It's coming up on family reunion time again, and all sorts of feelings are swimmin' throught my head.

The annual reunion of my fathers family is rollin' up on me quick. First Sunday in March. No tellin' who will show up this year, though I hear my one living uncle is busily callin' everyone, hitting them with a guilt trip to make sure they come. The young ones have shown up less and less in the last decade as the older generations have dwindled and the reunions have steadily become peopled with more unfamiliar faces. My cousins kids don't seem to have the same interest or connection to the family that our generation had, or our parents. Attendance seems to slide a bit with each successive year. They move away and get involved with their own lives, and don't feel the need to reconnect with folks they have increasingly little in common with. Probably something profound could be said about the loss of community in the modern age, but I won't go there.

I used to really look forward to these get-togethers when I was a teenager, having had all the old-time stories instilled in me as I grew up. As we moved from base to base in the course of dads military career, and later as we lived several hours away in Ft. Worth after dads retirement, the annual reunion was about the only time we got to see our aunts and uncles, our grandparents (on my mom's side), and other relatives. Feeling a bit cheated, I always longed for the security of a familiar place and extended family that my parents families and childhood homes represented. Even now, having moved home to the area of my parents childhood, living here in the same community as many of these people, the reunion is still the only time I get to see most of them. Our different lives and experiences have left us with little more than blood to connect us. That used to bother me a lot, but I've made peace with it.

Back when we were growing up, my sister and I both had fantasies about living here, near my grandparents and cousins, thinking we would have had a much happier childhood surrounded by family, and what we imagined to have been a greater sense of stability. We never talked about it as kids, but having discussed it as adults we discovered that we both had the same longing. Once, in about the 5th or 6th grade, my art teacher gave the class an assignment to come up with a drawing of our dream house. People came up with all sorts of interesting things, but mine turned out to look like a huge warehouse. When she asked me what was up with that, I told the teacher that what she saw was just the outside. All the cool stuff was on the inside, like a Roman Villa. There were all sorts of apartments, and even a lake to fish in, and all my relatives lived there with me. Sounds pathetic now that I think back on it. Pretty needy.

My sister, being six years older than me, got to spend more time here as a kid with our grandparents and cousins. She remembers sitting in the lap of our paternal grandfather, a legendary figure in the family, and running around and having great times with everyone. But I guess I came along too late, and so I missed out on all that. By the time I was born, everyone was a bit older, dad was a bit higher up in rank, and we were spending more and more time deployed elsewhere for three or four years at a time. Both my fathers parents died when I was very little, before I could get old enough to remember them. They passed away while we were on the other side of the planet, and I guess that must have heightened the desire in me for some sort of connection, listening to sis reminisce, and watching dad grieve for his own mom and dad.

In retrospect, I guess my mom and dad did a lot to instill in me the feelings of longing that they had, but couldn't do anything about because of the demands of their career. They planted all these ideas in me about the family and home that they were missing terribly. So, when I moved down here in the mid 1990s I tried to make up for all the lost time. I tried to connect with the guys who seemed closest to me, but who I also held in a sort of awe, from all the years of hype that I had absorbed. We went hunting and fishing a few times, but I finally got tired of their particular ideas of fun, and their friends, and the chase. It turns out, of course, that we really don't have much in common. How could we, having had such different lives? It also seems clear now that their perceptions of me were formed through our long years of absence from the family scene, and the stories they heard growing up of their fathers relationship with my dad, which was rocky from time to time. I guess this left them wondering why the hell I'd want to have anything to do with them, and weirded out by my insistence on trying to tag along and buddy up.

In retrospect, it went something like this. Whenever we would show up for the reunions back in the '70s or '80s, having driven a few hours down the highway, and planning to drive home after the big feed (in other words, when we weren't going to be around for more than a few hours), they'd take me aside and say stuff like "It's too bad you're not gonna be here longer. We ought to go fishing". Being naive and hopeful, I assumed they meant it. Hell, maybe they did. But when I moved down here and the opportunity came along for me to actually join them, the phone didn't ring. I got sick very quickly of feeling like a groupie, calling and chasin' after them all the time, only to then feel like I was butting in when I finally did catch up to them. So when I stopped callin' and chasin', like magic, we stopped having anything to do with one another.

