I grew up having seventeen sets of Uncles and Aunts. Trying to count all the cousins was a bit much, but every year, the Brackin Thirteen, held a reunion at the Gehring farm near West Union, (six were on my Moms side).
It was always on Memorial Day weekend and before the reunion we would stop at the West Union cemetery, where we would place flowers at our Grandpa and Grandma Brackin’s, grave before walking the short distance to our Great Grandparents grave. Their site was easy to find as it was, at the time the largest tombstone monument's in the West Union cemetery.
From there we drove to the reunion where my male cousins would run amok, before the meal and invariably end up in a corn cob fight. The younger ones would end up trapped by the older males until one of my uncles would rescue us and tell us dinner was ready.
Since then, the family had grown older and scattered around the country. This year My cousin Becky, decided to attempt a reunion in Waterloo, Iowa. Unfortunately, many of my cousins were too old or lived too far to attend, (and many had passed). We ended up flying from Wyoming, as we have stopped driving distances due to the cost of rooms and the price of fuel.
We had several days and after a great meal on Friday and then gathered Saturday for the reunion at the church basement. Becky had done an outstanding job of gathering pictures of the “Brackin Thirteen”, and had coordinated the food, (we brought a Key Lime Cheesecake). She also had pictures of many of the families and encouraged us to take the ones of our immediate family.
The attendance was small, only twelve of us attended. It was a far cry from the old days.
We were happy to see all who were there and we relieved tales from long ago. It also gave us a chance to find out what our cousins were doing, (everyone from my generation have retired although some have side gigs, one is an Uber driver and we make and sell our jewelry custom).
Thank you Becky, for all the hard work! Well done! We were happy to see faces we haven’t seen in years! Clear skies
