"The sky should be blue!" my great uncle Thelan would exclaim, "not that namby-pamby lilac color! It's ridiculous. And the sun, it should be yellow, not chartreuse," he'd sneer. "Reminds me of chlorine."

He was always going on like that with us; telling me and my brothers how the sky just wasn't right anymore. "At night the moon should be silver, not that bloody red. Reminds me of that fancy drink -- Sangria, that's it. Moon shouldn't be red. And there should be stars."

"But Unc," one of us would say, "there are stars."

"Ha! All two dozen of them. You boys ever count the stars?" We all nodded. "That's ludicrous. There should be millions, no, billions of stars. Ain't no stars at all any more."

Then sometimes he'd go one to regale us with some outlandish story about how he'd caught two fish on one hook, with no bait. Or how we were descended from Erik the Red and should all be proud to be Vikings. Or how if his brother Leo were still alive we'd be impressed. After all, Leo was governor! Some days he was a senator. Once he was even president. When we got older we weren't quite sure what to believe, so we went and found his grave. Sure enough, he had been governor. Of Iowa. For three months. Impressive headstone, though.

Uncle Thelan loved nothing better than filling our heads with wild stories, parts of which were probably true. I'm sure he did hook his own thumb with a fishing hook and have to push it through to cut it off. But I doubt he used his own teeth to do it. And there is no way he scared off a bear by yelling at it; the bear was probably just bored.

But once the old guy got so worked up about the stars I thought he might hit me. He said, "Look, you see this ladle? That's what we used to call a dipper. It's a BIG DIPPER. There's a Big Dipper up in the sky -- ya just can't see it all!" He slammed the ladle on the counter and I jumped. He was kinda crazy, so I was never really sure what he'd do. My parents assured me he was harmless, but was I still uncomfortable.

"Here, I'll show you on paper." He started putting dots on a brown paper bag with the pen he always carried. The magic pen that had ink inside it. I think he kept a stockpile somewhere from the old times. "These five dots are the five stars you kids keep calling 'the family'. You know these stars -- you can usually see them." I nodded, cautiously. "Well, there should be seven stars -- more really -- but seven bright ones. Here's where the other two go. And if you draw a line across these two and extend it this way about this far - BAM!" I jumped. "the North Star! It's there, I tell you. By my life, it's there."

He reached into a drawer and pulled out a round object with a black rim that looked like it was filled with water. "You know what this is?" he demanded. I studied it; I'd learned not to just say "I dunno" -- that was a "sin". You have a brain so use it. It looked like a clock with it's hands stuck on six o'clock. But instead of numbers it had letters: N, E, S -- oh.

"It's a compass! Where does the battery go?"

"It doesn't need a battery. It's a magnetic compass. You see those letters? B.S.A. Boy Scouts of America. Ever heard of them?" I hadn't. "Course not. They don't teach you kids anything anymore. This thing should work, but it just sits there. That damn metal in the sky interferes. It's just WRONG."

He went on to tell me stories of explorers who navigated by the North Star and magnetic compass, before there was electricity. I was fascinated by his stories of Columbus, Leif Eriksson, Magellan, and especially Marco Polo. I thought Marco Polo was a game for the beach, with a blindfold.

I didn't see Thelan once I grew up. Moved away and had my own life. I should've visited; I really should have.

Years later, looking up at the sky after midnight, I finally did see all seven stars. I got so excited I wanted to run all the way to Iowa and tell Uncle Thelan "You were right, you were right!" It took at least ten seconds till I remembered he was long dead. He made it to ninety, that old rascal. Ninety. No one else I knew had made it to 80. Still, even he got it eventually. "Consumption" he called it. But I knew what it was. It was the same thing that made the moon look like Sangria. And we did it to ourselves.