Rhu

The late Jack Hale was our stepbrother. Finally done in by a nephritis curse he bore for too many years, Jack, Jackaroo, Rhubarb, or Rhu as we ended up calling him, was a character.

He ran a steo 8 track installation company here in the raccoon district next the RR tracks where the LaCasa weatherization branch is now located.

If we had a nickel for every hole in car door interiors he drilled for the new speakers of music avantegarde motorists, we would have enough money to buy his grave a huge floral arrangement. We should do that anyway.

Jackaroo got his nickname from Mo Tio, master resilient floor installer for whom he earlier worked, breathing - as the SRN editor did too - a lot of the asbestos dust from the vinyl-asbestos tile cutter machine. No visible affects from that here yet.

We shortened the Jackaroo to just plain Rhu, and he remained Rhu with us till he died. After he went legally blind, Jack got his degree from Carroll College. He lived with his wife one block east of the union.

Once, Jack had a moped that he really shouldn't have been operating. we bought it from him in one of his sager moments. Then, he took to walking about with his red and white blind man's cane. He was crossing the street at East Avenue and Broadway by the Congregational Church when a driver got too close to him in the crosswalk.

Jack had to step back although he was properly tapping his right-of-way. He raised his cane and brought it down mightily on the hood of that car, while reading the driver off. "YOU @#$%*!!"

It left a big dent, he told us in satisfaction. The offender decided to just kept on driving.......

As we enter Lent, we think of Rhubarb, while the church now procures its palm branches to wave. He was a bit of a magician and a palmist in his own right. And a pirate.