The rabbi, who had sneezed and backed into the loose elevation lever, leapt out of the way of my tumbling uncle and fell into my wife's lap. His "oh my god!" echoed the only three words any of the other attendees could assemble at a moment such as this.

My first instinct was to burst into laughter, as I ducked the flying rosebuds and thorny stems and avoided the puddle of water accumulating under our pew. However, the rabbi had hit that point in his sermon when even the staunchest in the crowd were now welling tears. Here I was at an emotional quandary between hilarity and sadness and the only thing I could do was shake my head and sputter. Uncle Walter had always boasted he would get a laugh out of mourners at a funeral.

With the grace of a drill sergeant, the funeral director grabbed my brother and me by the collar and together we had the coffin back on the collapsed trolley, with Uncle Walter faced toward heaven, before the three pews of senior citizens in the rear had stopped coughing.

"Who put the shoes on him," I stage-whispered to the black-garbed master of ceremonies, "where the hell did they find them?"
The funeral director covered his mouth and shook his head. "They weren't there this morning. I watched my assistants dress your uncle myself. And those are not the black, laced shoes we were given."

The rabbi, now finally consoled by my wife, walked over and put his arm around my shoulder. "We should continue." He threw a glance to the crowd in the rear. "I'd hate to get some them any more excited than they already are."
I nodded and walked back to my wife and brother. "Jackie," I whispered in his ear, "did you do this?"
"Yeah Phil, and I greased the lever on the rolling cart as well. Jeezus, what the hell kind of a question is that?" My brother shook his head and turned to face the guest of honor. He whispered under a choking laugh, "Man, they do look good on him!"

Uncle Walter's link to my genealogical tree was tenuous at best. He was some distant great-aunt's only grandson who was the sole survivor of a town without vowels from one of the murderous Russian pogroms. The only proof of his lineage was the faded photograph of the great-aunt he kept in a bronze locket that hung around his neck even now.

He'd worked the oddest of jobs - night watchman at a local bank that had been shuttered and closed for several months, cat walker for the madam of a neighborhood brothel - until he was able to afford the passage to cross the ocean in the gloomy bowels of a cargo ship. On the steamship to America, packed with dozens of other teenage refugees, Uncle Walter befriended a young girl who became Aunt Tessie before the two immigrants reached the shores of freedom.

Aunt Tessie was lucky enough to have adult friends from her village in Russia who had escaped several years before the revolution. The couple lived with them in a two-room apartment in Brooklyn where they grew into their twenties and became educated in the ways of their new country. Uncle Walter worked in a variety of jobs; never spending more than a few months with the same employer before his growing repertoire of practical jokes would lead to his termination.

His warehouse position at the liquor distributor came to a crashing end when, drunk from drinking from the water cooler he'd filled with vodka, his fellow carton haulers tried to juggle the inventory. Uncle Walter, the only one sober enough to run, left the place with his pockets full of undamaged bottles.

He found employment in a large office building just across the river, where he started at an accounting firm on the top floor. My uncle flipped the two color ribbons in the adding machines upside down, so that fortunes were suddenly reversed, and removed one of the casters from a well-endowed secretary's office chair, forcing her to bend constantly to shift the seat. With the loss of that job, he moved down, one flight at a time, until ending up as the assistant to the maintenance man in the basement.

By their third anniversary, Aunt Tessie, who'd been working several days a week as waitress, had saved enough money to purchase two tickets for the Ringling Bros. Circus at the new Madison Square Garden. She and my uncle walked along the midway, staring at the carnies and wiping cotton candy from each other's nose. They stood back from the red, white, and blue cages of snarling tigers and menacing lions, but Uncle Walter insisted they shake hands with the monkeys.

With a ringing of bells, they turned and ran toward the big top - the main event was about to begin. Aunt Tessie found their seats and they wiggled their way down the row, staring as spotlights illuminated the crowd.

The music exploded from the orchestra as loud as a fire engine screaming past them on a busy street. Every light in the tent went on and thousands of children jumped from their seats, spilling popcorn and soda with glee. The stars of the show - high wire dancers, lion tamers in jodhpurs and black leather boots, waving braided whips in the air, and the three human cannonballs - all marched into the center ring to a standing ovation.

Then came the clowns. My uncle swore he counted over a hundred of them at that first performance. Aunt Tessie told me Uncle Walter was so excited that he reached over to grab her and, not realizing he had a handful of cotton candy, squished the sugary mass into her dress and all over her shoulder-length black hair. She didn't notice the mess for over an hour.

