I took Dad and Denise to the Wilson Family Reunion Sunday.

First, the gun report. There's still no word on The Dragunov. It looks like I might get it, but there is one other person who wants it. I'll know somethin' more definitive in a week or so, maybe. On the other hand, my M-1 Carbine is supposedly on it's way and should arrive and my buddy Dave's place today. I've instructed him to call me when it arrives and he takes it out of the box, even if I'm in class. I tell ya, my nipples are all standin' up in anticipation. Can't wait to hear from him.

I got to sleep in with my lady and wake up slow and easy this mornin', like it was a weekend. They had some sort of testing down in Florence, so I didn't need to be there. I told Denise about that yesterday, teasing her about how I could sleep in but she'd still have to be up at 6:30. Then she surprised me, telling me when she got to my place late last night that she'd sent her boss and email tellin' her she had an "appointment" in the morning and wouldn't be in till about 10AM. Naughty girl.

Now, about last Sundays gathering. I've always had a love/hate relationship with these reunions. I've been going to them almost every year since the mid 1970s. Dad was the driving force behind that. It was always his chance to reconnect with his brothers, cousins and childhood friends. For me, it was always a reminder that there was a wider family and rural life here in Bell county that I'd never been able to be a part of, and that somehow I'd never really be able to measure up to.

My dad always looked forward to these days with glee. My mom, on the other hand, always seemed to dread these gatherings. Of course, part of it had to do with having to get up at the crack of dawn and fry up a mess of chicken, or whatever dish we were taking (It's a pot luck event), get dressed up, pile in the family car and drive the 2 1/2 hours down from Ft. Worth to get to the Bell County Sportsman's Club by noon. The other reason had to do with the fact that my mom never really got along with some of the women in my dad's family.

I always wondered as a kid what was up with all that. I found out later that a few of my aunts always made sideways, snide comments that only mom would pick up on that indicated they thought she was full of herself, or some stupid crud like that. I always used to doubt that, not wanting to think bad things about my aunts. Then, a few years back I overheard one of my aunts saying something petty about my mom when she didn't know mom or I were close enough to hear. I haven't had anything to do with that woman since, and mom hasn't gone back to a reunion.

I think a lot of the undercurrent there had to do with the way my father always showed off his success to his brothers. He had an amazing capacity to be a huge ass hole back in those days, likely to say something that digs or embarrasses those around him. Then there's the fact that my mom was always a princess and very beautiful. My aunts married men who never made much money to begin with and then spent a lot of their money on bass boats and horses. I think there may have been some jealousy of the life we led in the Air Force, living in places like England. I don't know. As a kid, it was all a mystery, but added to the regular anxiety I felt about going down there.



That's me in the back. This was taken at the reunion in March of 1977, so that makes me 16. Always towering over everyone, fated to stand out in a crowd, but always wanting to stand back, trying not to be seen. That's my mom and dad on the far right, my uncle Sam and aunt Betty in front, with uncle Mack peeking in between them. My uncle Punk and his first wife Billie John are on the left.



My father and his brothers, taken the same day. Sam and Mack are gone now. They both died after we moved down here in the mid 1990s. Uncle Punk is still goin' strong, with his third wife. Mom and dad have had their moments, but they've been married for over 55 years now.



Here's what the sportsman's club looks like today. Someone spent some money to refurbish the parking lot, but the inside is still the same as it's ever been, with the same tables and furniture and the same pictures on the walls. There's always something very comforting about that. You see the same folks, a little older, with a few new kids runnin' around, but everything else is just as you left it last year, or in 1977.



The food is still the same too, though I do miss mom's chicken. Every once and a while she'll still cook it, but recently she's gotten to where the chore is one she reserves for other, more special occasions. Of course, I know how to cook fried chicken, learned at the feet of the master, but I don't really want to go to all that friggin' trouble for these folks ether. Some people cook, while others just get a box of chicken or sausage from the store and bring it. This year Denise made her wonderful apple cinnamon streusel dish, while I put together about 16 of those Kolache things I posted about a while back (the full ones, with ham and Swiss cheese stuffed in them).



Right off the bat Denise was welcomed by my cousin Peggy (her husband Mike, uncle Mack's son, is standing back there in the middle of the shot with the rodeo buckle). Peggy is just about my favorite relative down here. You've seen earlier posts where I talked about her cutting my hair. She has a salon in Salado. Mike is a great guy, but we don't see much of one another. He and his dad were both big rodeo guys. They were both tough as nails. Mike's in two halls of fame for the bull riding he did back in the 70s and 80s.



This is my dad on the left, and his cousin Wilson Moon in the middle. Not really sure who the dude on the right is, but I've seen him at these things all my life. Some cousin I don't know. Wilson is a great guy, and a great friend to my father. He likes me a lot too. Not sure why.

