Tag Archives: family reunion

July 24, 2012 · 11:45 am

Summers of Contentment: Part 3

Dear Readers,

‘Tis the Season . . . for Family Togetherness:  Every summer, three generations of the Blair Clan travel to the Family Reunion in the North Carolina Mountains, to enjoy a week or two of  Simple Pleasures.

Sadly, new technology has now all but eclipsed Family Togetherness.  Today, the design of personal electronics allows each traveler [except the driver] to retreat into his or her own personal bubble or sphere, wholly unconnected to the other travelers, with whom he or she happens to share space.

But I was lucky:  The six members of the original Blair family, from 1952-1962, experienced uninterrupted Family Togetherness, before this new wave of technology.  If you were born after, say, 1980, you are indeed unfortunate:  You cannot imagine the fun and creativity that you missed.  So, I will describe it:

Our green Buick, a behemoth, had neither power steering  nor automatic seat/window adjustments.  It had no air conditioning but, then again, neither did our two-story apartment at Randolph Air Force Base, near San Antonio.   My mother was heavily pregnant with me, when my parents moved to Texas, in the summer of 1952.  My mother took a shower every time she climbed the stairs, which was several times per day.

We received a military transfer to California in the summer of 1958.  We planned to travel in the Buick across the desert, which would be an unbearable challenge.  So, my father bought a motorized device, no bigger than a bread box.  It sat on the floor board, at my mother’s feet, and bounced ice cubes around the interior of the box.  Then, it fanned the cooled air into the interior of the car.

As soon as we passed across the interminable desert, my father stopped and bought everyone a Date Milkshake, at the first oasis.  You never tasted anything so delicious, cold, and refreshing in your entire life.

The Buick had no seat belts, which made it difficult for each siblings to mark off his or her “territory.”  There were neither infant safety seats nor booster seats but this deficit allowed the older siblings to pass the baby to the front seat, where my mother would feed and console him or her.   Then, she would pass the baby back to us, until we grew tired of him or her.  And back and forth and so on.

The back seat of the Buick folded all the way down.  Upon this flat surface,  my father placed a sheet of plywood, which butted up against the front seat.  This enlarged space provided a “sleeping berth.”  You see, my parents sometimes traveled at night:  I might go to sleep in my bunk bed in San Antonio but wake up to see the sun rise in El Paso.  Disoriented, I would have no memory of my dad having carried me, wrapped in a blanket, out to the car, in the middle of the night.

After waking up, we siblings threw street clothes over our pajamas and stumbled out of the “sleeping berth” to have breakfast.  My dad’s quest was to find the best locally-owned “Mom & Pop” restaurant, where we heartily ate a Farmhouse Breakfast.  My parents were frugal and we would not eat a meal again until supper. [Although we would have a snack and beverage.]

The boredom of four siblings, cooped up in a car for 10 or more hours, took its toll.  Sometimes, an older sibling read aloud to the younger ones:

Or, the older sibs read silently, while the younger children took naps.

[Image Credit:  Lovely Books blog]

However, we could read only for a short while before nausea set in.

We played card games with the younger children:

Or, we passed around the View Master and re-lived our travels, from the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, Disneyland, and Knott’s Berry Farm:

We took turns drawing on the Etch-A-Sketch:

Or, we played with Wooly Willy or Hair-Do Harriet.

My grandmother taught us older children how to make Button and String Whirlygigs.  This fascinated the younger children:

By mid-afternoon, we had exhausted all means of entertaining ourselves and we become punchy:  We giggled over the silliest things.  My mother turned her neck and head around toward the back seat and warned, “Stop that snickering!”

Yet we snickered even more.  My dad fumed silently as he drove, irritated by the volume of noise from the backseat.  My mother gave repeated warnings.  When  he could bear it no longer, my dad pulled over at the next safe place and stopped the car.  That was all.  He said not a word nor did he turn his head around, in our direction.  We were all shamed into silence and dozed until supper time.

After a sit-down supper in a family restaurant, we climbed back into the car.  As the sun went down, my dad and mom led us in singing.  And this was the best part of the entire day . . .

