Family Reunion

Hot Springs was the perfect setting for the family reunion. We stayed at the Velda Rose hotel and used one of the meeting rooms for our Saturday night gathering. When Robin and I arrived on Friday afternoon, my cousin Lou was waiting outside with her grandson. I jumped from the car and embraced them both.

Lou is my Dad's cousin, but she is only three months older than me. When I spent time in Bonnerdale with my grandparents, Lou and I would play for hours. We lost contact somewhere along the way and I learned she had always worried about me since she knew my grandmother had instructed my grandfather to put me in the cellar for crying. "I cried many times over that, just knowing you were in that dark place with spiders," she told me. "No," I assured her, "I quit crying when he got close to that scary cellar, but was dumb enough to start crying again after we returned to the house." That's when my grandmother would insist that I go into the cellar again, and my crying would stop.

I stayed in her hotel room until well past midnight that first night as we shared with other cousins I'd never met, some of our childhood antics. There was the time we spent the night with Aunt Cle. The back bedroom was scary to both of us, but I was especially afraid of the deer rug on the floor. After all, I was the city girl. Aunt Cle came in the room, jumped up and down on the rug to prove it wasn't alive and wouldn't devour me. Still, I cowered in fear. Her husband finally had to drive me back to my grandparents' home. This story produced much laughter from us that night. Lou was doubled over in laughter at remembering Aunt Cle jumping all over that rug.

Lou and I ate all our meals together and spent every moment with each other except for when Robin and I went to the National Park. She has this marvelous sense of humor and I admire her greatly. She was born with Charcoal Marie Tooth, a crippling malady that has confined her to a wheelchair. But Lou and her chair refuse to be confined. She uses that electric wheelchair much as we do a car to get wherever she wants to go. She planned the reunion, rolling along those almost two miles to downtown Hot Springs, to scout out hotels. On our walk through the town, I was surprised how many people along the way would stop to say hello to her. She knows so many people and is so active. She was presented an engraved clock at the reunion for all her diligent work.

Saturday night festivities were so much fun. We visited with many cousins, mostly distant, and learned much of the history of the Lambert and Ewing families. We had a catered buffet of a variety of sandwiches, dips and chips, and chicken strips. My sister, Donna, baked a cake and I made two kinds of cookies.

Fortunately, over half of my cookies were eaten because when I awoke on Sunday morning, I found the cookies totally infested with ants. And we were on the 7th floor! We had to throw out all the cookies. What a waste of time, energy and ingredients! Especially those expensive pecans. Donna's delicious cake escaped the invasion.

I will end this reunion tale with a funny story about my Dad. He had showered and then let my Mother use the bathroom to get ready. He was still hot from the shower so he stretched out on the bed in the nude to cool off. Suddenly, there was a knock just as the door to his hotel room opened, and there stood the maid. She hadn't given him any response time since she knocked and opened the door at the same time. I told him she will remember seeing him next time, he said "but not my face". I hope he's learned to engage the chain lock from now on.