I mean, I know why he likes me. I'm a decent guy. I just have lingering feelings from growing up away from all these people, a soft, spoiled city boy, hearing stories all my life about how wonderful it was to grow up here. Seeing how hard and tough these guys are, I always felt like I'd never be able to measure up to them as a man. I always felt like an outsider, so it surprises me when they welcome me, seeing who I've become as a man. Wanting to fit in as desperately as I always have, I matters a lot now that I'm finally fitting in, somewhat. Of course, I'm more comfortable with who I am now, no longer afraid to stand out in a crowd, which is something very new, and so their opinions don't really matter as much. Maybe that means I've finally grown up.

I'm mostly over those old feelings now, but it was still fun to think of bringing a girlfriend to the reunion for the first time. I'm sure most of these folks have always thought I was gay, having never seen or heard of any girlfriends before. Wilson was very happy to see me with Denise at the reunion. At one point while I was taking this picture he looked at dad and said, about Denise and I, "Sounds serious. Looks like you're gonna have a daughter-in-law." Dad's eyes got big and he said "Really?", and we all laughed.

Everyone was very welcoming towards Denise. Peggy and Pat (uncle Punks wife) both got very huggy with her. At one point my aunt Betty (the one that made the shitty remark about my mom years ago) walked up to Denise and said "So, you belong to Jeff?" Denise laughed at the old fashioned inference towards ownership and replied "Well, not officially... Not yet." Several people commented on how pretty she was and how they loved her accent. I was like, "Yep, that accent get's everybody goin'. Worked on me fer sure." It felt really good to go to my first reunion as a real grownup, in my own eyes anyway.



At one point Mike and Peggy's daughter-in-law surprised them by bringin' their three grand kids down from Ft. Worth (I think). They'd just been on the phone and she'd made them think she wasn't comin'. It was hilarious. That's uncle Punk and his wife Pat at the bottom right of the shot.

After the meal I took Denise on the traditional walk down to Belton lake and back, walking off the feed. It was a pretty day, overcast with a hint of rain. It gave me a chance to smoke a cigar and show her more of the place I've known and loved for so long. As we walked we passed other folks from the reunion who had already made the walk and were heading back. It felt really good to have her there, and to hold hands as we usually do when we walk anywhere. Again, it was like I'd grown up.



After the reunion we all went back to the house and had after-dinner drinks with mom. I killed off this fruity little drink. Can't remember now what it's called, but we got it for mom at the Class Six on base. Great stuff.



I tell ya, it's as if havin' Denise there gives my mom an excuse to bust out the booze. We all love it. After a few small glasses of liqueur mom asked if we'd like to bust out the blender and make Daiquiris. I was like, "Duh!", so she and Denise headed into the kitchen to get the blender goin'.



Dad's not a drinker any more. He drank rum and coke all through my youth, but takes too many meds now to risk it. He drinks green tea like it's water around the house, but craves a cold Dr. Pepper whenever he can get it. It's not good for him because of his liver, but I usually slip him one now and then when we go out together. We guys have to stick together.



I always love to grab one or the other of mom's cats and torment it when I go over there. You can't really tell it from this shot, blinded as you are by the glare from my bald spot, but the cat's really lovin' the attention. After squeezin' him for a bit I let him go and he doesn't go far.



The Strawberry Daiquiri was great, like a Slurpy with a slight kick. I chugged a few of them, emptyin' the blender, refillin' my glass and purin' the rest in Denise's. One of these days soon we're gonna have to introduce mom to the Southern Comfort Punch from Wisconsin. Good times.



Yep, good times were had by all.

I found out yesterday that mom has made an appointment with the psychic for Friday, so there may be mysterious goings on to tell you about after that. She and Denise will do that while I have my tires balanced and rotated, and then I'll take dad back to the drivin' range to hit a bucket of balls. Then there'll be buffet action. You know the routine.

While I was finishing up this post, giving tests here on base and playin' on the computer in the classroom, Dave called and told me that my carbine is there at his place in Gatesville and that it looks nice. The stock looks OK, but the gun's covered in grease, so I'll go up there this weekend and we'll take it completely apart, clean it, and put a few rounds through it. I can't wait.

Well, you guys have a great hump day, and we'll talk again soon. Cheers.

Here's some old shots, from before I was born.

Pat's old pictures of his family have inspired me to post some old shots from my family. As you can see, these are from October of 1955. That's five years before I was around. Not even a glint in my fathers eye. These came from one of those books you used to get your pictures back in. We've got boxes of them layin' around. Treasures.



The shot above is one of my favorites from this bunch. From right to left; that's my uncle Macklin (my fathers younger brother), my cousin Shirley, my cousin Mike, and uncle Mack's wife Vonne. Vonne is so friggin' HOT in these shots, and uncle Mack had it goin' on too. What would folks in New York give for those jeans and that shirt today? Vonne wasn't Mack's first wife or the mother of these kids, but she helped him raise them. They had a hard life. Mack was a carpenter and never made much money, and what he made was always goin' for horses and rodeos and such. He was a tough guy.