When their dad (my dad's oldest brother) got sick and died in the late '90s, I met up with these guys and their families again at the hospital, and eventually at the funeral. It was a very sad time, but in the midst of it they'd say stuff like "Man, we haven't seen you in a while", and I'd think to myself, "Yea, and you go to such great lengths to keep in touch", but I didn't say anything. I was mostly over the feelings of rejection and disappointment by that time. I do love those guys after all, to one degree or another, even though they've turned out not to be the close buddies that I hoped they'd be. Then a funny thing started to happen.

In the light of these experiences, I started thinking about all those feelings I'd had growing up, reevaluating them, and I learned to appreciate the life I'd had, rather than to continue to long for the life I didn't have. In other words, I guess I did a hell of a lot of growing up. I started reevaluating all the feelings I'd had as a kid about how much fun it would have been to live here, and I gained a greater appreciation for the upbringing I did have, and the places we lived, and the fun I'd had growing up where we were. In the process I think I developed a much greater sense of confidence in who I am. It turns out now that I wouldn't change a thing about those old days, other than maybe to have been born a bit earlier. I would like to have known my paternal grandfather.

He was a sharecropper, one of many farmers driven into sharecropping, or tenant farming, by the post-World War One depression in agriculture that ruined the farming economy in the early 1920s. He and my grandmother raised four sons (and eventually several of my cousins), and a lot of cotton in central Texas in the era before the New Deal and the Second World War gave people around here more options in life. The stories and pictures we have portray a great, immensely strong, happy, friendly, bull of a man. I really missed out on not getting to spend time with him as my sister did, or to get to go fishing with him as my cousins did in their childhood. I still really regret that. I guess I always will. As I think back on all this, I think that maybe by going out with my cousins I was trying to capture a little bit of that early time, but it didn't work out. That's life, I guess.

Now, when I see my cousins once a year at the reunions, we all act like it's great to see one another, and it mostly is. We catch up on one another, and it's about the same as it was when my family lived in Ft. Worth, Missouri, or England, and only got to come "home" once every few years. What the hell can you do? You can't pick your relatives, or control how other people feel about things. The only consolation I guess is that the folks on my mom's side are even more screwed up. They don't even have reunions. I've got one cousin on my dad's side and another on my mom's that I'm close to, and that's enough. My cousin in Pennsylvania has become like an older brother to me in the last decade, and that's as good as it gets.



I love this guy to death, and I think he feels the same way about me. His family up there in Pennsylvania are all super folks, and they treat me great, as if they've always known me. The first time I went up there in the mid '90s they had a huge get together, a Memorial Day picnic, and it was a great time. I swam in one of those above-ground pools, where the water only comes up to my waist, and his wife's nephews tried to dunk me. Fools. We made vanilla ice cream, ate cheeseburgers and played ping pong for hours (I beat his ass). They made me feel right at home. It was like night and day, compared to the way I feel around many of the folks down here.

We both grew up in the service, his dad in the Army and mine in the Air force, so we have a lot of things in common. We're also the only two guys in our generation, on our mom's side of the family. He was the first born, then three pain-in-the-ass girls between us, and then, after most of the fun was over, me at the very last minute. He tells me stories about times when our families got together at my grandparents house. He says he pushed me around in my stroller, and that he was very happy to see me when I was born. He was about 14 or 15 when I arrived on the scene, and he had concluded after many years that he was destined to be the only swinging dick in the family.

I have one fleeting memory of him from about 1966, when my family went up to Washington D.C., where his dad was working at the Pentagon. We spent a few days with them on our way to a new posting in England. He was about a senior in High school then, and was probably annoyed to have this little kid sleeping in his bed. Even though he was born in Texas, here at the local hospital, and started school here, is family ended up spending a lot of time stationed up north, so he went to high school and college up there, playing football for Joe Paterno at Penn State in the late 60s. He turned into a full fledged Yankee, learning to love hunting and fishing in the woods of Pennsylvania, building his life up there.

Next time I saw him was about 1977, when we all converged on the grandparents for some reason, and we all got to meet his first wife. Then it was his fathers funeral in about 1982. Then, after splitting with his first wife, he brought his young daughter down to Ft. Worth one summer and I took them both to The big water park in Arlington. We had a fun day. That daughter is all grown up now, and has told me that she really enjoyed that day. I only wish we all could have spent more time together all those decades ago, but fate didn't have it laid out that way.

We really didn't get together till the mid '90s. I think our mom's pushed us together. He found out that I liked to go canoeing, fishing and camping, and he floated the idea of me joining him on one of his annual trips to Canada, canoeing and hiking into the woods around Algonquin Provincial Park to fish for Pike on Hogan Lake. I went up there, and while we hiked in, carrying 40 or 50 pound packs on our backs, balancing 45 or 50 pound kevlar canoes on our shoulders, we found that we had a lot in common. We got along pretty well, and the relationship has grown since then.

