Ties That Bind

Family Reunion today: my very excellent sister and I and not more than ten other first cousins on my mother's side are now the oldest generation. Some of us older ones swapped memories of our elders and some of our departed siblings and cousins. Gail, from Tucson, recalled a tour of Madison conducted by the late Bud. Sherry, from Henryville, produced a list of our parents and aunts and uncles and that was grist for the mill.

Freeman recalled going with Uncle Mac for a couple of beers in a Seymour tavern and extricated the old World War I ambulance driver (he and Ernest Hemingway, I recall, although I don't believe anyone ever said they were acquainted, Uncle Sarge being a Yank and Ernest having driven for the Italians -- oh wait, I get confused, Uncle Mac was a doughboy and later on drove an ambulance for the Marion VA hospital -- whatever) from an altercation with a man much younger and larger than Mac. Of course there were the excursions to Circle K for six-packs ("Pull in here, Billy.") Norma Clarine said she still lives on Uncle Link and Auntie's old homestead and i asked her if the 24-bottle wooden Coke-cases were still there on the backporch and she said Yep and I went into my routine of Auntie greeting us from her game of cards, sipping her brew, chewing her Juicy Fruit, and toking on her Camel (one of the short ones that knock you on your ass when you inhale).

Gail wanted to know how close together the births of the offspring of Grand-dad John and Grand-Mom Sarah (m. 4/2/1895) were: Eli Harvey ("Mac, Sarge"), b. 7/6/1896; Milton Sales, 1/25/1898; Viola, 4/15/1901; Phillip Naper, 9/21/1903; Clara Virginia, 10/15/1905; Bertha Agnes, 7/21/1908; Harry Thomas (fr. Jim K.), 2/4/1918. Gail said, Well, they were pretty well spread out. This caused us to wonder about birth control in those days before drugs, IUDs, etc., since the births seemed sensibly spaced.

I had an impulse to crack wise and so I prefaced it with, "Well, now Bill would have probably said," so it made it all right to say what I did: "I suppose back then, what they relied on was the birth control drug, Noacitol." Gail laughed merrily.

It's a good family. We keep on keeping on, dying off but reproducing (two of the young women were PG, showing, at this reunion) and meeting every year at the reunion, which has been in continuous existence since 1950. Not bad, Hulio, not bad.