Old Fulton & My Dutch Uncle Al

I once had a Dutch Uncle—a real Dutch Uncle—his parents came from Holland. We thought he was rich because they had an automatic washer and an Oldsmobile. If we were in Clinton, IA, where they lived, he would take us across the river to Fulton, IL where he liked to go, sit on his parents' screened-in porch, drink beer and talk about fishing in Dutch with them and his brothers.

When they came up here in the big Olds, which I ran in the ditch out by Merlin and Marlene Boll's when he tried to teach me to drive, he raved about Mom's cinnamon rolls and swore, “Breakfast never tastes so good as in Cascade at Helen's,” and we felt rich. He believed it was the fresh eggs fried in bacon grease, my brothers fetched out from under the chickens in the old barn, now torn down.

He's gone now; they are all gone; I suppose even the screened-in porch in favor of a four-seasons room with air conditioning.

Cousin Patrick Van Kampen and I went back to Fulton this weekend and found it Dutch spiffy with a windmill the town imported from Holland, which functions and allows you see how the industrious Dutch harnessed sea breezes to grind their grain. The smell of the fish, which was pervasive then, is gone, except in the critical eyes and ears of those with the memories—our most valuable possessions?