[To be continued]

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August 29, 2011 · 11:21 am

Summers of Contentment: Part 2

I remember that summer morning, almost fifty years ago:  It was 1964 and our family of six packed up the station wagon.  At the time, my father was stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base and we lived in Bossier City, Louisiana.  We planned to drive to North Carolina and, finally, to Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Susan was sixteen, I was twelve, Michael was nine, and Amy was six.

The last errand, before leaving town, was to drive to the kennel and leave our puppy, a Boston Terrier named Cappy.  As Dad was cranking up the engine, the four children and my mother grew silent, at the thought of leaving Cappy.   As Dad backed the car out of the driveway, he surveyed five glum faces, abruptly stopped the car, opened his car door, slammed it shut, and returned to the house. He quickly returned to the car, muttering oaths under his breath, and threw the dog leash, bed, food, and bowls into the back of the car.  We cheered in unison because Dad had, amazingly, relented and we were taking our puppy with us on our vacation!

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[Image Credit:  greatdogbreeds.com]

We drove to the North Carolina home of my  Grandmother “Mommo” Blair and she traveled with us to Virginia Beach, to the home of my Uncle Bub and Aunt Pat Blair.  Their children, David, Ann, and Eddie, were our cousins.  As far as I know, this was the only summer that every member of both sides of my family [the Blairs and Van Hoys] gathered together in one place for a week of Summer Family Reunion.  I can only imagine how much my Grandfather “Daddah” Van Hoy, a widower, and “Mommo” Blair, a widow, must have enjoyed having all their children and grandchildren together in one place for one week.

Aunt Pat came from a large, closely-knit family and she loved company:  When she heard the crunch of gravel on her driveway, as each family vehicle arrived, she raised her arms over her head, screamed in delight, and, with arms extended in front of her, ran out to hug and greet each weary traveler.   An excellent cook, the daunting task of feeding seventeen folks did not intimidate her:  You could observe her, every morning, in her kitchen:  She wore her swim suit and hummed and sang, as she prepared either Meat Loaf, Chicken Salad, or Pimento Cheese for our luncheon sandwiches.

Bub and Pat hosted a total of seventeen family members that summer, in their large house near the beach.  They installed a cabaña outside the kitchen, where they set up picnic tables with benches, ice chests, and fans.  There, we could seek shelter from the sun, help ourselves to an icy drink, and gather for all our meals.  Bub and Pat also installed an outdoor shower, so that we could rinse off the sand, before entering the cabaña or house.

On a typical evening, Uncle Bub prepared fish and “hush-puppies,” Aunt Pat fixed corn on the cob, and Ann made the tossed salad with anchovies.  After dinner, the girl cousins made Lemon Pound Cake, drizzled Lemon Glaze over it, and everyone ate it warm.   On other evenings, we enjoyed big bowls of ice cream, topped with chocolate syrup.  During the evenings, we cousins played endless card games of War and Solitaire.

In spite of the heat, we cousins spent all of the daylight hours out-of-doors. Uncle Bub and Aunt Pat’s Boston Terrier dog, also named Cappy, could swing from branches of the big evergreen tree in the backyard.  With his jaw teeth, he grabbed onto a low horizontal branch, pulled backwards, ran forwards, and sailed up in the air, over and over.  Sometimes, he jumped up, clamped his jaw teeth onto a vertical branch, and swung his hindquarters, around and around.  Unbelievably, Aunt Pat patiently taught him to soulfully whine into her face, on cue:  “Maaa-maaa.”

Our family took a brand-new Slip n Slide to the family reunion:  Uncle Bub thought it would be “a hoot” to toss their Cappy onto it, rather like rolling a black & white bowling ball down the alley.   As you might imagine, Cappy didn’t much like it:  wild-eyed, he scrambled to right himself and ran away from his tormentors — but not before he had torn the Slip n Slide to shreds with his claws and rendered it unusable for us disappointed cousins.

 

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[Image Credit:  Late B[l]oomer, Sherry Thurner]

When the weather was fine, three generations of family members, in swimsuits, walked the two blocks down to the beach for a morning of fun in the sun, sand, and surf.  We Blair kids learned to body-surf that summer.   In those days, we knew nothing about the dangers of rip tides and malicious sea creatures.   Although I advise children not to do this, I sometimes walked alone to the beach and body-surfed for hours, on a lonely stretch of beach, with no lifeguard in sight.  I pitted my strength and wit against the voracity and power of the water.  There has never been an adventure more exhausting or exhilarating than surviving those waves, as they violently tumbled and tossed me within their grip, and then, at last, released and deposited me upon the sand, like sea glass, now scrubbed, smooth, and polished.

