Labor Day Family Reunions

Today, Sunday 5, 2010, the day before Labor Day, is when the annual Odle family reunion is held in Westville, Oklahoma. I spoke to my mother on the phone on Friday and discussed it with her. She isn’t attending this year, because her limited mobility and stamina due to cancer prevents her from making long trips. However my sister and brother-in-law are attending.

These reunions have been taking place sincebefore I came on the scene. If I recall correctly they were initiated by the infamous Charles Wilson. Charles is the oldest son of the eldest daughter in the Odle family, consisting of my mothers’ nine siblings and their offspring. I am only really aware of this most prodigious branch of the Odle family, and wouldn’t recognize other relatives of my maternal grandparents.

So Charles Wilson decided at some point in living memory that since the Odle clan had grown so regionally disparate--moving on to such distant locales as Colorado (for some reason Kansas was passed over), Missouri, and Arkansas—that in order for the nine siblings and their families to keep in touch, an annual reunion back in Westville, where no one lives anymore, was the solution. And what a great solution it was!

My father, who was a cattle farmer and factory worker, spent his meager allotment of vacation on this trip out to Westville for his wife’s family reunion. He put the camper on the Ford Explorer, we loaded up the coleman cooler with cokes an bologna, and headed out onto the open road for this cross-country trek from Arkansas to Oklahoma. We would stay with relatives in the distant metropolis of Van Buren. As a young child and pre-teen, this was the furthest I ever ventured from our rustic domicile.

I was a bit envious of our more worldly Van Buren cousins. It was amazing to me that you could drive—or walk!--a couple of blocks from your home to a bustling supermarket, where a world of provisions awaited your selection. There were heretofore unknown soft drinks, like Dr. Pibbs, which, I was later disappointed to learn was simply the generic store version of my favored Dr. Pepper. But this to my young mind was undiscovered country!

We would drive on up to Westville on Sunday morning, moving through the verdant hills of western Oklahoma. This is where my mother spent her childhood. We were often the first to arrive. The reunion took place in the Westville City Hall Public Events Center. I guess that is a fancy way to describe it. I am sure there were lots of Masonic fish fries and the like held there. The most intriguing part of this building to us kids was the jail cell, which was always empty. Had we stumbled upon Mayberry?

Eventually folks would start trickling in. We would set up rows of tables. Some tables were designated for dining, others for the dozens of casserole dishes that were soon to arrive. The older boys would drag in the coolers packed with store-bought ice and cokes of all kinds. We were set. Then the aunts would come in and each would have to hug me and exclaim how much I had grown over the previous year, but point out that I was way too thin and needed to eat lots of their casserole. A folding chair was set out and centrally located for Grandma Odle to sit in, and everyone else to gravitate around.

There were lots of us. Back in the late seventies and early eighties, the siblings’ kids were at their apex. Lots of long straight hair, bell-bottom jeans and over-sized collars and polyester slacks.

Uncle Randolph, the eldest brother, would drive up in his vintage station wagon, coming all the way from Oklahoma City where he ran Odle’s Grocery. Each Christmas season we could expect a nice fruit cake from him. For the reunion, he always brought the largest cheddar cheese wheel I had ever set eyes on. It was covered in red waxpaper. Was that also to be eaten? I did not know, but inquired further. Did they make those cheese wheels in Oklahoma City? We were never afforded such commodities in Plumerville, where we made due with boxes of velveeta cheese. My mother loved that stuff and thought we should too. A wedge of velveeta placed on a slice of bologna or spam and popped into the toaster oven for a couple of minutes and voila, a delightful meal.

Uncle Randolph—Randy--was the star among his sisters. He never got the end of ribbing about the old beat up station wagon which he drove for nostalgic reasons. I recently found out that he was a WWII marine who fought in the South Pacific, the events of which he never spoke.

Charles Wilson would finally arrive. A shrill whistle from Uncle Gerald announced that a prayer of thanksgiving was to be offered, either by himself or other menfolk. Only then would the feasting commence.

Sibling rivalries must have long since melted away before I arrived on the scene to witness those reunions, if they had ever existed at all. There seemed to be a general consensus of well-wishing and celebration. Uncle Cletis got on the piano and banged out hymnals, and if we were lucky, he would get out his fiddle. I once watched a reunion video of my mother’s siblings standing in a row singing a Cherokee nursery rhyme. Both my grandparents spoke Cherokee well if not fluently, and my grandmother sang Cherokee songs to her children.

This family. This family of nine children I was peripheral to. I was the lastborn son of the lastborn daughter of this family that sprang up from the verdant hills of western Oklahoma. How did they manage to prosper? My grandfather died before I was born. My grandmother was a gentle matron in her late eighties and early nineties when my memories of her were made. Was it a hardscrabble life bringing up this family? My mother was born in 1932, so neither depression nor dustbowl prevented her from coming into the Odle hearth. There always seemed to be room for one more. I cannot imagine this family was run like the Von Trapp household of whistles and commands, but maybe more like a joyous calamity as described by Frank Gilbreth Jr. in Cheaper by the Dozen.

Memories are re-creations of past events with a twist. When we recall the past, we do so with a burgeoning of new feelings which we didn’t necessarily have when the events took place. To jealousy and competition is added regret. Nervousness and angst bring up embarrassment. Confidence and enthusiasm wane to reticence. Happiness accompanied by her dear friend heartache. On this Labor Day as I recall these past reunions I feel nostalgia and sadness.