DAY 68: SPOCK at CEDARWOOD

This is David Louis Mattingly/ aka "Spock".

He was my youngest favorite uncle. I was his oldest favorite niece.

He had a window-washing business toward the end of his life. He is pictured here at Cedarwood Restaurant, a tool of his trade flung across his shoulder.

He died too young - a victim of cancer - and a cruel form of that disease; his cancer was in his face and head.

He chose almost from the beginning not to comply with the recommended treatments from his doctors.

It really was difficult for his family and friends that he made the choices he did; but they were his to make.

At the funeral home, one of his best friends spoke. He told a story that made everyone just get down laughing. He described a time when we still had railroad tracks in Loretto and St. Francis. He said he and Spock and maybe a few other friends had a peculiar hobby...they liked to let some of the air out of their car tires so that they could ease up on the tracks --- and ride the rails. They could lay out on the hoods of their cars and the cars would just follow the rails through all the scenic beauty that was to be beheld between Loretto and New Hope.

On the most memorable of those occasions, the friends were riding the rails (and probably smoking a little marijuana) when they got the rude awakening that they were right on track to meet up with a train heading right toward them.

They barely got off the track in time, and the locomotive sped past them.

This is one of those stories that is so crazily dangerous that it's only funny at the funeral. I was there - and it WAS funny.

Spock spent some time in the metropolis of Holy Cross, Kentucky.

He somehow became locally famous for what the locals called the "Spock Burger".

There was once a big billboard out in a cow pasture near rural Holy Cross that touted out the Spock Burger.

I always thought it hilarious and wondered what out-of-towners/aka "tourists" must have thought when seeing that Star Trek-like billboard out in the middle of a cow pasture...in the middle of nowhere.

Here it is...and in my opinion, it's the best billboard ever in Marion County...