Life in OK
Once a year, I go back to my hometown in Oklahoma for a family reunion. My Mom's side of the family is an interesting crowd. Here's a rundown of the events that took place at the yearly Tucker Family Reunion.
Monday: The Day Before
11:30 am: We drive out to Finley, a town almost wholly populated with my Mom's relatives. It has a gas station, a post office and a few churches. We see my cousin John is still building the house he started working on three years ago. John marveled us all by throwing some fish food in the pond out back and about 20 catfish came out and ate.
1 pm: We drive down the road to my cousin Stella's and see if our Alabama relatives have arrived yet. They haven't, so we take Stella and her husband Bob to the town of Snow (population 30-ish) to get Barbeque. While we're there, I see my high school drum major, Kristin. When we were in school, Kristin got her teeth kicked out by a mule. She looks great now.
1 pm: We drive down the road to my cousin Stella's and see if our Alabama relatives have arrived yet. They haven't, so we take Stella and her husband Bob to the town of Snow (population 30-ish) to get Barbeque. While we're there, I see my high school drum major, Kristin. When we were in school, Kristin got her teeth kicked out by a mule. She looks great now.
5pm: We go back to Aunt Marie's house and look at some of her paintings of deer and other wildlife. We read the Homecoming edition of the Antlers American newspaper, and find that my brother's old friend Billy Sam was arrested on drug charges.
Tuesday: The day of the reunion
9 am: Despite my pleading, my Mom and Aunt Marie insist on going to the family reunion early to get their salads ready. Aunt Marie picks up my Aunt Alma from the nursing home. We are the first ones there.
10 am: My Dad gives my cousin Garrett an OU hat, bringing ugliness from all sides of the room. This is because my Mom's relatives are OSU alum, and they all think that my Dad is a city boy because he's from Antlers (population 2,500) instead of Finley (population 350?).
11:30 am: Little by little, the family starts trickling in. People bring homemade food, and we run out of room on the buffet table. The crisis is that we have too much chicken spaghetti! I find out that I have about six new baby cousins since last year. People begin to ask why I'm not married yet.
3:30: The kids leave and go to cousin Robert's pool to swim. All the moms start making homemade ice cream.
6:00: We eat whatever food is leftover from lunch and play bingo.
9:00 pm: The rest of the clan goes out to a bridge on Bug Tussle road. We light firecrackers on this bridge, knowing that people only drive across this bridge about once a day. My adult cousins, John and Steven, almost set themselves on fire several times. Cousin Garrett is burned in the leg when little Tucker, age seven, lights a satellite dish that goes flying into the crowd. Cousin Freda says it's never a good thing to see rednecks running toward you with flaming sticks.
Just wanted to give you a little taste of life with my family. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that I'm related to them, but maybe someday I'll move back there and raise cattle or horses.
posted by Heather at
7/05/2006
1 comment(s):
Funny you mention family. I just got off the phone with my sister and we had a good long talk about just that.
I think it's cool to look at all the good and bad things combined to see how it all works together to make us who we are.
Sometimes I think about certain family members and wonder if I was switched at birth (I think this in a loving way, of course). That old saying "you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family." is a great saying that puts it all together (for me anyway). God chooses our family for us and I can't imagine who I'd be without any one of my family members.
Sometimes it's hard for me to believe I'm related to them too, but that is the most amazing part!
Thanks for sharing a little of your family with me, it came at the perfect time.
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