When I was a little girl I learned to play Life (The game of Life, you can learn about life when you play the game of life) in Jim and Betty Yunek's living room. They had cool modern furniture and their house always smelled like beer, saurkraut and sausages. It is a smell that I still cherish. sometimes I even cook up some sausages and let saurkraut simmer on the stove when i want to feel nostalgic about a particular time in my life prior to 1977.
We went canoeing alot with Mr. and Mrs. Yunek. They had a yellow canoe and sometimes one of us kids got to sit in the midde of their canoe while the other sat with my parents. I remember one time in particular when we stopped to eat lunch somewhere and Mr. Yunek stood up and said, 'I've got to see a man about a horse" and I was absolutely certain that he was going to go and buy me a horse. He returned a short while later - and there was no horse.
He taught my father, my uncle and my aunt. He taught me and my brother. He scared the shit out of all of us didn't he?
He was the first person to help me be unafraid of dogs. They always had a black lab. The first one I remember with any earnest was Scout, who ended up totally blind. I wasn't afaid of Scout and it is because of that dog that I got my first dog (unsurprisingly a black lab).
Mr. Yunek expected a lot from me. I wanted to do well for him and I worked especially hard in his class. Remember Black Studies? I bugged him incessantly the summer before my junior year to allow me to take that class with the grade above me. I believe he told me to come back when hell freezes over....but in the end he allowed me to take the class. My revisionist history is that I recieved an a (Shelley Olberding might remember me being the ding dong of the class i am not sure).
I never chewed gum in his class.
I loved riding in his yellow truck with the shift on the steering column.
I loved eating his horseradish pickles.
When I was really really little, I remember getting to go to Joel's basketball games. I remember pretending I was going to marry Joel, even though i was probably 4 at the time and he was 18.
Now all of my dad's golfing partners are dead - Bill Meinen, George Colvig, Mac McIlrath and Mr. Yunek.
I loved going to their house to go pee in their turquoise bathroom - the toilet and the sink were turquoise. They also had turquoise soap in the downstairs bathroom (which was either the very exotic coast or the very exotic Irish Spring - we had Ivory).
We had Thanksgiving dinner with them often. I wore my favorite polyester pantsuit once and got to have a Coke with dinner.
Once Betty told my aunt, "Kristin and Scott are like our kids" this was years after I moved out of lake city, but it made me feel connected and protected. It helped in some untangible way and I have never forgotten it.
