This is my great uncle Robert Trueblood around 1990. He had been living near the Arizona State University campus in a garage. He had very cheap rent and it was air conditioned and heated.
I remember visiting him from time-to-time in that garage where it reeked like garlic. He was of the philosophy that bathing was unhealthy so he would only bath maybe once a week. He was born around 1920 but seemed to have a lot of the values and outlook of a beatnik from the 1960s. He had claimed that the garlic was good for his pores as was not bathing but once a week.
I had considered going to Arizona State University where I had also been offered a scholarship in 1982-- instead of BYU-- but I had thought that I would have to explain my great Uncle Bob to any friends that I might back then. (I only lasted at BYU for about ten days and then dropped out before taking any tests. I graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1989).
My LSAT scores were in the 90th percentile and I had two BAs with GPAs of 3.71 and 3.73 or around there. So, I got into a number of law schools but only BYU and ASU offered scholarships. ( I could use these same scores in 1986 when I applied to about 12 law schools getting into all of them but Stanford and Marquette).
My great uncle Robert Trueblood for instance once ordered a burger very rare while I was with him at a restaurant near ASU. I also chose a burger but not so rare.
He was paying. He insisted. But when the order came he dug in, decided that the waiter gave him the wrong burger and promptly grabbed mine and devoured that.
We had had a weekly correspondence by mail from around mid 1976 through the day he shot himself near Phoenix in March of 1992.
He had not wanted to bother anyone so he drove his car to the funeral home grounds and shot himself in the parking lot in his car.
He had had some very bad breaks in his life but did go out thinking of others. He had some very painful disease in the last years of his life.
The last month of his life he had visited us in California and I had picked up that something was very wrong -- especially when he asked me if I wanted his car-- but unfortunately I had not followed up on my thoughts about what might happen.
I did remember to keep a close eye on my food though when we both ordered clam strips at the restaurant in Bodega Bay that February of 1992.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-B...92902960723600