Uncle Minot (youngsters:non fiction, 1867 words)
Author: Lou Hill	Added: May 26 2002	Views/Reads: 4432/2580	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
My Uncle, Minot Austin, appears in many of my stories so here is a little biography of a real old time Vermonter

UNCLE MINOT 

Minot William Austin was the only son of my great-grandparents Sarah and
William Austin.  Gram Austin used to tell me that as a child he was a 
cut-up and a clown. 

Minot and his mother had devised a language called "pup-hash" when he
was small.  All the vowels retained their original sound while the 
consonants were assigned a sound similar to those in phonetics.  For 
example the alphabet would sound like this: A-Bub-Ces-Dud-E and so on.  
On the first day of school the teacher  asked Minot for his name.  He 
replied "Minot Austin."  Apparently the teacher did not understand him, 
or did not hear him, so she asked him to repeat it.  Minot, who was 
never noted for his patience with those he considered fools, fired up 
and said "Minot Austin, Mum-I-Nun-O-Tut A-U-Sus-Tut-I-Nun."  Things 
went down hill from there. 

To my way of thinking, Minot had the perfect life.  He never had a
regular job in all the time I remember him.  He hunted and fished 
whenever he felt like it and in the years before WW II made a fair 
amount of money trapping mink and muskrat and from fox pelts. A prime 
fox pelt was worth $30 or $40, a huge sum of money in those days.  
Frequently he would paint or paper or do a job of carpentry.  He was a 
meticulous craftsman and took pride in doing a good job.  Believe me, 
his standards were high. 

He painted my grandmother's house in West Enosburg one summer when I was
around eight years old.  It hadn't seen paint in at least forty years 
and was covered with little dimples of dried-out old paint.  He had to 
scrape the entire house by hand (no sand-blasters in those days), then 
replace all the old rotten clapboards and nail all the loose ones in 
place. 

Finally he was ready to mix the paint.  It seemed as though he stirred
for hours.  Everything was done very methodically and very slowly. I 
remember being amazed when he dripped a few drops of black paint into 
the gallon of white he was mixing to make it "whiter." 

He did move pretty fast when he stirred up some hornets	 living in the
gable end of the house.  They came after him, he dropped his brush, put 
his feet outside of the ladder legs and slid down to the ground slicker 
than anything I had seen then or since.  Of course the fact that I was 
lying on the ground overcome with hysterics didn't improve his humor 
any. 

He didn't find it too humorous either when I spilled a bucket of paint.
I had teased and teased to be allowed to paint.   So finally, to shut 
me up, Minot relented and let me have a brush and about a third of a 
gallon bucket of paint.  He was very insistent about technique.  Even 
though it was only a prime coat, I couldn't leave any brush marks.  I 
lasted about five minutes before knocking over the paint.  Boy, did he 
cuss.  Minot was never obscene but he sure was profane.  I did learn to 
paint without leaving brush marks though. 

Uncle Minot encouraged my love of hunting and fishing.  I think that
there was something in the Austin genes because almost all of the male 
descendants of Sarah and William love the outdoors. He took me down to 
the branch and taught me to fish.  It was right out of a Norman 
Rockwell painting.  The old man and the boy using a branch with twine 
and a safety pin.  I caught fish even if they were minnows.  I was 
about five at the time and was hooked for life. 

Later on Minot gave me my first shotgun.  It was a single-shot
Springfield 12 Gauge that had been issued to the Vermont Home Guard 
during WWII.  It had a long barrel with a Poly-Choke and he cut the 
stock down and added a recoil pad.  Even with the recoil pad that thing 
killed from both ends. You had to pull back the hammer to cock it for 
firing.  I developed a bad habit when making a snap shot at partridge 
(Ruffed Grouse not the Family.)  For some reason I would leave my thumb 
next to the hammer after cocking it. Then when I would pull the trigger 
my thumb would jamb into my nose bringing tears to my eyes and on a few 
occasions a nosebleed.  I soon cured myself of that habit. I also 
remember on several occasions literally shooting from the hip.  It 
usually happened in extremely cold weather.  I would be walking through 
the woods and a partridge would flush.  I would start to bring the 


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