Family is the best part of the holidays

I hope you are having a great holiday! Each year, I look forward to Christmas with excitement and a little trepidation. I remember we spent at least two, maybe three Thanksgivings in a row in the hospital emergency rooms when the kids were small. They were all children's medical issues (not food related, I might add.) I can't tell you how many after-Christmases we spent sick instead of pursuing after-Christmas sales. It was one such holiday I learned I was allergic to penicillin and all the drugs in the "cillin" family. I got sick the day after Christmas and was taking penicillin. I was lying on the floor, curled up in a sleeping bag, when I thought my feet and legs were being attacked by insects. I didn't think there were bugs in my sleeping bag and jumping out of it didn't seem to help. A minute later I happened to look in the bathroom mirror to see a face I didn't recognize staring back. It was about the color of a lobster and swollen beyond recognition. Obviously, I survived. I have not always been concerned about spending Christmas with family. In college, I worked for a radio station and volunteered to work a 12-hour shift Christmas Day rather than going home to be with my parents. I'm glad I did it. I learned the hard way that grocery stores are not open at 5 a.m. Christmas morning. I had planned to buy some sustenance for the long shift. In those days, all our programming was on reel tapes, on records or live and since I was going to be the only person at the station, I would not be able to leave the building. The UPI teletype wire guys had a field day around midnight sending out bulletins about Santa's progress from the North Pole on Christmas Eve. I imagined some of them had children at home who might not see daddy when they awoke on Christmas morning. Chalk one up for being single with no children on Christmas. But Christmas 2015 was glorious. We were able to see both kids and their families and my in-laws over the Christmas weekend. I was able to talk to my cousin's widow on Christmas Eve. Louise lives in northern Indiana and has children about my age. Linda and I had a great time visiting with them a few months ago and Louise and I call each other around each holiday. On Christmas Day I got to hold and "visit" with my four-month-old grandson and his brothers and sisters. On one occasion I served as "protector" when our son-in-law's new drone flew too close to Joey and me. I got to listen while one granddaughter practiced reading. We admired another granddaughter in her "princess" dress complete with tiara and wand. The boys got toy trucks and a stunt set. All of the kids enjoyed their inflatable dinosaurs (which our princess decided to use as a club on her brothers and on me.) Then, on Sunday, we were with Linda's parents and our son and his family. Our granddaughter had asked for "Apples to Apples," a new card game designed to build one's vocabulary. I couldn't help thinking about the years I had to leave family gatherings early to go to work, to play records and do newscasts on a radio station or help get a newspaper ready for publication. I know there will be more years like that in the future (I doubt I ever retire) but most certainly time spent with family is best.

Folks get older but memories are sweet

Have you ever noticed how old people around you are getting to be, especially family and friends? 

My wife gave me a very special gift on Columbus Day. We went to visit my cousins in St. Joseph County.

Most of my family piled in to Louise’s house. Her husband, my cousin, Glen “Junior", passed away several years ago. 

We had supper together and spent the evening laughing and reminiscing. 

How strange that all those folks are getting older. Me? I’m not feeling it.

Young adults called them Mom and Dad and there were a few grandchildren present. Surprisingly, all the kids seemed to know who I was though we hadn’t been to visit for many years. 

I am an only child and these wonderful people were the closest relations I had to brothers and sisters.

In fact, one of my cousins climbed up on the couch next to me one day. He was maybe 3 at the time, and said, "You know what? You're my bestest brother cousin." 

When my Aunt Janice passed away, I attended the funeral. I was sitting near the back of the room with everyone else when my cousin, Junior, came and got me. 

"She looked on you as one of her own kids," he said. "You come sit with the rest of the family." 

It was confusing at times because my cousin, Junior, was some 25 years older than me and his oldest child was two weeks older than me. It gets more confusing because her name is Linda and I married a Linda. 

Like many families, Mom and Dad would take me to visit my cousins, aunt and uncle regularly in the summer. Mom said we kids were always shy and we didn't really open up and start playing together until it was time to go home. 

