A farm family reunion

A farm family reunion

Dec. 7, 2000

It's The Pitts
By Lee Pitts

I haven’t been to a good old farm family reunion in many a moon. You know the kind, where everybody got together to see who was falling apart. When a since-departed auntie left bright red lipstick on your cheek, pinched it and said, "I haven’t seen you since you were in dirty diapers." You met in-laws and outlaws you never knew you had, distant relatives you wish would have stayed that way, and cousins once re-moved you wish someone would have.

Back when there was still a lot of country in this country, nearly everyone was still related to someone who still lived on a farm or ranch. And that was usually where the family reunion was held. All the branches of the family tree showed up, including those who should have been pruned off long ago. Even the uncle who was a lawyer and the brother-in-law who worked for the IRS were invited, because all the relatives were close — in more than miles.

At an old-fashioned farm family reunion the fun was homemade and so was the food. You didn’t worry about dying from digesting the potato salad, the greens came from a garden and the burgers weren’t veggie. It took 20 men around a barbecue pit to decide when the meat was ready. Over hot stoves and tablecloths the women traded recipes and baby pictures. The main meal was served outside, with tables and folding chairs borrowed from the church. There were five kinds of pie served under mounds of fresh whipped cream. At a family reunion no one was on a diet or afraid of the food. The only preservatives present were the ones keeping Aunt Maude alive. The mosquitoes dined on royal family blood.

All the young cousins from the big city learned firsthand that milk came from a cow and not a carton. They rode a horse for the first time, picked and shucked an ear of corn, bottle-fed a bummer lamb, saw kittens being born, fished in a real creek and made memories that would last a lifetime. During a lazy softball game played in a cow pasture everyone was on the same side, the home team. Old men, long past their glory days, reaffirmed bonds written in blood over checkers or cards. Even the oddball kin, the sap in the family tree, were made to feel part of the family. And at the end of the joyous day, when folks were through celebrating freedom, food and family, to a person they would all say, "Let’s do this again."

But we never did.

These days if you wanted to have a family reunion you wouldn’t be able to find addresses for the fathers, the mothers couldn’t take time off from work, and the grandparents would have to wear name tags. To round up all the kids in one place you’d have to hold the reunion at the daycare facility instead of a relative’s farm. Just as well, you probably couldn’t find a family farm if you went back three generations. How could you have a farm family reunion where nothing was home grown or homemade? The food would be as foreign as most of the relatives. The fabric that wove families together is now frayed and faded.

When did our society abandon the family and the farm? And why?

Probably when we became obsessed with acquiring stuff and so focused on ourselves. In search of a "better life," we became upwardly and literally mobile. Kids moved off the farm, marriages split and so did relatives — without leaving a forwarding address. These days the only thing missing in the home is the family.

That’s why there’s no need to look in your mailbox for an invitation to a farm family reunion. That’s too bad, because family matters. Happiness is relative.