My Uncle Won't Be Seeing Indy 4

Euwhipides

New member
There are many places to start, but I suppose the most fitting would be to simply say that my uncle, Floyd Dyer, won't be attending the premiere of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He died yesterday afternoon, less than two weeks away from the first Indiana Jones film to grace movie screens in some nineteen years. It is poignant when you realize that, even though he wasn't fond of crowds, my aunt just had talked him into going opening night a few days ago.

These are a few bits and pieces from a blog-eulogy that I finished writing, and they seemed oddly appropriate to post here.

One of my fondest memories is the time he came over to visit me, and brought a couple of unexpected gifts with him. I was probably nine or ten years old.

He walked in the door bigger than life, and presented me with my very first real fedora, not to mention my very first bullwhip. I'm not sure if the fedora was officially Indiana Jones', but it was close enough, and the whip was a wonderful, six-foot latigo leather affair, complete with a swivel handle.

Last week I saw it in a drawer, or should I say what was left of it. It was missing the popper and the fall, and was little more than a glorified rag of tattered leather. To say I enjoyed it extensively would be the understatement of the millennium.

Still, maybe this isn't to post here. After all, Indiana Jones fans are a dime a dozen. But you see, it wasn't just that he took me to the FOX theater in downtown Atlanta to see Raiders of the Lost Ark once upon a time, or even that he entered a contest in the local paper and won us two free tickets to an early screening of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, though he did do both of these things.

It was that, in the halcyon days of my youth - or at least the days that were approaching halcyon - he was the closest thing I could get to a living, breathing Indiana Jones.

In so many ways, he was a better father to me than my own father has been. I have been very, very fortunate when it comes to uncles. My father figures have more than made up for all the inadequacies of my real one.

All in all, Uncle Sonny was a man filled with stories, a person bursting to the brim with colorful tales anxious to be told. In our days together, we spent hours and hours in conversation about everything imaginable. He had a wealth of knowledge when it came to the natural world he loved so well, whether it be animals or birds or rocks or trees or just about anything.

But even though he was a natural conversationalist, those memorable afternoons often revolved around some story from his past, some adventure from long ago. I spent countless hours listening to him weave the fabric of his life into a story, and it was something I never grew tired of.

He told me about growing up in Avondale in the fifties and sixties, calling up old friends and old hangouts and old loves in his imagination. My favorite was probably when he got lost in the swamps of south Georgia as a young boy, and had to spent the entire night alone in a tree, with only a dead turkey he'd shot for company. But there were plenty of others that ranged far and wide.

He effortlessly spun tales of his time spent in the Marine Corps, particularly his tenure at boot camp on Parris Island, SC, as well as his time stationed in Okinawa. He was a Marine through and through, and I don't believe Semper Fi was ever that far from his heart (incidentally, to this very day, whenever I do push-ups, I always do one for the Corps, just as he taught me). I also vividly recall his many stories of his old fraternity back at the University of Georgia, and what campus life was like so many decades ago.

But this isn't to say it was all sitting and shooting the breeze. There were adventures to be had, and have them we did. His love of the land sprung naturally from a well deep inside him, and either it was in me too, or else it was just highly infectious.

Put simply, Uncle Sonny was a man who was most alive in the middle of nowhere, who loved the open air and wind on his face, who loved more than anything else to be perched up on a deer-stand in freezing temperatures long before even the sun had bothered to come up, with an arrow nocked in his compound bow and the promise of a trophy buck beating in his heart.

While I never was much of a hunter, he did take me along for the ride on quite a few of his outings.

Our first camping trip was quite an adventure. We rented a U-haul camper, hooked it on the back of his pick-up truck, and proceeded to trek up into the North Georgia wilderness.

My uncle always swore I must have popped and snapped my whip nine hundred times. It was great to be out in the open like that, with nothing but pine trees and hills and fields and the blue sky to keep us company. It was not unlike coming home, and I know he always felt the same way. Both of us may have felt ill at east among the world that humanity has made, but neither of us felt anything but release and renewal when it came to the natural one.

And this held true even when a freak snowstorm unleashed itself on our last night out there. We wound up frozen in, and not only that, the heat in our camper had gone out. And since we had to have some ventilation, we had opened a vent the night before only to have snow filter down into our boots. Needless to say, we finally got out of there, but not before getting the camper free and then navigating down some icy back roads without even a hint of pavement.

And that was just the start of our adventures.

The time after that an unexpected tornado erupted and tore through the mountains and we had to drive our way out through that. Then one time his Ford truck got stuck in the mud and we had to wait for a jeep to come by and pull us out. Another time we had to walk into town because his battery had died, and we even had to crack our whips a few times to draw off a few wild dogs that were following us. Once we had to track a deer that one of his friends had shot during hunting season, navigating the deep woods under not the blaring sun but rather the watchful eyes of the stars. On a trip up around the Appalachians, we even ran into a wandering minstrel who took pictures of and wrote poems about the mountains and streams and wildlife around the area, selling them as bookmarks.

