So I get a letter from a cousin about our upcoming family reunion that will be taking place on the West Coast. My mom’s family is huge. There were originally more than 14 of them, so they have spread out from Louisiana like a Whitlock version of the Cripps. Apparently the family’s favorite past time is procreation.
My family has hosted the reunion at various spots, including Atlanta, Houston and Las Vegas. Atlanta and Vegas were the funniest. My uncles would disregard the hospitality suite we paid for and instead delighted in holding court in the lobby, playing dominoes and passing out late at night, still gripping their cocktail glasses -- true old-school macs…lol.
And nothing was better than the old-school reunions we held at the Lake Providence homestead. (Insert Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” here) We were awakened at 3 a.m. by the smell of fried chicken -- the official black family traveling food.
I grew up in the ’70s, so we were way past segregation, but for some reason my family packed food and traveled in the middle of the night, from Houston to Louisiana, like a carpool caravan on the Underground Railroad.
We grew up in the inner city, so going to the country was like traveling abroad. And I mean this was country… chickens, pigs, cows and well water that smelled like boiled eggs, open fields, pecan trees and the most ominous presence of all -- the outhouse. My grandmother had a small house with three bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, one window unit, a porch and one bathroom for more than a hundred relatives.
There was so much land that her house soon became a shantytown with campers, vans and tents to house various families. The older you were, the closer you got to actually sleeping in the house.
All the cousins would get into their “play clothes,” which was code for cut-off jeans we had outgrown during the school year. We played hard in the summer heat… no X box or Wii games here. This was hardcore races, kickball and my personal favorite, dodge ball. Dodge ball was our way to settle any grudge under the watchful eyes of the grownups. I was small and cat-like as my mouth kept me a favorite target.
We had a group of cousins who lived in the country, and we delighted in hanging out. One of our youngest cousins, Paul, was always barefoot, walking on those rocky roads like it was nothing. I think he was part Hobbit.
The days were spent playing, swatting gnats, eating watermelon and snatching meat from the barrel barbecue pit our uncles constantly surrounded. The pit was a sacred place for men to gather, talk smack and drink curious potions from paper bags. My favorite was my Uncle C.B. Apparently, he was not given the name Charles until he went to the Army, so I was named after him, my mom told me.
Uncle C.B. was a riot. You could tell how drunk he was by how closed his right eye became. He would snatch up kids and dangle them upside down. He would yell and say the craziest things, like, “Come here, Yellow Gal,” or “Bring your buck-tooth butt over here.” Yes, real self-esteem stuff.
The day would settle down and the bathing and night ritual would begin. This was the only time the kids were let inside the house. They had it down to a science. Most of my cousins were girls, and the only cousin close to my age was Stevie. I am not sure who had the worst bathing experience. The girls would have to pump water from the well, heat it up and go in three or four at a time. You were lucky if you went first, ‘cause they would only heat up the water, so you can imagine how ugly it got when you got to the last few groups.
Stevie and I were no better off. We were given a huge washtub that they put in the back room, with not so much as a curtain for privacy. There we were, two black, naked boys in this washtub with various relatives walking in and out with no regard for our modesty. My dogs have more privacy when I bathe them now…laugh.
The worst was having to go to the bathroom at night, which meant the outhouse. This would traumatize us forever. An older cousin made it worse by telling the story of the dreadful Boo-Boo Monster that had snatched a boy down by the cheeks and dragged him down to his lair years ago, never to be seen again.
This was especially tough for the girls. At least the boys could keep an eye on the hole as they watched for any suspicious activity.
We would finally settle down in our various tents. The grownups would yell at us periodically to shut up and go to sleep. But we would giggle, whisper and laugh about who made a fool of themselves that day and drift off to sleep thankful that none of us had fallen victim to the terrible Boo-Boo monster.