That all changed the summer after my sophomore year in high school. Mom and Dad were both in the hospital that summer and they thought it would be better for me to stay with my aunt and uncle in North Liberty, Indiana.

Mom and Dad were older than most parents when I was born. Mom was 40 and Dad was 35. Needless to say, I was unexpected. To this day, when I see a container of birth control pills I think, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Mom said I was her miracle baby and I made it a point of reminding her about that. 

Aunt Janice and Uncle Glen had four boys. All but one have passed away now. Bob was the youngest and I am told he is not in the best of health.

Junior bought a 20-year-old Chevrolet pickup truck that had been repainted black. It sported a homemade wooden camper on the back. After work that summer, he often picked me up at my aunt’s house and took his sons for outings in that pickup we called the "fishing buggy." 

Never content to stay on the bank and fish, I always got too close to the edge and went home soggy more times than not. The lake we fished had a muck bottom that irritated my skin and as soon as they dropped me off at Aunt Janice’s house, I headed for a hot tub of water. 

One weekend, Junior took my uncle and the boys camping on a nearby farm. There was a creek running through the property and we camped there in tents. 

The weather was wet and windy when we arrived. We didn’t know until later a tornado touched down about a mile from where we were camping. 

After dark we started cooking hamburgers for supper. That was my job. 

We didn't have a grill with us and it was starting to storm so we didn’t try to dig out the frying pan Junior had packed. We tried to cook the hamburgers on the top of a camp stove. 

A Coleman stove is fired by Coleman fuel, also called white gas. It has an open grate on top so you can pump air into the fuel tank, turn on the burner and light it with a match. 

Every time the wind blew the fire out, I would pump the tank and shoot more fuel into the burner so I could light it again. I didn't realize the fuel was also shooting into the meat. 

To this day, we laugh about the "kerosene hamburgers," named for Aunt Bea's "kerosene cucumbers" on the Andy Griffith Show. 

During our visit on Columbus Day, “my bestest brother cousin,” Mark, told me they still had the old fishing buggy out back of the house. So, Gary, Mark and I went out. When I saw that old truck, the memories came washing over me so thick I could have brushed them from my eyes. 

"When I want to find a happy place, I think back to those days," I told the guys.

Now, my Linda and my cousin, Linda, are both grandmas. Two of my cousins are drawing Social Security and still working. One of my cousins is in marketing and has two kids (Luke is into the Minecraft computer game.) One is semi-retired after doing very well buying and selling motorcycles and parts on eBay. Others are busy with their own lives but they all took time to get together on Columbus Day so I could see them and we could reminisce. 

"You know Junior and Aunt Janice and Uncle Glen, were there, too," Linda said during our long drive home late Monday night. 

I believe they were and it makes me very happy though a little emotional.  

