The best way to keep family memories alive is to write them down and share them. This memory is (mostly) from the late sixties.

We were going to stay at Nanny and Pappaw’s farm for a whole week! Along with all of our cousins! My favorite place on earth, and cousins! There would be horses to ride, hay in the barn for climbing, and dried purple hull pea seeds to be used in the pea shooters my older brother, Paul, and red-headed cousin, Rusty, would hollow out from sections of bamboo that grew down by the river. We would get to shoot rifles at old bottles, and at a can hanging from a string. We’d be sent into the garden to pick corn or beans or tomatoes. We could explore the mountain up to the water tank, and to the natural spring a half-mile beyond. There would be fireflies to catch at dusk, and lots of adults sitting around in lawn chairs sharing news and memories. Depending on the time of year, we’d pick blackberries, or pears, or scrounge for black walnuts from the trees out by the barn. (Dad used to make a killer black walnut cake with cooked fudge icing! Yum!) There might be fishing, or a trip across the river on the ferry, into Bridgeport to the tiny store at the Tennessee state line to buy handfuls of fireworks!

This particular reunion seems to stand out as extra special in my mind. That year there was a big white tent in the front yard, with tables underneath, where the big reunion dinner would be shared. The front yard was split into two big grassy squares by the slab rock sidewalk that ran from the front door of the house to the dirt drive. Across from the tent, faded green and white s-shaped lawn chairs of pressed metal, with cut-outs, and a matching glider, held the adults, while kids chattered and darted back and forth, like bees flying around a hive.

Suddenly everybody got quiet. My mother and aunts, who had been happily sharing news moments before, were staring at the newcomers: my Uncle Bill and his wife, Geraldean ‘Gerry’ (Phillips). What a looker – Gerry, not my Uncle. Skin-tight leopard print pedal pushers, slinky top, and kitten sunglasses! Oh, my! I don’t think my aunts were as impressed as I was, but to my pre-teen eyes, she was incredibly exotic. She was the talking point for the rest of the weekend!

In addition to the meal tent out front, there was a huge green canvas army tent that was the sleeping quarters for us kids. It was tall enough to stand up in, with a raised pointed roofline, and a canvas floor. We’d brought sleeping bags, and now I knew why. I didn’t give a thought to sleeping on the ground. I was too excited to be sleeping in ‘the tent’! However, my memories don’t include any time actually sleeping in the tent…

Another unique feature of our family reunions, especially big ones like this one, included planning for extra bathroom facilities. The farmhouse only had one bathroom, added to one of the back porches when my dad was in college. This was considered not nearly sufficient with all of us cousins (ranging from two years to about 16), and the adults: 4 brothers, 2 sisters, spouses, and various assorted adult cousins! So they built us an outhouse! Yes, a real, live, hole-in-the-ground outhouse! Reader’s Digest pages and all! Little moon cutout; corn cob on a string… and those older folk all acted like it was completely normal!

It was also at a family reunion (I don’t remember if it was this exact one), that I finally discovered where my nose came from. What I mean is, we are all told things like, you have your momma’s dimples, or your daddy’s hair, whatever. I know I have my dad’s deep brown eyes and fine (like thin, flyaway, fine) brown hair. I have my momma’s chin. My nose, though, was totally different from any relative I’d ever seen. Dad has this presidential honker (really! We pasted his picture on a card with Mount Rushmore- his nose looked just like all those Presidents!!) My younger brother, Glenn, got that lovely feature, and finally grew into it a couple of years ago. I think it is also called a Roman nose (something about roamin’ all over his face?) Anyway, I digress.

That year one of the relatives brought out pictures of our great grandad- Isaac ‘Ike’ Shiloh Hembree and his wife Sarah Webb Hembree. I remember somebody exclaiming to me, ‘that’s where you got your nose!’ Sarah died very young, shortly after giving birth to her sixth child, so nobody in my dad’s generation ever knew her. Dad said he had heard stories, but now we got to see her picture! She had a small face, hair in a tight bun on her head, and my nose! It’s hard to explain how important it is for a kid to look like other members in the family. I know I was excited! That gave me a connection to her that has never diminished. Family reunions are good like that.

Reunions are also good for food, and the reunions at the farm boasted huge amounts of some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. Butch Couch, another cousin gone too soon, wrote a memory of these meals that is included in the Hembree genealogy book my Uncle John and I put together in June, 1993. Butch said, “‘there was something very special about being a member of the Hembree family… and a great part of that feeling developed because Aunt Kathleen (Lasater Hembree) and Uncle Gordon (John Brown Gordon Hembree) were willing… to place before the entire Hembree family huge meals.’ He goes on to describe those meals in full, and while he speaks of meals provided before I was born, those descriptions match my experience at that same round table almost exactly!

Yes, the woman folk cooked: breakfasts of biscuits, ham or bacon, and eggs, homemade jams, butter (Nanny churned the butter!); big lunches of meat, vegetables of all sorts, buttery cornbread, wilted greens, sliced tomatoes, gallons of iced tea and fresh milk and buttermilk (all from big glass gallon jugs!) and home made cakes and pie -oh my, do I like pie! ; and dinner, usually sandwiches of leftover meats, reheated vegetables, and leftover slaw or potato salad.

So what do I remember the clearest??? Not the food; I remember doing DISHES! Yes, we kids did the dishes. Standing on a kitchen chair in front of the white enamel sink. Soapy water in a dented aluminum dishpan, washcloth in hands made pruny and pale from the sheer amount of dishes: plates, cups, silverware, glasses, serving dishes, and platters! and just when you think you’re done, you turn around and the table is covered with pots, pans, skillets, mixing bowls…. Even with every child cousin taking turns at the dishpan, at the drying station, and putting away, by the time we would get it done, it would be time for the adults to start cooking again! When I say I hate doing dishes, I mean I really HATE doing dishes! Aaarghhh!

I am so glad our family gets together for these reunions. They happen less often now, and so many of the faces I grew up with are gone, but we have so many young members for whom we want to build that same feeling of belonging. And there is still tons of food and yummy desserts! But I no longer have quite as many dishes to wash! #thankGodforpapergoods

Now, before ya’ll dear cousins start making comments about what I remembered wrong- these are memories from my pre-teen self, and are totally layered through 50-yr-old rose-colored glasses, so cut me some slack! Give me your memories to share here! Much love to all my cousins, brothers, sister, aunts, uncles, in-laws, and extended family! Please celebrate and write down (or record!) your memories for succeeding generations! Most of all, thank you, Dad, for having such a wonderful, wacky, loving family! I am proud to be a Hembree!