Family Reunions

News of my Cousin Ken’s death recently opened my memory bank and treasures poured out. Family gatherings were a regular occurrence during my childhood.  My family usually lived hours away from the rest, so anytime I was with cousins it was a big deal.  In remembering Ken, I pulled out the following piece that I wrote a few years ago about our extended family reunions.  It gives Ken well-deserved notoriety! 

I’m hoping my cousins will enjoy it and that you, too, will be reminded of pleasant times, childhood antics, crazy relatives and lots of love.

The Harrington Reunion

circa 1960

The car trunks were filled with suitcases, golf clubs, footballs, fishing poles, tackle boxes, bowling ball bags, food to pass and snacks to munch.  Tucked away in the suitcases were the new “reunion outfits” that would appear sometime during the weekend.

Teenage girls said good-bye to their boyfriends and guys said good-bye to their girlfriends, because girlfriends and boyfriends were not allowed on this weekend.  It wasn’t just that they weren’t invited, they weren’t allowed.  And although some girl might pout about leaving her boyfriend for a couple of days, she got over it in the first few miles because traditions are traditions and they create families and that’s what this whole weekend was about.  Family and tradition.  She would write to her boyfriend both days she was gone and someday when they were engaged he could come to the family reunion, also.  But definitely not until they were engaged.

Families from Indiana, Ohio and Michigan piled into cars, started their engines and headed for Smallbone’s, a resort in lower Michigan. This vacation sanctuary consisted of cabins of varying sizes clustered on one side of a small lake.  Since it was September, it was officially closed, but the resort, already tired from its hectic summer season, was now going to see its most challenging weekend of the year.  A hundred people attending the Harrington Reunion were converging on it.  The beds were made with clean sheets that would later be short sheeted and covered with rice or cornflakes.  The bathrooms were spotless and ready for toothpaste on the door handles and shaving cream dripping down the sparkling mirrors.  But all of that was yet to come and it would come under the protection of darkness.

The excitement in the cars was growing as kids anticipated the lake with a fishing dock, row boats and more cousins than they could play with in one day.  It would be a day of great freedom.  The adults were always around, but they were involved in their own “traditions” and the day just kinda flowed.  Everyone knew that boundaries were out there somewhere, but other than that there was great autonomy.  That is until something went wrong. Then the kids had a few scapegoats that could take the adults’ chastisement.

 Ken, Charles and Harley were names frequently hollered by the mothers sitting on the bank keeping watch over the kids. Keeping watch over the kids part of the time, for they had their own traditions to fulfill. They chatted about their lives, laughed, knitted, embroidered, crocheted and passed around containers of baked goods. That was usually when the kids ran up from the dock and put their worm-crusted hands into the containers with a female voice screeching, “Get your hands out of there! Here let me hand you one.”  The ladies sitting on the lawn chairs would laugh and the woman holding the container joined them with a bit of faked exasperation. 

For a group of second and third cousins, the kids all knew each other quite well and saw each other a few times a year.  But this was called the Harrington Reunion which meant there were cousins imported from Michigan that showed up for the weekend.  Fortunately most of these were babies or adults, so they stayed on the bank visiting with the mothers, grandmothers and great aunts.  Occasionally a younger cousin came with this “other” group and the aunts would call the kids from the row boats, introduce them to the newly-arrived, we’ve-never-seen-her-before cousin and the kids were then expected to “include” her in their activities. 

Now that was hard, because the “cousins” had been together year after year in this same place and they had their rhythm. They had their ins and outs, their ups and downs with each other and they knew who was in charge and who the followers were.  Absorbing a newbie wasn’t easy. And besides, if she hasn’t been here before will she ever be here again?  So it was mostly up to her if she felt a part of the group or not. 

If there were any men around, they were stragglers playing horseshoes or walking through the autumn canopy.  The vast majority of men were still on the golf course.  They wouldn’t be seen for hours.  They would make it back just about the time that the “ladies who were watching the kids” started complaining about how long the men were gone.

“How many holes of golf are they playing?” someone would eventually ask agitatedly.

It was funny how the point of exasperation and the return of the golfers was so well synchronized.  It was as if a checkered flag went down on the golf course warning the men that their time was up. 

Women didn’t golf; at least not at the reunion.  Oh, maybe they could, but they didn’t.  It was another of those unwritten traditions.  The men golfed, played horseshoes, football in the afternoon and competed.  When it came to sports, everyone of the clan was highly competitive.  It always appeared as an amiable competition.

The real competition came in the “girls’ cabin.”  When a girl turned thirteen she was allowed to stay away from her parents and sleep in the “girls’ cabin.”  This seems like a straightforward rule, like not being able to attend the reunion unless you are engaged or married to a member of the family, but it never went without challenge.

 “ But I’m going to be thirteen next month,” one female cousin whined with an accompanying look of “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!”

“But Nadine is staying and she wants me to stay with her,” another younger cousin feign.

Then there were the bed assignments.  Would the older girls stay on one side of the duplex and the younger ones stay on the other?  Maybe not, because that splits up first cousins and here we meet the less than amicable rub.  We were all one family but there were branches in the family tree and those were best observed among the teen-age girls.  Doesn’t that seem understandable? Clothes, looks, boyfriends, cheerleaders, music, grades, (well maybe not, that was too nerdy) were all points of competitiveness and comparison. So at the beginning of the weekend the teenage girls staked out their territory and claimed their loyalties. 

