Uncle Fred and Aunt Nettie

Last night my friends Jeff and Christa reminded me of how welcome they felt at my Unle Fred and Aunt Nettie's house when they visted a few years ago. And that got me to thinking about how everyone always feels welcome at Uncle Fred and Aunt Nettie's house. Their house has been a hospice, a campground, a refuge, a conference center, and a retirement home and an orphanage for hundreds of people. For the first 12 years of my life I was at their house every Thanksgiving and Christmas (
In case you are wondering, I will be posting Aunt Nettie's recipe for fruited molassas balls as we get closer to Christmas.), and usually a few days or even weeks in the Summer.

The first fig I ever ate (except for those in fig newtons) was off of their fig tree. The same is true of persimmons and pomagranites. My cousins and I would spend whole days in their pool. And once we got into a milk fight with the goats. There are no open canals around there now, but when I was a boy there were canals all over the place. My cousins Jamie and Brian and I would build wooden boats and race them in the canal. I always lost, but I was thre years younger. And one Thanksgiving we went "swimming" in a big mud hole. It must have been cold, but when you're six years old you don't notice things like that.

I think that was the same year my cousin Rick accidentally shot my brother Mark. They were 14 and fifteen, if I remember correctly. They looking for pheasant. Strangly, they thought it would be a good idea if they approched the center of a field from opposite directions. Well, the predictable happened, and Mark's new down jacket got the arm ripped open by Rick's charge of birdshot. It could have been much much worse.

When my Uncle Fred's mother moved into a double-wide mobile home behind the pool I would visit her and we would watch the Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas shows together. When I was 10, shortly before she died, she gave me a quilt. Each block is patchwork butterfly. Some of the seams are comming out of it and I suppose it is worn out. But I love it and often sleep under it.

My Aunt Nettie's mother, my maternal Grandmother also lived on the property. (it was actually in this mobile home where I slept nights.) I know she loved me but I was always a little afraid of her. She had ornamental chickens from asia that my little dog loved to chase. So she didn't like my dog. To a little boy that is a big deal.

I have more memories of that place and the people who lived or passed through there than I can possibly write down. But one of my favorites is of a Bingo game that occured the day after Christmas when I was 11. Everyone in my family sings. All of my anunts (6 of them), my mom and dad, uncles, cousins - we are our own choir. And we do that family harmony thing that only family can do. Well, during the bingo game Aunt Lena was the person who was drawing the numbers and calling them out. But Uncle Fred's mother couldn't hear Aunt Lena's voice so he would repeat the number. After the first three or for times, Aunt Nettie a began repeating them along with Uncle Fred. Then someone else joined in but singing. Then we all started singing the numbers in a very solemn 8 part harmony. It was like Aunt Lena was leading us in the world's silliest call-and-response hymn. Eventually, Aunt Lena and Aunt Joan and some of the younger cousins fell apart laughing and we got back to the game.

And there were many nights when we stayed up till dawn playing cards or Monopoly, or later when my two oldest sons were little boys, Risk.

A few years later, after I was grown and married and divorced, and after my parents were retired, Uncle Fred asked my parents to move into his mother's place. I guess it had been sitting empty since she died. Those five years that my parents lived there were, I think, the happiest years of their lives. They weren't exactly healthy, but they were healthy enough to get along without help. They did a great thing for my two oldest sons during those five years. They brought them to that place each year for the whole summer. So now, those two grown boys - one fighting in Afghanistan and the other asking me about wedding rings (I don't know who I am more afraid for.) - have memories of running through the same orchards, swimming in that pool all day until the slow summer sun goes down, eating BBQ tri-tip on the patio, shooting guns (when they were five or six I set up targets in the eucalyptus grove and taught them to shoot pistols.) and watching TV with the old folks.

Well, I heard tonight that both my Uncle Fred and Aunt Nettie are in very very bad health. It doesn't look like they can come to my Mom's memorial service; sickness prevents travel. I'm going to see if I can't adjust my schedule so I can go visit them soon. I hope I am able to do for my children and nephews and nieces what my parents and unles and aunts did for me, my siblings, and my cousins - provide a place that always feels like home. But first, I guess I'll have to buy a farm. My wife says we can start looking next July.

I apologize to my handful of regular readers for writing about my family so much. But it seems that these last few months all I can think of is my family.