So now we try to make up for lost time. He comes down here whenever his job and family commitments allow, and I try to get up there about once every year. In the last three years we've switched to the more comfortable, old geezer style of holiday adventure, towing his boat up to a nice little lodge on a lake in Canada for a week or so after Memorial Day (you can check out more of the pictures from Gananoque by clicking on that Flickr link over there on the left). We have a great time, usually joined by an old friend of his, or his new son-in-law. But the bastards at work have screwed up my holiday plans for this year.

The ever present, ever tinkering college administrative geeks moved this years regular three week summer break from early June to late July, so I'm not going to be able to make the annual fishing trip in the days that we reserved last year with the lodge. I swear to God, those bastards tinker with stuff just to justify their existence. Useless! Like tits on a boer hog, as my father would say.

I told my cousin it's probably just as well. With me not being there, the other guys will finally be able to catch some fish. He tossed out a good barrel laugh at that one. Thing is, after not making much of a good showing for myself in the first few trips up there, last year was my year.



I hooked one nice sized Pike after another, and a few nice Perch and Bass while the other guys sat there, getting more and more pissed. It was glorious. It was my year. When I got the bad news a few months ago we tried to figure out something we could do to find a way to fix the mess, but in the end it was decided that the rest of the guys would go ahead and use the days we reserved in June. I'll teach an extra mini-semester this year, and then we'll try to get back together next time around.

I'll make a few grand more this year, but I'll miss the hell out of that trip, and the fun of being with my cousin and his family. Who'd a thought I would have to go to Pennsylvania and Canada to find the fun times with family that I've always dreamed of having here in Texas? Go figure. Life is weird like that I guess. Of course, over the years, I've whittled together a family of sorts, finding great, close friends who share many of my same interests, and that's good enough. I guess that's what most people do.

So anyway, the reunion is coming up in a few weeks. The food will be great, and we'll listen to my dad and the other old-timers tell the same old stories, and we'll talk about how much older we all feel, and we'll see a few new kids runnin' around, and life will go on as it always has. What else should we expect?

A word from some of the guys in the field.

With all the non-binding resolutions, bilious pontifications, and stupid chest thumping being tossed around these days, I think It's relevant to hear what at least a few soldiers think. I actually hear this sort of sentiment a lot on the base, from soldiers in my classes and older retired Vietnam vets that I work with.



Couldn't say it better. Ether pull 'em out or go all the way. No half-assed bullshit. Not again.

Santa brought me a cool assed digital camera...

but the thing is as complicated as Chinese math (sorry). What the hell ever happened to point and shoot? Still instinctively bring it to my eye for a split second each time I try to use it, but that's going away. Slowly learning some of the functions, reading through the ridiculously thick instruction manual. So, yer thinkin' "when are we gonna get to see the FHB?

Tada!


Meet Sandy, one of my hunter killer kitties. Lethal fucker he is. Used to bring home monster rats and shit till the neighbors forced me to fence him and the others in the yard. Dickless, humorless mother fuckers! Back yard is like the gulag archipelago for kitties now. Sad, but what can you do. Yer thinkin' "What the hell is all that crap behind him?" Well, that's the tack board over my desk, and about 30 years worth of accumulated crap (doesn't even begin to illustrate the full scope of my accumulated crap, I assure you).


Question is (click to enlarge), how much of this shit can you identify?


Here's another of my tribe. Tiger by name, pussycat by nature. He also has been known to slay rodent scum with abandon, but is the only one of the bunch that will let others than I approach him. He's a sweetie. In fact, this is the one that the neighbors gave to animal control, trying to get him killed for layin' around in their yard. I hope they all get tumors.


So (note the still healing evidence of the pox), yer not fond of cats? Maybe a weak self esteem requiring the always attentive, slobbering sycophancy of "Man's Best Friend"?


Well, that's just pathetic. I make rude noises at you for such silliness. Dogs are cool as hell, but cats are mystical, holy things. The Egyptians knew that shit four or five thousand years ago, so ketch up, for Christs sake.


Anyway, I've got shit to do. Don't get used to this level of intimacy. After this I'm back to being aloof, distant, and mysterious.


See what I mean? Me and my 30 close, trusted friends are outa here (well, really 20. I don't want to fuck up the clip). 10 points if you can ID the origin of the clip (duh, I mean the manufacturer). I know, easy peasy.

