Identical Uncles ~ Double Trouble

I loved all of my uncles, my mother’s brothers, and especially my twin uncles, Ray and Len Hunt. They were devious tricksters. Always full of mischief and seldom thinking of the consequenses. Everyone said they were “full of the devil.” It was an apt description. They teased my mother and her brother, Bob, unmercifully and my mother adored them. 

Ray and Len were identical, “mirror twins.” It was impossible to tell them apart, without looking to see which hand they used. Uncle Ray was right-handed and Uncle Len was left-handed. They got their names before their hand-dominance was established, but it certainly worked out well for those of us who knew them.

Beginning in first grade, Ray and Len often switched seats in school and the nuns couldn’t tell them apart. They walked the mile and a half to school each day, dreaming up tricks to play on their teacher and their only classmate, a boy they named, “Rabbit Tracks.”

One morning they came to school, excited to  tell their classmate they had captured rabbit tracks in their hands.. Their classmate, naturally, was eager to see such an unusual sight and only after they opened their empty hands did he realize he’d been tricked again.  The poor boy was known as Rabbit Tracks for the rest of his life.

The twins were thirteen years older than my mother. They called her “Dolly,” but treated her more like a rag doll that the china variety.  My grandmother told me she didn’t think my mother would live to be six years old, with those two brothers around. They liked to hold her upside down by the ankles and listen to her scream as the blood ran to her head. They taught Bob to steer a car when he was five years old and my mother, the passenger, was three. 

When they were older, Ray and Len took my mother and Uncle Bob all over the farm with them ~ milking cows, inspecting their traps, delivering eggs and working in the field. They named the cows after their girlfriends. They taught Uncle Bob to drive the hay wagon, pulled by two big draft horses, Duke and Nellie, while they rode alongside in the Model T.

On one terrifying occasion, Bob was driving the team of horses, when he lost his grip on the reins and fell between the two horses. My mother hung onto the side of the wagon, screaming, while Bob wrapped his arms and legs around the single tree between the two horses. The twins saw what happened and turned the Model T around in time to stop the horses. Of course, my grandparents never knew about any of those antics. My mother and her brother were threatened and bribed, and never said a word.

By the time I was old enough to recognize my uncles, Uncle Len had a son, Dick Hunt, who was as mischievous as Ray and Len. For a long time I thought they were triplets. Dick died young, but before he died, he helped the twins carry out one last mad caper. 

Uncle Ray had knee surgery and was recovering in the hospital. Len and Dick went to visit him. They wheeled Ray into the bathroom and undressed him down to his underwear. Len put on Ray’s hospital gown, and climbed into the bed, leaving Ray sitting in the bathroom. Dick went to fetch the head nurse and insisted she come to see the surgery, 

“I’ve always heard that the surgeon was a miracle-worker, but you have to see this. That doctor didn’t even leave a scar,” Dick told her.

When the nurse pulled back the sheet to inspect Ray’s surgery, she saw Len’s knee with no stitches or any sign of surgery whatsoever. Only after she went back to the nurse’s station, did the two brothers and my cousin, Dick, find her and explain how they had tricked her. 

By the time they died, Ray had lost his wife, Betty, and a daughter, Joan. Len lost his wife, Mary, and his son, Dick. But my uncles, Ray and Len, never lost their sense of humor or their playful spirit.