Then through typical girly activities like styling hair, polishing nails, changing clothes and talking about boys, the walls came down.  Probably what coalesced them the most were the teenage boy cousins who were continually pesky. 

By the end of the weekend all the girls were close again, just like their grandparents, parents and aunts and uncles wanted them to be. This was exactly the reason for these family reunions.

There were enough of the “imported” relatives that it was hard for kids to keep them all straight.  But there was one that every child knew by name, Aunt Goldie.  And of course why did they recognize her immediately?  Certainly her tall, lean frame and her white hair distinguished her, but the children remembered her from one year to next by the Tootsie Roll Pops she carried in her bag.  For a woman who never had children of her own, she knew how to attract them.  She was a tradition.  Those dozens of children would remember her long into their adulthood.

Throughout the weekend there were pictures taken and pictures shared and a movie camera running almost continuously.  The soundless movie camera was very perceptive in catching for posterity the clowns, the hams, the shy, the strong, the awkward, the athletic, the talkative, the fashionable, the moody, and the crying. All would be remembered more readily for what the movies recorded than for who they really were. 

Harley, Ken and Charles usually commandeered the rowboats and if you wanted to ride in one, you had to make friends with them.  It was another smokescreen of family cohesiveness.  But they knew how to row the boats and how to give orders for rowing the boats and the younger children were happy to have a seat in one.  As the boats crashed into each other, those three guys took command and often more risk than necessary to get the boats untangled.  Then the kids heard from the bank, “Harley, don’t stand up in that boat!”  “Kenneth, be careful!” They were watching.

For most of my childhood, my dad’s first cousin Deantha had been the family secretary.  Later her sister Caroline filled the role. This position carried all authority and a lot of work.  There was an official president and vice president of the family, but they were mere figure heads.  Voting them in was a tradition of the annual business meetings.  But the secretary books never changed hands.  On Saturday after making the room assignments, Caroline updated her family book with new births, confirming wedding dates and taking a count of reunion attendees.  Later she would tally the cost and announce what each family unit had to pay for the weekend.  Her small frame wielded much authority.

Newlyweds attending the reunion for the first time had to go through initiation.  One never knew what this would entail, but the reputation of it was enough to turn any new member of the family away. Under the shield of night, people were harassed in their sleep, thrown into the lake, dressed clownishly and paraded through the local bowling alley, unable to get out of their cabin in the morning and whatever the devious minds of the family could concoct.  The only deterrent to any of the pranks played at night was a sleeping baby.  If you had a sleeping baby in your room or in the other half of the cabin, you were exempt from practical jokes.  Therefore newlyweds usually got private cabins.

Supper of barbecued beef sandwiches was served after the golf, the rowboats, the multi-generational football game and the horseshoe roundup.  This meal was prepared by the aunts who owned large electric roasters. The roaster brigade moved through the generations.  Seldom did anyone retire, but they did die off.  The daughter would inherit the roaster and the responsibility.  It was important to have the family together and this crew worked hard to make it happen. Others helped by bringing the best and gooiest desserts to share.

The local bowling alley was hit en masse as the family descended upon it, occupying most of the lanes.  Some members of the family carted their own bowling ball, bag and shoes.  Others stood in line to rent shoes. The kids ran around lifting bowling balls off the racks, most of them too heavy for them to handle, until they found just the right one. Bowling skill levels were varied, but the thud of dropping the14-pound sphere, the rattle of falling pins and the hollow sound of the gutter balls created a wonderful ambiance for cheering, chatting, bantering and nurturing relationships that would mark the family for generations.

Even after turning in their bowling shoes, the night was not over. The pranksters were just stepping into their prime time.  As stealth as they tried to be, they could easily be detected and identified by their giggles.  Often accompanied by their younger protégés they were usually caught in a flashlight beam by a roving patrol. Their embellished stories were whispered around at breakfast amidst guffawing laughter.   

The card players pulled out the Rook cards and stayed up past all the babies, the grandparents, the newlyweds, the teenagers and maybe even the pranksters.

Whether it’s tradition or habit, form or value, Sunday mid-morning the family gathered for church.  All were dressed better than on Saturday, maybe even wearing their new “reunion outfit.” It was casual compared to their typical Sunday attire, except for the few that still donned a white shirt and tie.

The congregation of one hundred or more family members crowded into the lodge.  After congregational singing, for there were several fine musicians, one of the ministers in the family gave the sermon.  If there was no pastor in attendance, one of the many skillful public speakers could deliver an inspirational scripture-based message.  At the service’s conclusion, family business issues were addressed.   Announcements by Caroline of engagements, new births and pregnancies were met with applause, laughter and occasionally surprise.

The offering was taken and designated to a specific project that someone in the family represented or a financial need of family members.

Dinner was served by the Smallbone's staff and we sat with our extended family at a traditional Sunday dinner of chicken, mashed potatoes, vegetable and dessert.

Over time, the kids outgrew the rowboats.  The reunion moved to other sites. The pranksters grew older and went to bed about the same time as the babies.  Aunt Goldie’s generation became a branch on the family tree.  Eventually the reunions grew few and far between. But for the generations that met at Smallbone’s, there was a lasting bond among them.  Life took them in many and varied directions but the memories of family reunions went with them. 

Do you have a family reunion that meets regularly or meets at all?  I’d love to hear about it.  Your comments might spur someone to initiate such a memorable time for their own family.