Uncle Bus

Raymond Palmer Martin 
Jan 5, 1926 - Nov 22, 2008

The third child of Irvin Henry Martin and Rose Haeb, Raymond Palmer Martin was born on the cold, clear morning of Tuesday, January 5, 1926. He was named for a friend of Irv's, Raymond Palmer, who served with him in France during The Great War.  Although his name was Raymond, everyone called him Bus.  This nickname came from his Aunt Gertie, who when first seeing him, said, "He's a real buster."

Uncle Bus was an avid baseball fan.  The Chicago White Sox was his favorite team.  When he was a child, the family didn't own a radio, so he would go down the street to Butch's Grocery Store, sit on the floor in front of their radio and listen to the game.  It seems like there was always a baseball or basketball game on the radio when I was at Grandma's house.  To this day hearing baseball on the radio takes me back to my Grandmother's kitchen.

Uncle Bus didn't like school, and couldn't wait to turn 16 so he could quit.  In 1944, at age 18, he enlisted in the Army.  After the war he was stationed in Japan until his discharge in 1947.  Upon his discharge from the Army he completed his GED and then went to work for American Coating Mills.

Wanting to be like his Uncle John, who was a life-long bachelor, Uncle Bus didn't marry until he was 39.  Like his mother and uncles he had a green thumb and was a prolific gardener.  He always wore plaid flannel shirts, both winter and summer.  He was practical, unsentimental, and funny.  When he turned 65, he threw his GED certificate away because he was pretty sure he would never need it.  Despite his lack of formal education, he was a smart guy.  He invested his money wisely, enabling him to retire in his 50s, even though most of his working years he never earned more that five dollars an hour.  He felt the same way about early retirement as he did about turning 16.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time at Grandma's house, and thereby with Uncle Bus.  He taught me how to play War and Solitaire with playing cards.  He made hand-drawn games of Hang Man and Battleship for us to play.  He taught me to play Cribbage and to read a slide-rule.  He was good at logic puzzles and would lay out matchsticks to help me solve them.  I never got the hang of those logic puzzles, and the answers still elude me 50 years later.

He always had a funny, dry sense of humor, even in the last couples of years of his life, when he was beginning show symptoms of dementia.  His wife put their house up for sale so they could move closer to her family.  He didn't want to move, so when potential buyers showed up to see the house he would tell them that he wasn't moving and came with the house.  I'm pretty sure that despite the dementia he knew what he was doing because he laughed whenever someone told the story.