of bed and gave him a quick peck on the cheek as I put on the robe, and followed him into the kitchen, thoroughly enjoying the pattern of his firm ass cheeks bouncing against the tightly belted terrycloth robe.

I had not seen much of Uncle Frank’s cabin – nor of him – the night before, but there he was in the large kitchen, also clad in a terrycloth robe similar to the ones Todd and I wore. There was a large dark-wood refectory table in the middle of the room, set for three, and a steaming mug of coffee in front of each place. Uncle Frank was at the stove, which was in front of a huge natural-stone hearth similar to the wall-size stone fireplace in the living room. In front of the hearth, there was an old-style cast-iron stove that looked like something from the 1890’s (which, I found out later, it was – Uncle Frank had built the cabin, and the stone hearths, himself, and had scavenged much of the interior appointments, like the stove and the marble countertops and some chandeliers, from an old hotel in town that was being torn down – the wrecking crew were going to tear everything out, and Uncle Frank paid them off to let him in there for one weekend to salvage stuff, and then paid a couple of them extra to help him haul it away). Uncle Frank turned towards me, smiled and said, “Grab your plate and bring it over – it ain’t cordon bleu but nobody’s died yet from my cooking.”

There were two huge cast-iron skillets on the stove, one filled with scrambled eggs with cheese, green peppers, onions, and the other with bacon and link sausage. There was a pan of biscuits warming in the oven, and Todd and I fell to eagerly. Teenagers will usually eat anything that doesn’t eat them first, and our nighttime exertions had left us both ravenous.

We loaded up and sat at the huge dark-wood table, and gulped down the breakfast like wolves. Uncle Frank got up during our second plateful and cooked another big batch of the scrambled eggs and the sausage, and put more biscuits in, and made another pot of coffee. Halfway through our second go-round we began to relax a little, and Uncle Frank actually was able to pile his own plate high. I said to Uncle Frank, “Thank you so much – this is delicious! I’ll go for your cooking any day!”

Uncle Frank grinned and said, “It’s better over a campfire, but it’s ok here too – the cast iron gives it a special flavor.” He sat at the end of the table, and the terrycloth robe didn’t even begin to cover his massive chest. He was simply huge, with a wild mane of tawny-blonde hair flowing back off his forehead and down past his broad shoulders, and glittering green-glass eyes, in a strong face made stronger by a short beard of a slightly darker blonde than his hair. I had heard Todd give a report in class one year that said his family originally was from the midlands of England, and Todd’s grandparents could not have children. They had adopted first Todd’s father and then, several years later, adopted Todd’s Uncle Frank. The two men were not related by blood, either to Todd’s grandparents or to each other, and they could not have looked less alike.