all right have you ever been to a family reunion
i go to a family reunion every year religiously it's the well i come from Iowa
oh wow tell me about that
my mother was one of nine children in the family
uh seven of those children are still living and uh the family has grown of course and we get uh about a hundred and fifty people a year
wow
that show up at this family reunion
i had come from a large like i say a large family i had forty four first cousins on my mother's side and we all know each other pretty well and
and uh so it's a wonderful occasion when we get together and we don't see everybody each year but you know alternate years we get to see most everybody
is uh
so what makes the reunion a good reunion
oh
what do they do i mean they can be real boring i've i've been to a couple as a kid
well you have to go with the right spirit of course uh i think what makes our family reunions so good is that we there is so much love that is shared there
uh
okay so you must keep in touch with each other
um other than at the reunion is that right
well yeah many of us do actually uh
i'm in my fifties now and my mother came from a generation where the only option was writing
okay
postcards letters whatever
uh-huh
uh and she used to correspond with her sisters quite religiously
and they with her so and of course that older generation still always sends all of us Christmas cards and it's wonderful you know
yeah
yeah that's
so uh but it it ours is the type of family if i had no place to be i could call anyone of my aunts or my cousins and they would say come and stay with me for a few weeks
oh wow that is good so when so when you guys have your reunion uh
um-hum it's
now i'm sure that sounds like you guys are pretty satisfied what about your
your uh how how what do you do for the kids
oh well
uh these attitudes are projected down to the kids
that this is the place where we really want to go and and we can have a good time it's not a boring thing uh i guess once in awhile about thirteen or so maybe it's a little boring for them
yeah
if if they haven't been there enough years to have formed friendships but my kids went every year and therefore they knew you know a lot of the other kids
uh-huh
so then you kind of look forward to seeing some of these second cousins once a year
we do go to uh it's Clear Lake Iowa where we hold it and we make every effort in the world to get the shelter house
so we have a facility where we can be inside but yet the kids can go and be in the lake if they want to
is is uh and and how do you allocate uh i mean how do you decide when you're going to meet and
oh and that's set it's going to be it's always the first Sunday after the Fourth of July
oh okay well the first Sunday after the Fourth of July has got to be hot right
oh it is but then you can't find any time in Iowa when it's not hot in the summertime
that's what i meant could be the springtime or something like that the kids are still in school then huh
oh yeah uh-huh well okay but Iowa is very agricultural and spring is not a good time to try to do anything
i see
because so many were involved with agriculture so so do you have a reunion
well my kids my parents uh
used to have reunions and and uh we'd go and
and uh actually i kind of remember it as a lot of as a lot of fun but it's been
very tough to talk my kids into the idea of meeting any of the relatives uh i don't know exactly why that's true i think part of it's because they're
oh
uh
they just don't know anybody and we our family is all scattered out we started in California but uh now everybody's
all over the United States these days
uh-huh well you know with as many people as we have we're all over the US too
but uh
i yeah i i know that there's a difference but i haven't quite even even locally uh
i i guess i've got a brother that lives uh about a five hour drive from here and i haven't seen him for
twenty years so that tells you something about my
oh my
what did you say your first name was Ralph
but it's
Ralph
uh Ralph shouldn't act like that
no no i shouldn't i'm uh i have to admit that it's
but when i hear these uh well of course i was the last of eight see
oh okay
the very last of eight and my parents were both married before and and uh
so i only have half brothers and half sisters so that's i guess that's part of it they were all grown by the time i came along and uh
oh i see
i shouldn't say all grown but anyway it's it's one of those uh
um i was always the you're their kid you're their kid and i'm not saying they're not nice but but uh
you you know we don't have those stories
okay there's difference yeah uh-huh
real close uh uh
i was always the little kid i'll put it that way so that's and then the other side of it and the other thing too is that my parents uh
uh my dad had five kids