Here's something that's bursting with the spirit of the holiday.

Have an engorgedly merry Christmas everyone. Enjoy

Io Saturnalia everyone!

With all the talk going on these days about how the real spiritual basis for Christmas is somehow under threat from secularism and political correctness, I think it's time to remind a few folks of some history. See, 2000 years ago, the Roman world had this little festival that took place at the end of each year, celebrating the winter solstice, the end of one year and the birth of the new one, and the god Saturn. Basically, it was about a two week piss up. People loved it. It was the best two weeks of the year. Everyone got time off from work and school, exchanged presents, set up and decorated evergreen trees, and basically had a huge time. When the emperor Constantine had his vision at the bridge in the early fourth century and Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the new church authorities tried to wean the common folks away from all of these "pagan" traditions. They couldn't get people to give up the statues and alters they'd set up everywhere to make offerings to the gods (who, after all, had ordered their world very nicely for thousands of years), so the church started allowing statues to be set up to all the figures of the Bible. Over time, people shifted to the new "gods" and new traditions began to replace the old ones. Offerings and prayers to the old gods evolved into offerings and prayers to the new ones, seeking some form of intercession with the big guy.

They tried to get people to stop celebrating the two week end of year festival, viewing it as a horrible pagan travesty, but they couldn't do it. The people loved it too much. So, in the spirit of compromise (which we know the Catholic church has always been really good at), they simply cooped it. The "pagan" holiday went from being a festival to celebrate the god Saturn and the birth of the new year, to being a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Christ. The exchanging of presents began in Roman times, but Santa and the association of the evergreen holiday tree with Christmas were supposedly German innovations. All these pagan remnants hung on because people loved them and wouldn't let them go. When the Madison avenue folks got hold of it all in the 20th century we all began to be trained like Pavlov's dogs to go out each year and put ourselves into debt to line our roofs and yards with more and more lights and lay out more presents under the tree than last year. I don't want to be a bummer, but I'd be amazed if the number of people in America who really see Christmas as basically a vacation when they're gonna have fun and get cool presents didn't outnumber the folks who focus only on the religious meaning of it all.

I'm not totally closed off to the religious meaning of it. I was raised to believe in it all. Back when I taught classes on Navy ships I had a chance to do a little traveling. I've been to Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and I've seen the rock where Jesus was supposedly crucified, and his tomb. I went to what they claim is the Garden of Gethsemane, which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I've trudged up the mountain in the Sinai where Moses supposedly got the ten commandments, and I've seen what they claim was once the burning bush. I grew up taking all the religious stories for granted, accepting it all without much thought, but you know, at some point you grow up and start asking questions. I love all the Bible epics from the 50s and 60s that get drug out for the season. Movies like The Robe, Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, etc. all captured my imagination as a kid and helped me develop my love of history. I jokingly tell people that my knowledge of the Bible is so limited, if the story didn't appear at some point in a movie starring Victor Mature, chances are I don't know about it.

I'm not really that uninformed, but like most people today, I pass quickly by most of the supposed religious basis for the holiday and go directly to the family gatherings, the awesome food and the spiked eggnog. It's all about family and fun with me, and time off from the drudgery of work, and memories of the past years when, as a kid, I reveled in piles of cool presents under the tree and snowy vacations away from school. Imagine the irony of that. I used to hate school and now I'm a teacher. Bizarre. For many people I think "the reason for the season" is a Christmas bonus in their check, good food and drink with friends, reconnecting with family, celebrating another year in the bag, and having a week or so off from work. Lets be real. Our end of year festival is still a huge pissup... A materialistic orgy that goes on every year, framed by Christmas and New Years, culminating in the New Years celebrations that easily mirror the two week Roman festival from 2000 years ago. Is it about God? What really is the "reason for the season" for you? If they took away the time off, the parties, the booze and the presents, would very many people show up?

These guys probably wouldn't.



But then we probably shouldn't use them as a barometer, should we? Anyway, I hope everyone has a great time. To each their own. I'll be heading over to the folks with a trunk full of stuff, eating great food and celebrating one more holiday with the whole family still in tact. No tellin' how many more of those there'll be. So, Merry Christmas (or X-Mas) and/or Happy Holidays to everyone. Cheers. By the way, "Io Saturnalia" is Latin for "Ho, Praise to Saturn". Ya gotta love Wikipedia. And by the way, dig this...




Click on it to see the larger image. Love that Hubble. Looks like the cover of a Yes album from the 70s, or maybe an old Star Wars poster. Later.