"A little crease in the door," he said over the patter on the metal roof.

"True."

"Paint’s pretty good, though. How old is it?"

"’99."

"Not bad for 7 years old. How much was it?"

"About five," I said.

"And how many miles?" he said more to himself than me as he opened the door, sat down in the driver’s seat, squinted at the odometer. "Fifty-nine, three-fifty-seven," he read aloud.

"Had 57 when I got it," I said, looking over his shoulder.

He held the steering wheel at 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock, staring through the windshield. "So you really like it?"

"So far, so good."

"How does it handle?" He reached for the stick shift.

"Pretty well," I said as the little miscreant ducked into the garage in my black rubber boots and announced that supper was ready.

"How’s my favorite seventh- grader?" Uncle Chet spun slowly out of the car and straightened his back.

"Hungry for blueberry pancakes." She pointed toward the house. "I’ll bet I can eat even more than you."

"All that trumpet-playing must have given you an appetite," he said, and they fell in step. I closed the overhead door behind us, followed them through the drizzle.

"Especially when we’re marching. We went more than half a mile yesterday," she said, opening the back door; "although you weren’t there to watch."

"Couldn’t be," he said and sat down to unlace his shoes.

"Hi, Uncle Chet. Want to see my pet snake?" Buddy said.

"OK."

"What do you mean, you ’couldn’t’?" she persisted.

"I was a Memorial Day speaker in my home town," he said. "We had an Army colonel from Oklahoma, representing the brass, a mother who’d lost a son in Iraq, representing the bereaved, and me, the former company clerk, representing the old grunts."

"And what did you say?" I asked.

"Well, I followed the colonel, who talked about the nobility of the war, selflessness on the battlefield, that sort of thing. I was supposed to talk about veterans’ benefits, which have been slashed by Bush & Co., but after listening to more than enough, I spent my time reviewing the Gulf of Tonkin incident."

"Here’s my snake!" Buddy put the green rubber likeness in Uncle Chet’s lap.

"Yikes!’ He sat up straight and shook the toy by the neck.

"Pancakes are getting cold," said Hon, who was at the stove minding two skillets.

"What’s the Gulf of Tonkin incident?" the little miscreant asked as we sat down at the table.

"A big lie that sucked us into the Vietnam War," Uncle Chet said, spreading a napkin in his lap. "In 1964, President Johnson said our ships had been attacked by the North Vietnamese, and he used that as an excuse to bomb them. In the next 10 years, a million people died, and even though there was plenty of courage on the battlefield, lives were lost for a lie."

"Just like the ’weapons of mass destruction lie’ that led us into Iraq," Alice said.

"I saw through that, mostly because of the Gulf of Tonkin lie," Uncle Chet said.

"So you’re saying Johnson was as bad as Bush?" Hon said, joining us at the table.

"Nowhere near," Uncle Chet said. "Johnson had redeeming qualities: the ’war on poverty’ and the civil-rights bills. He was a mixed bag, but I didn’t worry he was becoming a dictator.

"Bush has me worried. Will he go peacefully, or only if his brother is installed? Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote in Rolling Stone that the election of 2004 was apparently stolen in Ohio, and sometimes I wonder whether we’ve already crossed the line."

———

Cooperstown News Bureau Reporter Tom Grace is traveling with his Uncle Chet, who he says is imaginary. Grace’s column appears twice monthly.