive. Plotnik only discovered he had a large, unknown family ten years ago.

Since then, he has tried to find photos and stories of the other six. The man above is the largest enigma -- it's Plotnik's Great-Uncle Dave, the sixth of the seven children. Grandpa Max was number seven. Everybody seems to have loved Uncle Dave (whoever took this photo wrote on it 'my favorite Uncle Dave'), who lived, at various times, in Portland and Seattle. One of the women in the photo is Aunt Nellie Armstrong, who Uncle Dave married, divorced and remarried several times, apparently.



But which woman is Nellie? The hat and dress of the older woman seems to date the photo around -- 1915? If so, Uncle Dave would have been around 30 -- he looks around that age here -- and so the lady in the flapper dress in the snow with the scarf and the hat would be Nellie. If the photo is later -- perhaps Nellie is the shorter, older lady. Plotnik likes the irreverent looks on both the women's faces.

No one knows much about Uncle Dave, except that Dave and Nellie had one son, whose name was Milton. Milton lived in Daly City, but died in 1998, just a month or so before Plotnik would have discovered his existence only a few miles away. Damn! Milton could have filled in one more piece of The Puzzle.

Yesterday, Plotnik got an email from Cousin Corrine, in Florida, a woman who is the aunt of New Cousin Jeffrey. Of course, Plottie has never met her, but corresponded with her when he discovered she existed some ten years ago. Cousin Corrine recounted to Plotnik about her sadness since her husband died and how she has gotten into alternative healing and can help people by various holistic methods.

This is the part Plotnik loves: there are threads that exist in families. The Plotniks are filled with alternative people. Perhaps every family is. Perhaps Plotnik's quest is to find these off-center people who are his own flesh and blood. No, that's not true. He wants to know about all of them.

He likes seeing their pictures and looking for the telltale Plotnik signs: thick eyebrows and square chins. He likes hearing their stories and hearing if they are often beset by explosive sneezes, another family trait.

Poland to England to Brooklyn to Portland, that's Uncle Dave. What happened in between? And did he sneeze? Why did he marry and divorce his wife so many times? Damn -- Cousin Milton could have told him. Damn.