We cousins were oblivious, also, about the dangers of UVA and UVB sunrays:  We were casual about using sunscreen and sun block and, therefore, we got thoroughly sunburned.  Before bed, we girl cousins took showers and helped each other slather on the Solarcaine and Noxzema.   The girls slept on multiple bunk beds, in one large bedroom, and the boy cousins had their own dormitory.  I have vivid memories of sunburn and sand and how it felt to fall asleep, in those bunk beds, under the ceiling fan, as the beach house had no air conditioning.  Falling asleep would have been more of a challenge if I had not exhausted myself with play, all day long, with body-surfing and swimming:  The strange residual sensation of floating upon water, the soft phantom sound of crashing waves, and the lingering taste and scent of salt-water and air all combined to gently lull me to sleep.

~~~By Margot Blair Payne, August 2011, with thanks for the contributions from my sisters, Susan Blair Hollister and Amy Blair Sweeney.

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June 14, 2010 · 8:50 pm

Places of Enchantment

For Father’s Day, June 2010

Places of Enchantment:  A Tribute to Alton Bernard “Nobby” Blair

Born October 29, 1919 and Died February 21, 2006

A few months after my mother died, my father moved to Tallahassee and, for almost five months, he lived only one mile from our Payne home.  At first, I wondered how he and I would find “common ground” during our daily visits, for Dad was a “doer” and I was a “dreamer.”  He had been an athlete, a coach, an educator, and a military officer.  A handyman who could fix anything, he was a wood craftsman and built furniture and clocks for his family.  He even designed and built the interior of his retirement mountain home.  I, on the other hand, was often lost in the world of “arts and ideas.”

One autumn evening, I introduced Dad to the film, Cross Creek, based on the memoirs of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her 25 years of community life in rural central Florida.  The film was enchanting:  it was beautiful, quiet, thoughtful, and lyrical.  At breakfast the next morning, he said, “I am still thinking about that film.”   He had never been a reader of literature, so I was amazed when he devoted two hours, every night, to reading the book, Cross Creek. It had captured his imagination, as it had always captured mine.

During those fall evenings, chapter-by-chapter, he and I enthused about Cross Creek:  We shared our favorite passages; critiqued the writing style; discussed the characters, the land and water, the woods and wildlife, the flora and fauna, the food and folkways.  After finishing the book, he ruefully told me that, to him, all other reading had become dull.  I quickly asked my sisters, Susan and Amy, to order other Rawlings book titles for Dad.  In astonishment, they asked each other, “Which Dad would that be?”

I was delighted, yet puzzled, by this new-found connection that Dad and I shared, until I pondered this quote by Rawlings:

“I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.”   

I then asked myself, “Who was it that first introduced you to places of enchantment?” . . . . .

. . . . . In the summers of the 1960’s, our West Coast Blair Family Retreat was to the campgrounds of Big Sur, California:  Together, we chose the best rustic campsite by the creek, set up the tent; read, napped, and gazed up at the sunlight, peeking through the majestic sequoias and redwoods; hiked up to the water falls and crossed moss-covered footbridges; fell asleep to the soothing sound of the bubbling creek; and woke up to the call of the song birds, in the morning.

As my younger brother, Michael, said, “Well, here we all are – out in the natures!”

In my memories of Big Sur, the moonlight shone on huge stepping-stones, as our family crossed the shallow creek, to gather with the other families, at the outdoor amphitheatre.  We huddled around the campfire, sipped hot cocoa, and waited for the park ranger to greet us:  “Howdy, Campers!”  He led us in rousing renditions of campfire songs; we sang with unabashed enthusiasm and learned all the hand-motions, too.

Even forty years later, my father still loved to sing those campfire songs with his family.  We sang them, every summer, at our East Coast Blair Family Retreat:  the North Carolina mountain home of my parents.  Dad and Susan created identical “Campfire Songbooks” for each member of the growing Blair Clan.  Ten years ago, in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, Michael led family and friends in singing campfire songs, after the celebration dinner that commemorated the 50th wedding anniversary of my parents.

We discovered that we could take those songs anywhere:  They were our connection to each other, to places of enchantment, and to all that was true, good, and pure about nature and family life. . . . .

. . . . . Back in Tallahassee, sitting with Dad, the daylight hours were shortening, as the autumn of 2005 faded into winter.  The Rawlings books arrived, which my sisters had ordered.  However, by then, Dad was too weak to read them, so, during the evenings, at his bedside, I read extracts to him.  With delight, I told him of this discovery:  “Mizz Rawlin’s” spent one fall season, in 1936, living and writing in a retreat cabin, in Banner Elk, NC.  I could imagine her, gazing out her cabin window, drawing inspiration from the same magnificent, panoramic view that would captivate my father, some 40 years later.  Dad would then introduce his family to this enchanted place and it would become our Blair Clan Reunion Retreat for the next 25 summers.

In the final weeks of his life, my father often reviewed his life in “daydreams.”  These were vivid, strong, and persistent memories; they represented events that had been very important to him.

One day, I asked him, “What are you day-dreaming about?”

He answered, “Big Sur.”  He spoke only in a whisper and his eyes were closed but he could smile and nod.

I told him, “I remember waking to the good aroma of your campfire coffee and breakfast in the mornings.”  He smiled.

I asked him, “Do you remember the morning when a blue jay zoomed down and snatched a hot blueberry pancake off a plate on the picnic table?”   He nodded.

I continued: “Do you remember what you said, as you scratched your head and watched the little thief fly away?”   He waited.

I reminded him, “You said, ‘That was either a very light pancake or a very strong bird!’”   

He smiled and the corners of his eyes wrinkled with delight, in the remembering.  He went back to sleep.

It was only Valentine’s Day but an early spring had arrived in Tallahassee:  The, azalea, dogwood, and redbud were blooming.  I was overjoyed when my father lived long enough to see a Carolina chickadee return, at last, to the window bird feeder.  Dad did not live long enough to return, one last time, to the mountains of North Carolina.  One week later, he was gone from the land and water he loved so well.  However, before his passing, he had imparted to his children and grandchildren a desire to turn — and return — to places of enchantment.  This legacy will be his strong connection to many generations.

Margot Blair Payne, Daughter, The First Week of Lent 2006, Tallahassee, FL

“ . . . If there be such a thing as [collective or instinctual] memory, the consciousness of land and water must lie deeper in the core of us than any knowledge of our fellow beings.  We were bred of earth before we were born of our mothers.  Once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend, or any human love.  We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in a man’s heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.”

“ . . . It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought.  It may be used but not owned.  It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting.  But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters.  Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun, and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.”

