My Uncle Art lived on the same road as I did, almost across the street from my cousin Calvin. Uncle Art was a bachelor. I don't think he was ever married and, while I am not certain of the history of his coming to live in a gas station, I believe that he used to run the gas station, only when the Wallace Fire destroyed most of the town, and the business rebuilt a mile or so away, to be nearer the main railroad and Highway 41, he wasn't getting a lot of business. At some point his house burned, I believe, and rather than rebuilding the house he moved into the gas station, which was no longer in operation anyhow. For a bachelor, I think he kept the place pretty clean but he was the only person I was ever to know who had a pit in the middle of his living room. Uncle Art would collect bicycle parts and build bicycles out of them for the kids in Wallace, most of whom he was related to. Of course, he could also repair bicycles. Although my cousin Calvin took full credit for it, I am pretty sure that Uncle Art helped him convert a bicycle into a motorcycle when he was twelve or so, which wasn't fair, given that he was my uncle, not Calvin's. I know he played a part in the go-karts that we made out of discarded gasoline-powered washing machines when everyone began replacing them with electric. The other thing that Uncle Art did, which was truly amazing, was that he would carve things like peacocks, and cages with balls inside of them, all out of a single block of wood. He also carved people, animals, and other things, all of which were done very well. Uncle Art died of cancer not too long after my mom died. His death really confused me because I had been told that he had gone into the hospital for "water on the knee," and I wondered how the hell anyone could get sick from having water on their knee. When he died from it, I was wondering whether I dared go swimming or take a bath. As I learned many years later, "water on the knee" was used to express the condition of fluid accumulating on the knee joint, one of the causes being a tumor. I don't know the details, but he never came home again.