Had a nice long chat with my only remaining brother today.  I won’t call him my little brother cuz, like me, he’s big and solid as a house.

Dr. Joe is a college professor in New Mexico.  We don’t talk nearly often enough.

We talked about the current family kerfuffle, and I elicited a belly laugh from him when I told him how Shithead and Drama Queen are now spouting nonsense on their blogs about how I’m faking my Parkinson’s disease for some reason, I’m not sure, but I think it’s to defraud the government somehow.  It was hard to tell with all the misspellings and poor punctuation.

Me, Joe and Bob, sometime in 1968.

I’ve always admired Joe on certain levels.  For one thing, the kid was born with a birth injury that rendered his right hand nearly useless and made him walk with a limp.  But our Dad, who instilled at least 6 of his 7 kids with pride in themselves and their family, wouldn’t let him use his disability as an easy out.  When Jack, Bob and I played baseball, Joe played baseball.  He would catch the ball in a glove in his left hand, toss the ball and glove into the air, snatch the baseball and throw it just about as quick as a two-handed player could pull the ball out of a glove.  When Jack, Bob and I played football, Joe played football.  Jack was the only one of us with the hands to play a skill position.  Bob, Joe and I were more of the “immovable object” variety.  Joe would hit.  And he would hit HARD!  In my senior year in high school, there were 3 Schmalfeldt boys on the defensive line.

I last saw him when I was at a “Droolfest” in Nashville.  He was working in Jackson, Tenn., at the time.  We ate steak.  Like men.

Joe’s a good boy, and I love him a lot.

NOW, TAKE THE POLL!