Uncle Ray

Uncle Ray is my Dad's uncle. So does that make him my...great uncle? I dunno. However...he is a really cool guy. He's still alive. He flies in from Florida every so often for the deer hunting season, and fills me up with amazing stories.
When my dad was young, Ray and his brothers would take him to get flounders. They use a long pole that is forked at the end (called a gig), and stab the flounder and pull it up and put it in the boat. The scary part is that they did this at night. Every time the river would come by a creek, alligators would see the bright light, and follow the boat.
They would also catch catfish. Only...the catfish don't die for a couple of hours, so they flounder about making huge "uuuhh" noises. Must be kind of scary, in the dark, alligators following, and catfish moaning.
To make matters worse...if you took young reckless Uncle Ron with you...you might get into trouble. Ron was reckless. He'd sometimes use the gig to try to stab cottonmouth snakes...not smart, because they'd start crawling up the gig, and Ron would have to hurry and try to scrape it off on a passing rock, or there'd be trouble.
Ray continuously loved to tell stories like these: Uncle Steve (my uncle, my dad's brother) fell asleep...and he was pretty close to the surface of the water at the back of the boat...and an alligator was following. Ray jokes that they were using Steve as bait...
Or about the time where my dad asked if the stabbed flounder would bite him if he put his finger in its mouth. Ray said, "Why don't you try it?" my dad stuck in his thumb, and it got a dark bruise for weeks.
When I was little, I asked Ray if he'd ever been stung by a jellyfish. The answer was yes. All across his belly. I asked him what he did about it...he said, "Heck, I didn't know what to do...so I just rubbed my cigarette butt in it (the wound)."