Family Reunions

[Briar Lee]

Today I attended the first family reunion of the Cahow/Hewitt family since the dread Corona.

Since 2019 quite a few, of the older generation are sleeping until the Master calls then unto Judgement.

Because somehow, in some way, a Union cavalry man wooed and won an 18 year old girl in 1865 and took her away from her plantation and all her family and kin, I was hatched and even today, about four dozen of their descendants gather to play guitars and fifes in Gardener Cemetery.

Looking around today we all have her nose. You can tell her descendants by it from their spouses.








I wonder if 200 years from our births anyone will decorate our graves, you know?

Not that we will know.

Moon Mullican wrote the song, about family reunions.

We sang it today.

Do you, have a family reunion you can attend?

 

[sablebrush52]

For my family it always was Thanksgiving.
My parents hosted Thanksgiving for decades, and family came from all over the country.
When they became too old to continue, I took over doing the cooking. After they passed and the house was sold, the tradition was continued by my brother in San Francisco. Along came Covid, my brother became ill with cancer, and his eldest son took on the tradition, and the reunion continues up in Portland.
In 200 years nobody will know I ever existed. As for singing at my grave, good luck. I’ll be cremated and scattered.

 

[Hillcrest]

I’ll be cremated and scattered.

Have you considered becoming pipe mud ?

 

[Briar Lee]

For my family it always was Thanksgiving.
My parents hosted Thanksgiving for decades, and family came from all over the country.
When they became too old to continue, I took over doing the cooking. After they passed and the house was sold, the tradition was continued by my brother in San Francisco. Along came Covid, my brother became ill with cancer, and his eldest son took on the tradition, and the reunion continues up in Portland.
In 200 years nobody will know I ever existed. As for singing at my grave, good luck. I’ll be cremated and scattered.

The ashes of a second cousin, twice removed, were buried yesterday in Gardener after a funeral service, two years after her demise at the age of 80 from diabetic complications. The service had three separate musical specials by professional musicians, and three scriptural readings, and a eulogy. According to tradition her siblings remained at the gravesite until the grave was filled. Afterwards we all went to a nearby convention center for a big meal and the entire tribe could sing there, with the professionals.

One good thing about the old time Christians (only) is if there is a musical special at a funeral service it’s crackerjack or there’s no music.

Whether the remains of the departed are cremated or buried is actually of no consequence, but there’s a great emphasis on the tombstone. The body will soon be dust, but those granite stones will remain until the sound of trumpets in the East. The upright stones are simple, laid level and squared up on the compass points, with no photographs or long inscriptions or elaborate carvings. Since the Campbellites in theory were pacifists (but surely not in practice) there are usually not any martial inscriptions.

Those stones, are for us to remember them by, not for their spirit.

 

[Pooh-Bah]

When I was a boy, my great-grandmother would have a big ol' stew cookout every summer.
Being a full seven hour drive away, and not caring for flight, we only attended once in my memory.

When the old lady passed, I don't believe anyone took up the mantle of the stew, and so I've no contact at all with the extended family, which is a shame.

 

[sablebrush52]

Have you considered becoming pipe mud ?

So I can ghost your pipe and haunt you? I like that idea!

 

[Hillcrest]

So I can ghost your pipe and haunt you? I like that idea!

Touche !

 

[augiebd]

Good on those of you who are able to keep these important family traditions alive. For a variety of reasons some that life seemed to make inevitable and others a little harder to reconcile there are so many broken branches in my family tree a reunion seems too hopeful.

 

[puff_not_snuff]

Good on those of you who are able to keep these important family traditions alive. For a variety of reasons some that life seemed to make inevitable and others a little harder to reconcile there are so many broken branches in my family tree a reunion seems too hopeful.

Family reunion on my end would be standing around with a bunch of people wondering how I am even related to them and hoping the event gets SWAT'd.

 

[mso489]

The history of the Civil War in Missouri is not similar to the war in the East or in the West in Tennessee, as I understand it. The comparison would be more similar to the secular wars in Iraq after the downfall of Hussein. Missouri did not secede from the Union, but there were strong sympathies throughout the state, but especially in the southern part of the state for the Confederacy, as well as strong feelings for the Union. People were wearing the uniform of the other side to ambush their enemies, and sometimes it had little to do with war issues and more to do with local feuds and rivalries. Jealous neighbors were confiscating their fellow citizens family silver.

My wife is a native Missourian, went on a school trip to Independence and heard Harry Truman play "The Missouri Waltz" on the piano, and my wife and I met at University of Missouri. We've made trips back to her home to visit her family, and visited the State Park at Athens (pronounced the with a long A) on the state line between Missouri and Iowa, the site of a Civil War skirmish that involved an artillery barrage still leaving damage in historical buildings and trees.