But it wasn't all just hiking and camping. There was a little treasure hunting every now and again, a search for that ever tantalizing bit of "fortune and glory." There are still photographs lingering in the bottom of a drawer somewhere that depict me doing all sorts of things. Some show me walking along freshly plowed fields looking for arrowheads, others show me crawling over ancient boulders that indians once used to grind corn, still others show me discovering the skull of a long dead animal.

While more a geologist than an archaeologist, Uncle Sonny did enjoy poking around old, deserted houses with a metal detector, hunting for any bits of precious metal that someone might have buried during the Great Depression or something. And though we never did find any Sankara Stones, we did discover a piece of a meteorite once that was polished black from its descent through the atmosphere. We did unearth some very interesting trinkets every now again, many of which I still have.

And even though he was something of an Indy, perhaps the most peculiar thing about Uncle Sonny was that he in fact loved snakes. Far from having an aversion to them, he'd caught them ever since he was a boy, navigating the back woods and creeks around his home. Then he learned everything he could about them through nature magazines and books and journals. He held a lifelong affinity for them, and while I don't think he was ever bitten by a poisonous one, he did receive his fair share of hits.

Long before the antics of the Crocodile Hunter, we were hunting snakes with a flashlight along the river banks inside of Stone Mountain Park, and I can recall him very clearly grabbing them at the base of the neck so they couldn't get their fangs into him. More often than not we'd let them go, of course, but it was quite exciting nonetheless.

Of course, all things change, and the two of us eventually drifted a little bit apart. Life has a tendency to do that, and it was no different for us. In the end, he didn't really travel into the woods that much, and was content to just play the lottery as opposed to actually going to dig up treasure. And when all was said and done, he spent a lot of time looking after my grandmother before she passed away a few years ago.

Unfortunately, this was also the time that his lifelong foe choose to make a reappearance, this substance that you drank and that altered your personality and experience, not to mention your most fundamental self. No, not the blood of the Kali that Indy was forced to drink, but rather alcohol. In my mind, though, the two are very similar, and very creepy.

While he had been sober for the better part of ten years, he eventually succumbed to its insidious flavors again. It was a battle he'd been fighting on and off again for the last few years, and yesterday afternoon, his liver and heart gave out and he lost.

And he was only three years older than Harrison Ford.

After the medical examiner was finished and the funeral home had taken him away, all I could do was give a little salute and mutter "semper fi." Well, a little later on I broke out my newest whip and gave him a twenty-one crack salute. It was the best I could manage at the time, and I'm sure he would have appreciated it.

So, in honor of those who didn't make it to the premiere date and in the hopes of gaining perspective, could I at least ask that everyone just forget about the reviews and conspiracies and plants for awhile and just enjoy the heck out of the KOTCS when it comes out next week?
 

Indyswede

New member
A really nice and warm rememberance.
Also a very well written post and one that your uncle would have been proud to hear.
I feel with you in these hard times.
 

Crack that whip

New member
I don't know what to say, other that I'm sorry for your loss.

He sounds like a wonderful guy to have had for an uncle, and your remembrance of him is beautiful. Thanks for sharing it with us.
 

DiscoLad

New member
Nurhachi1991 said:
Sorry to hear that man :( .............. But maybe they will show Indy 4 in heaven who knows. :hat:

Amen, Bro...Amen...And By-the-By Sorry about your uncle..Sounds like a nice guy, Hope it gets better from here.:hat:
 

stunrun

New member
wonderful post, and a wonderful tribute - sounds like a remarkable guy:hat: I'll spare a thought on Thursday, and enjoy this film i will!:whip:
 

Cagefighterkip

New member
my grandpa gave me an indy fedora when i was nine, and he took me riding horses at his old barn... he died when i was ten, we were rlly close. damn i loved that man...
warm tribute sir, and i know how you feel...
 

Euwhipides

New member
Thank you all very much. It just seemed appropriate to share. I hope no one minded.

Well, I just got back from the funeral. It is better now that that is indeed over with. I just had to write my own little eulogy. The official ones tend to be very dry and generic, and sometimes just flat off the mark. I mean, the pastor did the best he could, but still, it helps to know who you're talking about.

I do hope everyone enjoys the film. I know I will. I know my Uncle always wanted to go to the Happy Hunting Ground when he died, so maybe they will indeed have a screening there.

You guys are great.

:whip:
 

Canyon

Well-known member
My friend, I am very very sorry to hear of your loss.

That was a beautiful, moving and very eloquently written post. I take my hat off to you. :hat:
 

DocWhiskey

Well-known member
I'm sorry to hear that, friend. I too lost my Uncle a few months back. I never had a father, so he was a father figure in my life. Keep the good times with him close to your heart.

I'll follow your suggestion too and enjoy the heck out of KotCS.

When you're young you spend all your time thinking, 'who will I be?' Then for years you're busy shouting at the world 'This is who I am!' But lately I've been wondering - after I'm gone - who will they say I was?
 
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