Uncle Walter watched the parade of clowns dance into the spotlights, honking their horns, blowing off smoke bombs, and marching in their long, floppy shoes. It was as though he'd seen the messiah smile at him. The clowns danced by their seats, tossing brightly colored balls of glittering red and gold in the air, but Uncle Walter's eyes were fixed on the pontoons they bounced on from ring to ring. One clown pushed another in a baby carriage that held only the second clown's billowing butt. His shoes, a melange of yellow and purple spots on red leather, flopped in front of him as the carriage was wheeled around the ring. He looked at Aunt Tessie, waving his hand in front of her eyes to get her attention. She turned to him and said, "Yes!" as a smile spread across her face and her cheeks flushed crimson.

They joined the circus that night, hurrying home to pack their few belongings into pillowcases and to say goodbye to the friends who'd put them up for several years. When the Ringling Bros. private train pulled out of Grand Central Terminal at 2:18 in the morning, Uncle Walter and Aunt Tessie were seated with the scrub boys and roustabouts, watching the sleeping city fade in the distance.

Every night, for almost thirty years, until the third divorce, they were the first two clowns into the ring. Aunt Tessie would count back from five, listening to the ringmaster's voice enthrall the "children of all ages," and on zero, she and Uncle Walter would race to the center ring, hand in hand. There, my aunt would tug several yards of silk handkerchiefs from what appeared to be his ear, but those with sharp eyes could see the fabric spooling out from under his silver derby and through a wire loop in his auburn wig. Just as the last piece of cloth pulled free, Uncle Walter would race across the ring and tumble over a group of clowns who had collided from several directions.

Unfortunately for Aunt Tessie, Uncle Walter had a libido without a governor and a penchant for the wives of public officials. Opening night at a Ringling Bros. performance was always attended by the mayor and his wife, city council members and their spouses, the local sheriff and her husband - all fair game for my lecherous uncle.

The circus provided a roped-off VIP section, several rows of seats always setup on the right side of the middle ring. Uncle Walter would untangle himself from the chaos mid-ring and dance over to the group of politicians and their friends, singling out the prettiest of the women in that section as he came. He'd honk the bulbous horn glued to his nose and climb into the bleachers, headed for his target. Once eye-level with the woman, Uncle Walter would squeeze a bulb in his pocket and spray the unsuspecting woman with water from a hole in a plastic daisy pinned to his blouse.

As the woman squealed, and her companions erupted in guffaws, Uncle Walter yanked a bright orange towel from his back pocket and made a concerted effort to clean the water from the poor victim, spending an inordinate amount of time and concentration on her breasts. Usually the husband or boyfriend would laugh along until he noticed that several other clowns had stopped in their performance and were watching Uncle Walter at work.
There were a number of occasions where my uncle came close to having some part of his face rearranged or a limb bent into an awkward angle as he was shoved out of the stands. However, his dalliance did not end with a single squirt from a plastic flower. The clowns, in costume of course, walked the midway and performed tricks for small groups of circus patrons once the main event had concluded in the three rings.

Uncle Walter followed the VIPs from the huge tent and managed to wedge himself between his target and her beau as they walked eating caramel-covered popcorn. A well-placed squeeze alerted the woman of the clown's presence and, in many instances, gave rise to a thrill. The young trophy wives were eager to slip away while a husband advanced his political career or exhibited his physical strength along the carnie line.

Aunt Tessie, otherwise involved in her clown duties somewhere else on the circus grounds, was unaware of my uncle's traipsing and philandering until one night just outside of Kansas City.

The show had gone well, even with three clowns laid up with the flu. Roger, the baby carriage driver, had substituted a small white dog for his usual passenger and Davis, whom everyone called Binky, even without his costume, managed to perform the three hoops trick with just one other clown and still elicit laughs.

Uncle Walter had been working on a tall redhead who sat next to the mayor and flipped her fingers with her head thrown back whenever his honor let out a raucous belly laugh. She grabbed Uncle Walter's hand when he tried to clean the water from her blouse and shoved it down to her lap laughing, "Clean it all up!"

After the show, the mayor and several collared men of the church, slipped out behind the main tent to smoke cigars. Uncle Walter found the redhead filing her nails while she sat on an empty beer keg. Aunt Tessie found them both a half hour later, sprawled on a blanket underneath the grandstand when she went back to the main arena to retrieve the last of her props.

