The Family Reunion

Every year at Christmas time my mother’s family would gather at our home for the “Bell Family Reunion”. She had eleven brothers and sisters and since the family believed in being fruitful and multiplying we would have close to sixty guests for the multi-day festivities. Approximately, a week before each gathering my father would visit with each of our neighbors to forewarn them and to humbly ask if we could use part of their trash cans (in the alley) because the consumption of Coors beer would be staggering. Of course, we had one tea-toting neighbor who would annually give permission for any kind of non-alcohol trash but simply refused to allow a beer can in her garbage. After enduring the annual temperance lecture my father would assure her that he would personally examine the trash before it left our house.

The family reunion also served as a great learning tool. Apparently one of my personality flaws is that I would badger people, usually against their better judgement, into doing things they normally would not do. This was definitely the case surrounding my first and only use of snuff. My Uncle Fred had always dipped snuff. At the reunion of my 5^th year I would continually ask Uncle Fred for a “pinch” of what had to be a miracle concoction. Finally, he gave in and to the best of my knowledge, within seconds after the snuff hit my tongue I was running through the house screaming for water. A lesson learned.

With the number of children in the family the Christmas Eve present opening event would last for hours. Likewise, we always had a visit from Santa Claus. Uncle Fred always had car trouble on Christmas Eve and would miss the event. Anyway, this is the story that they gave us until the year that Uncle Fred exceeded his tolerance level for great quantities of beer and ended up on our roof looking for a chimney to slide down. Since we didn’t have a fireplace the angry Santa didn’t play close attention to the fact that we had a rather steep roof and he slipped and fell off the roof into my mother’s flower bed. A disheveled Santa stumbled into the house with a string of colorful words coming from his mouth. In what seemed like a few seconds he was led back to his sleigh by several of my uncles as Uncle Floyd explained to us that since Santa had so many houses to get to that night he could only make a brief appearance at our place. Soon with the gifts flowing around the room the Santa incident was out of our minds for the rest of the reunion. On the 26^th the families started pulling out to return to their homes that ranged from Texas to Illinois to Colorado to other towns in New Mexico. 

The Great Fire

When the founding fathers laid out the plat of my home town they were men of great vision. The streets were wide, every block was precisely square and through the middle of each city block ran an alley approximately twenty feet wide. No one really owned it, but it served the purpose of a location for trash cans and all sorts of activity for an inventive child. It was an area of freedom because fences and building usually blocked the view of the alley from any parent. As a part of garage disposal, prior to any clean air acts, we were allowed to burn the trash and a part of my duties around the house was to carry the trash out and start a fire in our 55-gallon metal drum that served as the major trash can. Since I had to start a fire in the drum I was allowed to take two matches with me to start the fire. One morning it only took one match to start the trash fire, so I put the other match in my pocket and went on with my business. Much later in the day while playing in the alley I noticed a stack of limbs leaning against a neighbor’s fence and I thought to myself, that would certainly make a great fire. Remembering that I had a match in my pocket I proceeded to start a small fire within the limbs. To my surprise the fire almost instantly grew to a roaring blaze and the neighbor’s fence was completely on fire. I immediately ran around the corner and jumped into the sand box that we had in the back yard and acted like I had been there all along. It seemed like minutes and I heard the fire truck sirens approaching my neighborhood. The fire was quickly extinguished and only the fence was destroyed. Later in the evening my father asked me to walk with him out to the alley, so we could look at the results of the fire. I really didn’t want to go with him but there really wasn’t a way out of it. When we got out there he asked me if I knew who started the fire and without missing a beat I said that I didn’t have any idea. He then said, “Well I’m glad you don’t because I sure wouldn’t want to have a son who would be involved in something as terrible as this.” WOW, that was all he said and that was all he did but, that cut me to the quick. Unfortunately, I did not step up and take responsibility for the fire and his words haunted me for the next twenty-five years. On my thirtieth birthday I couldn’t take it anymore, so I asked my father if he remembered the fire that destroyed the Gonzalez’s fence. He said yes, he certainly did. I then said, “Dad, I set that fence on fire.” He responded by saying, “Yes, I knew you did, I just wondered how long it would take for you to let me know.” That was the worse punishment I ever received!

The Round-Up

One thing that I learned from my early education about life on the range was that at least once a year you had to go out and round up your stock for branding. To a five-year-old fertile mind this was a task worth doing but you needed a least one ranch hand to help you. I could only think of one person who was capable of this awesome task. This was Harold who also had all the right equipment for the job. Harold owned his own rope, tricycle and the spirit that had brought him through many gun battles in the back yard. More important, Harold was one year younger so he would follow my directions. So early one Saturday morning, Harold and I began scouting the neighborhood for available livestock. One by one we were able to bring in the strays that crossed our paths that morning. Some were willing, some had to be unleashed and some were downright uncooperative. But we persevered and by the end of the morning we had filled the backyard with an assortment at least twenty pedigree and mongrel dogs. Since at the age of five I had not mastered the art of sneaking matches out of the kitchen, I calmly walked into the house and asked my mother for a few matches so Harold and I could start branding the cattle. Harold’s mother was soon at our door step fetching her son and all his equipment and I had the humbling task of returning each of the dogs to their rightful owners coupled with an apology that was encouraged by my mother who graciously joined me in the task.