Gas Station Boudin

My Uncle Bob is pretty much the best. He taught me to love the Rolling Stones long before I could walk. He once threw me over his shoulder to get me through a gauntlet of water moccasins surrounding some crappy shack he and a fellow grad student rented outside of Breaux Bridge. He served on the UL English faculty with, among others, John Kennedy Toole. He took me to some black market pet store when I was four and let me wander just far enough to have a spider monkey pull out the drawstring from my hoodie. He had a motorcycle and now rides a scooter to campus, where he has long served as an English professor. He is a Tennessee Williams scholar who founded the Williams festival in New Orleans and whose forward can be seen in paperback versions of The Glass Menagerie. He loves to fish even though has endured immediate and massive seasickness most of his life. He is about the funniest person I know, and he has been a profoundly meaningful role model for me in his capacity as a husband, a father, and a man of the world.

And he’s a great cook. Here is Dr. Robert Bray in the local paper.