There were no words between the two clowns that night. Uncle Walter slept in the lobby of the motel, leaving the bedroom to his wife. In the morning, as the last of the roustabouts were loading the train, Aunt Tessie found Uncle Walter in the coffee shop sipping a hot cocoa to ward off the chill.
"Are we not married?" she asked. "Have we not been husband and wife for almost ten years?"
Uncle Walter put down the cup, rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and muttered, "I'm sorry," without looking up.
"Sorry? That's your answer? I'm sorry Tessie, but I can't keep my putz in my pants." She dropped his wallet on the table and the room key into his cup. "Go, Mr. Sorry. Get your things packed and onto the train. When we get to the next town, you'll bunk alone." She put her hands on the table and stared into his face. "Or you can sleep with some other floozy. But as of this morning, we are divorced."

It took three weeks of roses, chocolates, and apologies, but Uncle Walter was able to convince his ex-wife to be remarried on the train from Houston to Albuquerque. The following weekend, Uncle Walter seduced the governor's daughter in her father's limousine while the driver enjoyed the bottle of whisky he'd accepted as a bribe.

The second time he was caught with his pants down and nose honking, Uncle Walter had just convinced a young councilman's soon-to-be bride that what he kept in his pants was as large as his shoes. Aunt Tessie, searching for him to get ready for the late show, proved him a liar before the woman could take off her clothes.

Aunt Tessie divorced him as they walked from the main tent, with custard pie still dripping from his face, and remarried him over two bottles of vodka an hour later when Uncle Walter slipped the diamond ring onto her finger.
"Where did you get this trinket, you scoundrel? We barely make enough for vodka on Sunday and you are spending your pay envelope on jewels?" Aunt Tessie held the ring at arm's length and let the twinkle from the gaslight skip across his face.
Uncle Walter finished his bottle and tossed it into the woods. "I won it in a bet with a rich man who did not believe I could pull silver dollars from his nose." He belched and then continued, "I took two from each nostril and dropped them in the palm of his hand." Uncle Walter laughed, "Then I yanked three from his zippered fly and told him the only way I could put them all back was through the crack of his ass!"
Aunt Tessie frowned. "And he bet you they wouldn't all fit?"
"No, but his girlfriend did. And when the man refused to let me try, I told the girl she'd lost the bet." Uncle Walter grabbed her bottle and took a swig before she could snatch it back. "She dropped the diamond ring into my pocket and just walked away."
"And I am to believe this tale from your lips?" Aunt Tessie took a drink and stuffed the open bottle in her apron. "We've been together for thirty-one years; if you have secrets from me, you just invented them yesterday."
Uncle Walter waved his hand. "Feh, no secrets from Tessie." He leaned in and pursed his lips. "Give us kiss, we're newlyweds again."
Aunt Tessie punched him in the nose and went to bed.

They parted for good just after my dad was wounded in Korea. Uncle Walter had taken to long walks at the end of the day's shows, ostensibly to smoke a cigar. Aunt Tessie had never given in to allowing the smell of tobacco to come between them and truthfully had little idea of the time needed to smoke the average Cuban cigar. When the ten-minute walks reached the two-hour mark, she decided to follow the trail of his odors to get some feel for what possessed him to take so long.

The stench of his cigar left the fairgrounds and traveled several blocks north toward the high school. A light in the principal's office clearly silhouetted a man with a derby and round nose and a shorthaired woman flailing her arms on a table.
Aunt Tessie picked up a rock and hurled it through the window. Moments later, Uncle Walter came running down the brick steps of the school, bleeding from several small cuts on his face. The following morning he woke up alone; a note was stuffed into his white and red clown shoes.

The words were obvious and bear no repeating here, but in essence, Aunt Tessie didn't care how many diamond rings he pulled out of rich men's asses, she was gone and the sooner he dropped dead, the better.

Uncle Walter stayed with the circus for another fifteen years after she left, and if you believe every one of his anecdotes, "screwed 'em until his putz dried up."

As we were his only living relatives in America, Uncle Walter made his way back to Long Island with all his equipment when he retired. He lived in our guest room for several years and until my wife's patience ran out. He would take great pleasure in tickling my son until the boy wet myself and then immediately scream for her to come and remove the soiled child from his lap. Fortunately, as the boy got older, he occasionally saw in him an ally for a clever prank.

For Thanksgiving dinner one year, Uncle Walter found one of his compressed air canisters in the storage shed. It was a small one that he used to stuff under his clown hat and open with a tug on a length of fishing line to inflate a large balloon. He enlisted the boy's help to distract my wife while he stuffed the device into the turkey and carried it himself to the table. Just as I began to carve, Uncle Walter yanked on the cord. The bird farted and then shot down the table, jet-propelled by the tank in its tush. The huge wooden salad bowl stopped the turkey before it could fall into my wife's lap, but not before the cranberry sauce splattered my brother, Jackie as it rocketed past.

