Return of the hillbilly family reunion
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Julie Carter

Anyone who has ever had a family has had to endure the occasional family reunion.

Generally, family reunions are where a whole bunch of kinfolk, who never did much like each other, get together for a few days and act like they are happy to be in the family. Sometimes they actually are, and this bunch was.

Last weekend, I bravely ventured out to somebody else's family reunion. I wrote about this family when they gathered last summer, but I had never personally met any of them, except the one that invited me.

I met the 85-year-old uncle, who last year was in the company of a young Latin tango dancer.

This year he was traveling solo, but had lost none of his will to tell tales of his sex-at-85 adventures should one be unwise enough to inquire about his love life. Most of the time, he could be found hovering over the platter of bacon-wrapped shrimp pondering their possible aphrodisiac properties.

The cousin who is a district judge counts family among his friends and voters. Campaign donations are always the topic when deciding if favors of any kind are to be granted, including refreshing your glass of ice tea.

Last year's event to this mountain resort landed them in some rustic cabins where they charged one cousin with providing 80 eggs and 10 pounds of breakfast meat. A cook-your-own sort of place.

This year, the group landed in a high-class hotel with what I heard referenced as "whorehouse prices," but it included a complimentary hot breakfast.

The judge and his family, along with his brother and family, were housed in a top floor executive suite.

These men are rough-country ranchers from the Palo Duro area, raised up poor and hard-working.

The one brother stayed on to run the ranch after college, while the other became a progressive embarrassment to the family by first becoming a lawyer, then a politician on his way to the judgeship.

When the rains came, the roof of this posh hotel began to leak in the executive suite.

This would have been a tremendous problem for most who were paying through the nose for the privilege, but not these hillbillies.

They just moved the beer cooler over to the spot, flipped the lid open and let it catch the rain.

Hoping to class up a few of the kinfolk, the planners of the soirée booked Asian cooking lessons from a local culinary chef.

Any previous knowledge of this particular ethnic food included the little known fact that the Chinese restaurant in Hereford, Texas, next door to the laundry, utilized the discarded starch water to thicken their gravy.

The story goes that even the calf-fry-off-the-branding-pot eaters needed several Mimosas to survive the chicken deboning demonstration.

One gal that married into this bunch finds great relief in their "normalcy," as compared to her family.

She recalls some of her own kinfolk. Just for starters, there is the one with the long hair and tattoos who makes a living playing acid rock, or when that isn't good, is an operator for underwater seismograph oil exploration.

Another, with the same hairstyle and a law degree, makes his money picking a banjo. Yet another raises doves and when the eggs don't hatch , he works at Wal-Mart to make ends meet.

Thankfully, she has seen nary a one of them in years, except the cousin that showed up with a couple of horses and a pig when everyone was making a mass exodus from the coast to escape Hurricane Katrina.

Writing about other people's kinfolk sometimes makes me miss my own, but not enough to wish for a family reunion.