~~~All quotes are from Cross Creek, the memoirs of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, 1942, Scribner’s

Epilogue:  August 14, 2006

One week after the Memorial Service for my father, my husband, Stephen, and I returned to The Hiding Place Columbarium, a walled garden on the property of the Banner Elk Presbyterian Church.  My parents chose this garden as their final resting place:  Their cremains, each contained within an urn, are interred within two niches, side-by-side.  Brass plaques identify their names, dates of birth, and dates of death.

From the vantage point of the garden, Stephen and I turned around in a circle and surveyed the sweeping vista of the mountains:  The view beyond the Columbarium Garden Archway faced the majestic Grandfather Mountain.  The opposite view led to Beech Mountain, where my parents built their retirement home.  To the left of the archway, a short distance up the hill from the Columbarium Garden, stood the sturdy, stone church, over 150 years old, the denomination of my Scottish ancestors. Yet another direction revealed the road leading to The Grandfather Home for Children.  My parents had been enthusiastic supporters and promoters of this home, which gives hope, health, and healing to children from troubled homes.

By vehicle, we followed the road to the Grandfather Home for Children. On foot, we explored the property and found a bench and a commemorative marker, which the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society had placed:

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings ~ 1896-1953

Rawlings wrote the first draft of her Pulitzer-winning novel, The Yearling, in this location.  Her famous short story, A Mother in Mannville, featured a boy at Grandfather Home.  Both stories are popular MGM movies.

~~~~~~~~~~

[For more information:  Marjorie Rawlings In the Mountains:  The Story Behind A Mother in Mannville, Mary Dudley Gilmer, 2004.]

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