I’m just throwing this out here that the holidays are when people start dropping crazy uncle stories into conversations.

It’s crazy if your uncle protested the Vietnam War and drove a VW van to Woodstock, where he dropped LSD and bootlegged some free love, but is now a Trump supporter.

”I think there’s the one person in any group of 15 or so people who think and say things that the rest purposefully ignore,” a member of my vicious circle said in support of my defending uncles.

Comedians zealously mined family for humor when I was a kid in the 1960s. Jewish comedians appeared on TV with jokes about their Jewish mothers. Catholic comedians told the same jokes about their Catholic moms. Black comedians? Yup.

Every comedian’s mom was identical. Overbearing. Omniscient. Finger-wagging, “When are you going to find a nice girl and settle down?”

Take Henny Youngman. Please.

These comedians, flown in from Vegas to temper the end of the day for viewers of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” were never as funny as the Marx Brothers.

The Marx Brothers were so far ahead of their time that Chico and Harpo were dead before the 1960s were half over.

My seven uncles lacked any shortcomings worth mentioning, although while Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Gummo and Zeppo were pseudonyms, Dad and his brothers were, in fact, Eldo, Waldo, Hugo, Leo and Otto

Dave, my high school pal, liked to run off those names, then mention their sister, “… and the odd brother, Catherine.”

Dave was funnier than most 1960s comedians.

My uncles had no harsh edges, even though three of them had been in World War II.

They had subtle humors and expertise that spanned cars, plumbing, electronics, farming, archery water skiing and wood working.

Hugo dreamed of skiing at his lake place behind a boat that he built himself, so he built a boat. All the cool furniture in my house was made by Uncle Roy.

Stories of outrageous behaviors captivate people, so they get hopeful if I mention that Roy’s brass knuckles are in a tool box in my basement.

Roy liked fireworks, fast cars, and when we drove the receipts from his Minnesota lake country grocery to the town with a bank, he placed in the glove box a loaded revolver he got from an FBI pal.

Married to one of Mom’s sisters, Roy was young enough to enter World War II after most of the shooting stopped and big enough to be charged with getting soldiers back to their cots in the Pacific when they celebrated as the war wound down.

Soldiers who see a war ending are, mostly, coaxed back to their bunks. Roy found little need for the brass knuckles.

He might have considered them one day when a drunk vacationer lingered, annoyingly, in his store. Drunks ruin the grocery shopping experience for others.

Roy navigated the challenge until the customer stumbled through the door frame. Sober the next day, the man returned to apologize.

“That’s OK,” Roy said, the souvenirs of his own youth likely bubbling up. “Everyone has to let their hair down some time.”

Uncle Bert drove Mom’s other sister and family from Maryland to Minnesota each summer, so his sons would know their cousins.

Roy and Bert were Midwestern farm boys during the Great Depression and in uniform for World War II — enough in common that they never lapsed into dull talk.

They had brothers, which makes it harder to abandon childhood antics. If you’re worth a damn, anyway.

There were a few trips during those visits that required two cars. Bert and Roy drove. It was very important that the car I rode in arrive first. It rarely did.

They didn’t give a kid a pill back then if he turned everything into a competition and was a feverishly sore loser. Uncles gaslighted you.

(It wasn’t even called gaslighting, which curiously came to be buzzword more than half-century after that Ingrid Bergman film debuted.)

I got older and quit caring which car arrived first. They admitted rigging the outcomes.

I said that I blamed them for how I turned out, but mostly admired them running a prank each summer and keeping it to themselves for years.

I didn’t see most of my uncles that often, but there was a durable bond. I learned to shoot an arrow, use a 9-volt battery to solve an audio speaker problem, and that a small pen knife fits better in your pocket than a Swiss Army knife, and usually does the trick.

I learned that the best pranks are simple and methodical.

And if one works, milk it for all it’s worth.