Write on! It's the right thing to do for your family

Everyone needs to write.Not everyone will be the next famous writer. Not everyone will pass high school English but for your family's sake, you need to write.
It's important you tell your family, your children your grandchildren, about your life. It's important to them. If you don't want to write, try dictating stories that you remember into a recorder. Most cell phones have the ability to record sound and if you have a phone you don't mind talking into it, do you?
Today I visited in the home of a 90-year-old lady who recently made a very generous donation to a local non-profit group.
During the course of the interview (which I recorded, by the way) she told me she "can't write" but she is jotting down her memories for her grandchildren.
She retrieved a big plastic bag filled with various sizes of paper on which she had written many things that have happened over the years.
She plans to have her daughter type the information into a computer to save it for posterity.
What a wonderful idea!
Young reporters sometimes complain they don't have anything to write about.
"Close your eyes and open a phone book to any page," I tell them. "Put your finger down on the page and call that number."
If someone answers and will talk, I promise they will have at least one interesting, entertaining story to tell. Everyone has a story!
The lady's husband wrote a series of letters for his grandson, talking about how much different the boy's life will be from the grandfather who grew up during the Depression.
There was another gentleman in the room while I interviewed the lady. They were not related.
He told me he learned his father was adopted as a child. His mother could not afford to keep both he and his sister so she agreed to pay a family friend a small amount of money each year until she got back on her feet financially. It never happened and the boy eventually changed his name.
What a great story! I hope he records it in some form for his children and grandchildren.
While I was in the lady's home I tried to remember why her deceased husband was so familiar to me.
"You wrote about him when he died" she said. "You put his story on the front page of the newspaper."
I try to write about all the prominent people at their passing so that was no surprise.
"I have that front page ganging on the wall of my study," she said.
I was dumbfounded!
Then she led us down the hall to a bedroom converted into a study.
There, hanging on the wall, laminated to preserve it was the front page from a 2005 edition of our local paper.
It had been hanging there 10 years and I had no idea.
"You're a good writer," she said.
Relatively speaking, maybe.
It was the subject and the story that made her hang the front page of our paper on her wall.
Not long ago I found a letter my mom wrote her dad when I was first learning to set up. I couldn't talk but I laughed at everything my dad's mother said, mom wrote.
Just like my son!
I gave the letter to our son and he later texted me about it. I'm sure he appreciated that little bit of family history.
You don't have to be"a good writer. The fact that you are writing about family will be enough to make it special.

Home made ice cream in summer (almost)

We had home made ice cream at Bob and Marianne's today.
The whole family was there. Bob and Marianne are my in-laws.
It was great.
I played catch with Logan, our 4-year-old grandson, played with Cailin, our 3-year-old granddaughter. She had a book and she had a baby doll, and I'm not sure what we played, other than we visited.
Sitting at the table, reminiscing with everyone about times when our kids were little, my memory went back to when I was little and we had family get-togethers at Grandpa Phillipses.
On some occasions during the summer, we met at the lake for a cookout.
Grandpa didn't make home made ice cream, but he, too grilled out. He gave me his charcoal grill and we had it for years. It finally burned out when our kids were little.
Grandpa would have the grill set up in front of his cottage at Magician Lake in Michigan. Aunt Jessie and Uncle Brownie would be there. Aunt Jessie would have her ever-present camera and big smile.
Rick, my cousin, would be there with his parents. Sometimes his sister, Lou Ann would be there, too. But Rick is 6 years older than me and Lou Ann is six years older than him, so I have to go back a long ways to remember when Lou Ann was there.
In addition to the adults talking, we could hear the motor boats droning down n the lake. Grandpa's cottage was on the bank, high above the lake, giving us a good view of the lake.
When I got older, I could go for a walk around part of the lake.
Ten, we could always go down the steps (that seemed like they numbered 50 to a thousand, depending on my size at the time, and walk out on the pier Grandpa built.
We could also sit on the benches down at the end of Grandpa's neighbor's pier and watch the boats.
Grandpa was a fisherman and had little use for the water ski boats. Personally, I thought they were pretty cool.
At the local marina, I got to see some of them up close. They were shiny, made of fiberglas, various colors, but I was partial to red and white.
I liked to fish (and still do), but going out with Grandpa meant wearing a heavy orange life jacket that was so hot in the summer time. I don't remember catching a fish during those excursions. But I do remember the dragon flies that would play on the end of my pole. They provided some welcome entertainment and distraction from the heat.
I ma not have caught any fish, but I loved the bluegill Grandpa caught. I can still taste their delicious white flesh and feel the bones. Sure, you would burn your fingers nce in a while on the hot fish, but who cared. They were so good.
Grandpa had a cat clock on the wall above the dining room table. Its eyes moved from side to side in time with its tail. I guess it was supposed to remind us that cats liked fish too.
We had a fantastic time. today.
Bob and Marianne really started something neat when they were married nearly 60 years ago.
Bob turned to Rebecca, our daughter-in-law, and said, "See what can happen in the next 60 years?"