You can see it in those eyes. He rode bulls and trained cutting horses, and he rode life hard. He played hard too, and not always with his wife. Dad told me once that he'd ended up with his first wife after wakin' up with her after a long drunk. She ended up pregnant and so they got hitched. That was what you did back in those days. They had these two kids before they split, and I'm not sure what contact the kids had with her after that. I met that woman briefly once, at a rodeo in the early 1980s where Mike was riding. He ended up a star rodeo rider himself. She seemed real nice. It's safe to say that my uncle Mack knew how to have a good time, and those who loved him and rode along with him on that journey sometimes had a tough time of things.

I was always scared of him when I was a kid, but always loved him, and looked up to him. He seemed mythical to a little kid who grew up away from his family and home country and only knew about these things from stories. He was a real cowboy, and always seemed tough and cool, the few times I saw him while growing up. He was the real thing. In the last 20 years of his life he walked in a permanent stoop from an injury when a bull stomped on his back. Seeing him in that bent posture, with the big barrel chest, those huge arms, and those scarred and muscled hands, he was larger than life. I miss him a lot now.

He didn't go easily, coming down with some sort of encephalitis and losing his mind. He spent his last years in a nursing home, totally out of it, unable to recognize anyone. It wasn't a very nice nursing home ether, since all they had was Medicare. I'll never forget how small and weak he looked in his coffin. His son Mike leaned over him when the service was over, hugged his father and sobbed. They'd never had the words we all yearn for from our fathers. That always hurts when they go and you find it's too late.

Vonne had cancer several times in her life, and the last time it got her. She died a few years after Mack, with Mike and his family taking care of her. Those who were close to her say she never got over Mack's death. They went through a lot together, and in the end he softened a bit. He started to go to church with her, and began to have a closer relationship with his son and grandchildren. Then the disease took him, just as everything was beginning to work out. It's all very sad, but I think it shows that you should never waste any time. You never know how much you'll have.



That's Vonne on the left, and then Mike and Shirley. That's my sister at bottom center, peekin' up into view there. She was about a year old there, and already knew how to vogue for the camera. This must have been when mom and dad brought her home from England, where she'd been born, to introduce her to the rest of the family. Shirley died a few years after these pictures were taken. I'm not really sure why. My sister remembers her, and the shock of such a young death. Mike is still going strong, with children and grandchildren and a great life. His wife Peggy is my barber. I love them all to death.



That's my mom in the middle of that shot, and my sister in the arms of our paternal grandfather. That's Mike peekin' into the shot on the bottom left, and my uncle Mack to the right. That ghostly figure to the left of the picture is my grandmother (talking to Shirley). I remember her, vaguely. I have a memory of all the men in the family standing around her in a close circle, and her looking up through the haze of Alzheimer's. She didn't know her sons any more, but she did recognise me and the other kids. She died in about 1968, and dad wasn't able to make it back in time for her funeral. His brothers told him not to come. They didn't want to have to put off the funeral to wait for him. I remember going to the cemetery when we did finally come home and hugging his leg as he cried. That was the first time I ever saw him do that.




Here's Mack holding my cousin Larry. I'll do another post about he and his brother and my uncle Sam one of these days. That's my grandfather on the right. He attained a mythic stature in my mind growing up, hearing stories from my father. He was a sharecropper and didn't have the money to buy his own farm until my father went off to the Army and sent his pay back home to his family.

The place you see in these pictures is the farm they ended up in. Granddad died of a heart attack some time around 1964, hitching the mules up to the plow behind that garage in the back of this picture. My dad tells me he was found sitting up against a tree in the back yard with a smile on his face. Dad flew home for the funeral, and took his fathers clothes out to the field behind that garage and burned them. He couldn't stand the idea of any other man wearing those clothes. I'll never forget the day dad took me there and showed me the tree and the place where the clothes burned. All these things happened before I could be here and know these people. It's always been as if I arrived on the stage just in the wake of a great drama. That's not true of course, but these stories I heard growing up left me feeling it all the same.

That farm is still there, though not in the family any more. It still looks very much like it did then. The fields around it are still plowed and tall with corn in the growing seasons. They have a corn festival in Holland, and some years I get dad and go, and we look to see if he can run into anyone he knows. I drive him by the old farm now and then, and all the other landmarks of his early life, and the emotions well up in him. Most of the people who meant something to him in his life are gone now, waiting for him on the other side. That's got to be the worst thing about living that long.



Here's a last look at Vonne, Mike and uncle Mack. Check out the clouds in the sky behind them. They make me wish these were good color shots. There's a always a big sky over Texas, and the views can be majestic, particularly when the rain clouds boil up and the sky a hundred miles away and the sun gives them the look of a great painting by Thomas Moran or Albert Bierstadt. That faint line in the field behind them is the road to Holland, where my younger uncles went to school, and where some of my cousins can be found today.

Part of me would give anything to be able to walk into this picture and see these folks again. I miss them a lot. I also think about all the stuff that hadn't happened yet in October of 1955, and I'd like to jump back there and change a few things. You can't go back though, but it's a fun idea.