1. At an uncle's house, asked about a beautiful, gap-toothed boy in a portrait hanging in their living room.
Uncle B.: "That was our son Barry - he died when he was 7 or 8 I reckon."
Aunt L.: "No, he died when he was 8 years old, two months, four days, and six hours old. And he died on my birthday."
He had leukemia that wasn't diagnosed until it was too late - he died within six months of his diagnosis and the fact that my aunt knows to the hour how old he was when he died makes me cry.
2. Took my first trip to a Wal-Mart store. You've got to love a store that will sell guns and bullets, but not booze. Priorities, people...priorities.
3. My Uncle E. has written an autobiographical sketch and as soon as he hands it to me I make an excuse to go back to my cabin to read it. My mom is very tight-lipped about her childhood (it was pretty bleak) and this sketch fills in a lot of the gaps for me. The next day I have a long conversation with Uncle E. He is a very quiet and thoughtful man and I appreciate the fact that we got some time alone.
4. In Tennessee, the only place you can find ATM's is at banks. And a few gas stations. To me, this negates the purpose of an ATM and after a twenty-six-mile drive to get cash, I want to go to Wal-Mart and buy a gun and kill someone.
5. My cousin K. is a genuinely happy and nice person in the best ways. Very salty sense of humor, also. My only real memory of her is of a trip she made with her family to see us while we were still living in California. She was a teenager then and I remember sitting on the bathroom floor watching her apply makeup and thinking she was a movie star. I relate this memory to her and she laughs.
6. My uncle J. asks me how my dad is doing and I give him the unvarnished version. He sits for a moment and then says "I kindly reckon he got into a habit he just couldn't get out of." Yep.
7. A drive through the countryside shows lots of markers commemorating the "first settlers" in the area. I love that most of these markers totally ignore the fact that there were already people living in the area for thousands of years until they were forced out by the "first settlers". Bleh.
8. I learn from an uncle that my grandmother had a daughter in-between my mom and her younger bro., who died at age 2. My mom also had a daughter who died at age 2. They had the same name.
9. I learn from another uncle that HIS uncle Skelt had a son who died from the "bloody flux". I don't want to know any more about that.
10. My oldest uncle lost a leg and a hand in WWII. My little niece notices his prosthetic and asks him why he has a "toy leg" and this makes him laugh so hard he literally almost falls out of his wheelchair.