Uncle Bert
My dad's brother [UNCLE] Bert passed on a few years ago. Uncle Bert and my father were thick as thieves when they were little boys. They were always getting into trouble. My dad was always trying to keep up with bert given his hip issues. I have awesome pix of Uncle Bert and Dad as kids. Uncle Bert was a smart arse so to speak - he was always cracking on everyone. As grown ups, Dad and Uncle Bert were not as close but did keep up with one another on the phone being that they were 1000 miles from each other. I will say that Uncle Bert made the BEST Christmas cards every year when his kids were young. He was a commercial artist (what they used to call graphic designers back in the day) for IGA in NY State. We used to drive all the way through Canada from Detroit to go visit them in Lafayette NY. Always in the Summers. Summers in up state NY are the most beautiful non humid, verdant days on the planet. Uncle Bert had a house out on land that seemed endless. When we would go visit, we would go walking back behind the house and get lost for hours. Uncle Bert loved his dogs. Because we weren't allowed to have dogs growing up, our exposure to dogs at a young age was mainly through the White side of our family. He had beagles at first, then a St. Bernard, then a Sheep Dog, then a Bichon Frise. I'm sure I've missed a few in there. Uncle Bert was the type that LOVED a good joke. When personal computers became the norm in the early 90s, he embraced the MAC and loved sending jokes via email. But these weren't your run of the mill Dad jokes that were clean and had a good punchline. These were literally the raunchiest, dirtiest, sometimes nudity involved jokes. Most involved boobs. He was relentless sending them, but some of them were pretty funny. I always gave him my personal email, because they were not SAFE FOR WORK. So the funniest story I have about Uncle Bert is that one of my many jobs, he got a hold of my work email. This was when I worked at Moxie, and my boss was Jason Dempsey - a Vanderbilt graduate who seemed prim and proper on the outside, but had a dark side that he never let out at work. So no matter how many times I told Uncle Bert to send to my personal email, his email program kept defaulting to my Moxie work email. So, I created a filter to filter out his emails so that I did not accidentally click on one when anyone was standing over my shoulder thinking I was surfing porn at work. This system worked well while I worked at Moxie. But then I quit my job. The policy at Moxie was to forward your email to your boss for up to 6 months post departure until most folks knew you were gone. There was one catch - all filters were removed. My boss Dempsey got my email complete and unfiltered. So about 6 months after I left, I attended a Moxie alumni gathering and Dempsey was there. His first question to me was "Who is Bert White?" And I was like ummmmmm, Why?. And it dawned on me - Dempsey was getting Uncle Bert's dirty jokes. I was like - 'I'm so sorry I'll call him and tell him to stop'. Dempsey said - 'No don't! They are the highlight of my day - I just have to see what Uncle Bert is sending me next!' HILARIOUS!!!