Uncle Walter wore his white and red clown shoes in our house only once. It was the last Halloween before my son graduated college and the circus was in town for a three-week stand at fairgrounds. He'd taken the shoes from the shed and marched around all afternoon in them. As dinner time came around, he took them off and stood the floppy shoes next to the front door to air them out. Curiosity got the best of me and I laid them down and slid my foot into the left one.

I didn't have a chance to get the right one in position when Uncle Walter, all five and half feet and sixty-odd years old, lifted me by my armpits, shook my body until the left shoe fell off, and sat me down, barefoot, on the floor.
"Never, for any reason whatsoever put on another clown's shoes." He took my face in his hands and brought us nose to nose. "Those shoes are what makes me a clown." Uncle Walter tilted my head down to look at his chest. "Inside here, I'm just your Uncle Walter. But when I put on my shoes, I am a clown, and every clown is special." He let go of my face and reached for his white and red floppy shoes. "And these are my shoes, to be worn by only me... forever."

My brother and I convinced Uncle Walter, once my wife had finally reached her limit, to take up residence in a home for seniors. Over those fading years of his life, he had unloaded his memories on my brother and me during our weekly visits to his bedside. I'd brought my wife only once; she said he was full of crap and that no one person could have really done the things Uncle Walter claimed. I had no basis for disbelief, but there were times Jackie would shake his head and leave the room.

Uncle Walter hated the homes. The thoughts of growing old without the circus around him and the loss of women to fondle were too much for him to bear. He called the first one 'Stalag A' and made it to the letter 'G' before he died.

His record was eleven months at a place in Far Rockaway, but only because they had male orderlies in his wing for the first ten. Uncle Walter's lecherous tendencies followed him all the way into what his nurses called 'the rancid years.'

No nurse was safe from his prying hands. A pinch on the ass was his way of saying good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good anything as long as he scored. Twice he'd managed to lock himself in a janitor's closet with a willing volunteer from the nursing school. At a home in Bensonhurst, they found him passed out drunk on the sidewalk one morning, naked except for his clown shoes - properly laced and double tied.

The lack of a phone call from some nurse supervisor, administrator, or the family of a female patient, became an event we celebrated with each new month of silence. However, when the call came, we knew it was only a matter of days before we'd have to dig through the phone book again.

And so now, we're sitting here as Uncle Walter's box, finally closed and latched, is rolling out the door to a waiting hearse for his last road trip. We've left the shoes in place. To tell the truth, no one wanted to touch them.
The funeral director shuts the rear door of the hearse and comes back into the small chapel. "I assure you; no one here put those shoes on your uncle's feet. I am so terribly sorry."
A woman's voice, cracked and gravelly from too many cold nights on the road, calls out from behind me, "So give the family a discount, putz. And Phil, don't take a coupon; you want cash."
I spin in the seat and peer at the wrinkled face of a tired nomad who had once worn floppy shoes herself. "Aunt Tessie?"
With a grunt, she lowers herself into the seat and puts an arm around my brother's shoulders and my waist. "He loved those shoes."

I had rummaged through several photo albums filled with cracked and fading pictures of the two of them in costume, but had never met Aunt Tessie face-to-face. Although Jackie now stares at the woman in disbelief, I have to admit I'm more relieved than surprised to see her here.

My aunt reaches into her purse and pulls out a red stick-on nose so old that the rubber flakes off in her hands. "This was his. They gave it to me at the home yesterday." She shakes her head sadly. "I've been living several blocks from him for almost two months and didn't know it."
Aunt Tessie takes out a string of handkerchiefs and blows her nose with the yellow and red ones. "I saw his obituary in the newspaper and figured you boys would have waited until after the funeral to clean out his room." Digging deep into her purse, she pulls out a faded color photo of her and Uncle Walter vogueing for the crowd. "The administrator looked at this and said it was all the proof he needed."
The picture clearly shows the white and red clown shoes Uncle Walter has taken to the grave. I smile and hand the photo back to her. "He talked about you all the time." Jackie coughs and I can see a tear roll down his cheek. "He wanted to jump into a ring with you one more time."

With a wink to the funeral director and slap on her knee, Aunt Tessie tells us, "I paid him a hundred dollars to let me put the shoes on Walter's feet." She shoves the tied silks back into her purse and snaps it shut. "He'd never go anywhere without them."