Guest Blogger
Last week’s Genea-Blogger prompt was to ask a guest to blog. This suggestion came at an opportune time since my youngest son had just accompanied me to family reunion. AND he agreed to write this week’s post for me. Thanks, Dave. Here it is:
Notes on the reunion in Texas
It had been months since I declined my mother’s request to attend family reunion. Dad usually accompanied her to these things; and besides, I hadn’t any but the faintest of notions how I was related to the other folks attending. Indeed, the labyrinthine familial chains binding me to them were reflected in cumbersome titles like “second-cousin-once-removed,” or “third-cousin-once-over-on-your great-great grandmother’s side,” etc.
In any case, my father took sick the week of the reunion thereby leaving my mother without a date. So, I offered to go. We left on Friday, July 31st, for Pampa, Texas. Soon into our trip, I was glad I’d gone. My grandparents lived in Perryton – which is about 60 miles due north of Pampa – so I spent a lot of time as a boy in west Texas. The sky and farm and ranchlands seem to stretch out into forever in part of the country, and seeing it again brought back pleasant, nostalgic memories.
On the way we stopped in Miami, Texas (pop. 588) so mom could take a picture of her Uncle “Scoops” Osborne’s gravestone. While looking for Scoops, I noticed an inscription on a gravestone which said “May he rest gently forever and forever gently on our minds.” Standing there in the town cemetery, encased by high hills on either side, feeling a slight breeze on my face, I could think of no more gentle a place to rest.
We arrived in Pampa that evening and settled into our room. After a nice dinner at “Texas Rose Steakhouse” (I kept calling it “Tokyo Rose Steakhouse” for some reason) mom went to bed and I went out to a bookstore. Buying a Cormac McCarthy novel, I came back to the room to read the rest of the evening away.
The next day we got up and made our way to the First United Methodist Church. It was funny meeting these folks and struggling to figure out exactly how we were related to one another; it was as if the struggle brought us together more than any ancestral ties could. In most cases we simply accepted as fact that we were family, and promptly dispensed with the rest of the details. After lunch, mom gave a presentation about the earliest (discovered) male relative, a John Osborne from Tennessee. He apparently was something of a rascal, leaving his children with not much more than a series of failed business ventures and personal debt.
After the reunion we went to the town cemetery, our last stop before heading home. It was a lovely place, with long walkways shaded by tall trees. Mom snapped her pictures and we got into the car for the ride back to Oklahoma City. We briefly entertained going through Perryton so we could see my grandmother and grandfather’s graves. We decided against it, with mom saying “Mamaw and Papaw would understand….they know what its like to travel in the Panhandle.”
Thanks, Dave, both for going with me and for the guest post.
I’m glad it wasn’t the awful time you were expecting. My kids feel a lot like you did about going to meet cousins for the first time. We actually have only been to one reunion, for my husband’s family. It’s a large family so we see various subgroups at various events.