Uncle Leo and Aunt Alice

I'm sure I could go on and on about this family.  I loved my Aunt Alice and Uncle Leo.  They were totally not your typical people.  They really lived OUTSIDE the Box... especially for the 50's and 60's when people had certain standards they were expected to live by.  Uncle Leo was just a free-spirit.  He didn't want anyone telling him what to do or how to do it.  My first memeries of him was working for the railroad.  How cool is that!!   I have no idea what he did for the railroad...but I knew he worked for the railroad.  Once I went to visit them and was sent home on a train... since he could put me on the train for free.  It was a bit exciting and a lot scarey riding on the train all by myself.  I still remember him telling me not to get off the train until they said San Francisco... not South SF...but SF!!  
Mom and Dad loved sending me down to stay with the Dunn's.  Judy got to go to Aunt Mildred's house  (at TOTALLY normal family)...but me, no, I got to stay with the most dysfunctional family either the Tucker's or the Beaton's had ever known.  I feel to this day it's a miracle that I'm still alive after some of those visit.  I remember Dominic (now Bill) aiming an arrow at me with his bow and arrow.  It was one of those REAL arrows...nice and sharp.  Luckily his mom saw him and stopped him from shooting me.  Another time Uncle Leo had a bunch of us kids in a car...took us "somewhere", he went inside to talk to "someone".  Dominic and I found a box of 22 shells in the car and a hammer.  Dominic told me the shells would make a loud noise if we hit them hard enough with the hammer.  We proceeded to beat the heck out of those shells... I'm sure it was only the Grace of God that those shells didn't go off.  Uncle Leo was pretty upset when he found us doing it.  All the little kids in the car were just hanging out the windows watching us. 
But...with the Dunn's there was always something going on.  I remember Uncle Leo coming to our home in Novato... piling all of us kids (about a dozen kids) into his old panel wagon and going up the hills behind our house.  We loved it!!  Dad would NEVER drive up on the hills!!  Now that I'm an adult I realize that dad wouldn't because he repected the flora and fauna--as well as Private Property!!   But private property never stopped Leo.  Once Aunt Alice wanted some lettuce for dinner... so Leo piled us kids into his car, drove us to a lettuce field and told us to each pick a head of lettuce.  I remember one of us asking if it was OK..and he said "heck yeah...that's why it's growing out there".    AND..even worse, once when Leo became a truck driver (for Safeway, no less) he stopped by our house with the truck and proceeded to open the trailer and haul in a couple of boxes of mayonaise and fruit.  Dad was having a fit, but Uncle Leo never paid him any mind.  He said it was OK...he'd just say a couple boxes got lost.  Poor Dad...I can still see his face, he was horrified at taking stolen goods from Leo!!