1991

Family Reunion

Gary's and Diaine's Log Cabin House

Reunion Day

Monday morning, I wake up again to the smell of coffee, get dressed and head to the kitchen. It’s Labor Day holiday and the day of the family reunion.  Surprisingly, Mom is already up, sitting next to Dad reading the paper. Grandma hadn’t got up yet.  I make breakfast, English muffin, tea and a glass of orange juice again, sit at the table and pick up the front page of the paper then ask Mom what the plan was for today. Mom was always the planner, the scheduler, the one to tell everyone their tasks and plan for the day.  Grandma gets up and joins us in the kitchen and Mom makes her a scrambled egg and toast and gets the last two slices of bacon that Dad had cooked.  We had a couple of hours before we had to leave so I go with Dad out the back door and into the back yard where I follow him around talking to him as he waters the flower gardens.

The plan is for everyone to gather at Gary and Diane’s house around 11 o’clock and we would eat around one, Mom tells us. Knowing our family and which ones were always late, that probably meant eating around two. But we were never ones to be late, Dad’s view of proper etiquette was, “if you’re not 15 minutes early, you are late.”  If they say it starts at 11, for Dad that meant be there at 10:45.  At ten fifteen and Dad announces it’s time we load up the car, Mom delays him a few minutes, telling him we don’t have to leave quite yet but Dad is not deterred for long and we start loading the car. By loading the car, I mean loading all the food that Mom made, which for such family gatherings, each household is expected to bring.  This is a long tradition in our family with each person having their own special dishes.  There is even a cookbook of family recipes titled, “Tall Tales and Great Meals: The Junior Family’s Cooking Heritage Told Through Delicious Recipes, Memorable Stories, and Slanderous Lies.’  Mom made green beans, her famous Jello salad and what she best known for, mashed potatoes, ten pounds of potatoes.  She made five pounds last time and they ran out, she explained. I spent a half hour helping Grandma peel the potatoes this morning bringing back memories of doing so when I was a boy and, just as I had then, I sprinkle a bit of salt on a fresh peeled piece of raw potato and eat it.

With the car loaded, we leave the house promptly at 10:30. Typically it’s only a fifteen-minute drive over to Gary’s house on 10th Avenue, ten minutes today being a holiday with hardly anyone on the streets, so we arrive well before eleven.  Surprisingly, we were not the first ones there, there are a couple of other cars out front, likely some family member that stayed the night at Gary’s and Diane’s. Mom and Grandma get out of the car and head into the house though the kitchen door while Dad and I get the food out of the trunk of the car and bring it into the kitchen.

Gary’s and Diane’s house is a beautiful old log cabin which the family knew as “The Log Cabin House” or more appropriately “Gary’s Log Cabin House” as it was considered Gary’s dream house.  Built with logs dragged from the nearby Sweetwater cypress swamp in 1929, it was completed in 1931. Uncle Gary bought the house in 1983 (sold 1996) and did considerable renovation on it including adding additional bathrooms, a large master bedroom suite, and a separate guest house attached to the main house by a covered walkway.  At over 3,000 square feet, the most spectacular feature of the house is its forty by sixty great room with a twenty-foot-high ceiling with a huge stone fireplace at the end.  It is like some lodge you would find in the mountains of Colorado. There are large windows on the south side overlooking a sprawling lawn that slopes down to azaleas and ancient pine trees at the bottom of the yard. The house was featured in some popular home and garden magazine when Gary and Diane lived there.

Grandma Junior, Grandma Mixson, Grandma Dowling
<Click photo to see more pictures with Grrandma>

As directed by the women, we place the food on the table in the great room, and head over to the drink table and get some ice tea and head outside onto the patio. It wasn’t long before others started to arrive, Mom’s siblings and their families, Aunt Sue and Uncle Jim, Uncle Cork and Connie, Carole and Dick came up from Clearwater. Along with their parents or separately the cousins, Sara and Joshua, Daniel, Kristan, Dana, Vandy, Carrie Lane, my brother David and sister Beth, Uncle Gary’s kids Kelly and Eric were there still living at home. There was another whole generation of little kids, most of which I had no idea which cousin they belonged to.  Several of the younger cousins and their husbands came with new babies, then there were the grandmothers, Grandma Junior, Grandma Mixson and Aunt Diane’s mother, Grandma Dowling, the three of them responsible for everyone present that day. It was somewhat of a sad moment looking back on the moment, the family had learned the year before that Grandma Junior had Parkinson’s, but I didn’t know what that meant at the time but would learn so in the following years.

Food on the table

People gathered, people talked, kids played, adults watched as they ran about. When it was determined, if it was possible with all the confusion, that everyone was in attendance, we gathered in the great room in a large circle and held hands while the prayer was said. In years past it was Grandpa Junior who said the prayer, most fitting as he was a Baptist preacher, but since his passing it varied who said the prayer, this year it being at Gary’s home and him being the eldest son, Gary said the blessing. Not quite up to his father’s standard, but sufficient and considerably shorter than what Grandpa, who would make it a short sermon, would have delivered.  With the prayer said, the mothers yell out, “Children first.”, as they proceed to the food with their smallest children in tow to prepare their plates.  With the children appropriately fed, the grandmothers are called, and then the floodgates open for the rest of us.  I get in line, talking to cousins in line with me. There was food of every kind, meats, vegetables, casseroles, salads, and the desserts, I could hardly wait to get to them. I progress through the line, taking a bit of old favorites and trying a couple new things, I fill my plate with more food than I could probably eat and look for a place to eat, choosing to sit on the stone balcony overlooking the back yard.

Kids lined up for the sack race

The pool

There are often planned events at our reunions and today was no exception, there would be potato sack races. In the old times, potatoes would come in large burlap sacks, which would be used for sack races. Common at children’s birthday parties, the kids would line up, each standing in a potato sack, and at the sound of “Go”, would hop across the yard to a finish line. Today there would be a series of races starting with the little kids, larger kids and adults. Uncle Gary couldn’t find any burlap potato sacks but did get some flower sacks which were not as large as potato sacks but are nicer in that they are made from a finer cloth than the rough scratchy potato sacks.  It had warmed up nicely after lunch many changed into their swimsuits and spent most the afternoon or around the pool.

Late in the afternoon, four-thirty or five o’clock, people wandered back to the food table where they got something to eat for dinner. Most of the food was pretty much gone but there was always ham and rolls to make a simple sandwich.  After eating, and the dishes were washed, people started leaving, each saying their goodbyes to those remaining, which by six had dwindled down to a few when we put the empty dishes in the trunk, all ten pounds of mashed potatoes had been eaten, we took our leave and headed back to Mom and Dad’s. After dropping us off at the house, Dad drove Grandma Mixson back to her house in Orange Lake and was home shortly after seven.  

I woke up Tuesday morning and like the previous few mornings, had breakfast with Dad while reading the paper. After breakfast I packed up my things and loaded my suitcase into the car and Dad drove me back to the airport in Jacksonville while Mom stayed home.  Dad and I had one of those slow southern conversations on the way to the airport, one of us would make a statement, the other would sit and ponder it a bit before replying.  Dad pulled up at the drive through drop off at the airport, gets out and opens the trunk and I get my suitcase out then give Dad a hug and say, “Love you Dad.”, and he replies, “Love you to son.”. I take a few steps and then pause on the sidewalk with misty tears in my eyes as I watch Dad drive away, then turn and go into the airport.

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The Gators played San Jose State the following Saturday and won 59 to 21, Dad was ecstatic.

Grandma's Birthday