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What am I at my age?
Celebrations and holidays | |
| By Leonard J. Hansen | |
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Celebrations and holidays bring out the worst in relatives. Like good Americans we celebrate the Fourth of July with a family picnic and invite everyone we know on the limbs of the family tree. Unfortunately, a lot of the same relatives show up. Like Morton Morgan. He was once married to my second cousin, Agatha, but they divorced about twenty-seven years ago. Morton still claims a kinship with the rest of us. "Its because the law of this great nation made us all family together," Morton Morgan says every year. For the record, I've never even met second cousin, Agatha; but Morton has arrived every year since the six months they were married. "I'm going to let you in on a secret," he confides, moving closer to me. His straw hat with the red, white and blue banner that he's worn every year almost slips from his bald head. "I will tell this only to family. Sand." "Sand?" I ask. "Not so loud! Yes, sand. Do you realize that Gregory Hines has been making movies about tap dancing? Tap dancing means sand dancing, where they spread sand on the stage for a neat, added effect. If there are ten thousand tap and sand dancers in the country using a pound of sand in their routines, you and I will be rich beyond our imagination. I have cornered the market in dancing sand." There is a pause because I don't know how to answer him. "I have put a call into my barber who once cut the hair of Gregory Hines' cousin, to arrange a meeting one-on-one, mano a mano, as we say in show business. Now, all I need from you is your approval to make you vice president of the Morton Morgan Dancing Sand Company, and a bit of seed money to cover the long distance calls and the start up costs of someone to dig up and bag the sand. About ten thou will start the ball rolling." Last year, Morton Morgan was pushing shares in race horses. The year before it was to fund the return of the hula hoop as a national craze. Twenty years ago he claimed to have the inside track of selling stainless steel for the DeLorean cars. "Gee, I wish I could get involved, Morton," I said as so many times before. But each year my reason would be a larger and larger whopper. "I'm really with you, but and this must be off the record Bill Gates has asked me to hold my position as majority holder in Microsoft. He doesn't want to jeopardize his new line of atomic powered computer peripherals. We expect a killing in the market on this one." Last year I invoked Steven Speilberg's name, and the earlier, the Pope. My alibi then was that the Vatican was going to market a new frozen treat called the Popesicle and they were holding me to my financial commitment until the product was well established in the market. Uncle Jeffrey comes to the Independence Day family event. I think it is the only time he moves away from his television set all year. As it is, he brings along one of those four-inch Sony TV sets which he places by his coffee cup, so not to miss the Gomer Pyle re-runs. He brays in laughter every few minutes, and that act assures us that he's still alive. To make him feel at home we present his hamburger, ear of corn, potato salad and cole slaw on a plastic TV dinner tray. He smiles appreciatively, and allows conversation with him only during commercials or station breaks. During the next half hour he's particularly entranced as Barbara Eden stars again in I Dream of Jeannie. Uncle Jeffrey gains a very strange grin as he watches the scenes with the genie in her scanty outfit, and crosses and uncrosses his legs frequently. The Wilburn side of the family arrive, all primly attired. They're Catholics, and each member makes sure that everyone at the celebration knows it. "Father James said," Timothy Wilburn, the patriarch of the Wilburn clan, announces to no one in particular, "last Sunday in his sermon that we are allowed to eat meat today even though it is a Friday because it is a holiday, as long as we eat fish three Saturdays in a row. That's great of him, so we plan to dig in and join in even though the rest of you can never reach heaven when you die." "Well, what's right for you is right for you," I respond. Others at the table glare at me. I make it worse: "Well, maybe there are different heavens one for Catholics, one for Protestants, one for Jewish people." "Blasphemous!" The elder Wilburn is more than upset with me, but he is more than upset with me every year at this same time. He sets up his own card tables for his clan and sits on a fold-up chair, deliberately facing away from me. I have brought a case of chilled beer, just as I do each July 4 picnic. Carefully, I set the cooler just a few feet out of my immediate eyesight. That's so that the Wagner boys, seventeen and eighteen years of age, can swipe a couple of cans and disappear over the hill. This year, each boy was escorting a girlfriend, and four cans disappeared at a time. I should have thought better of my action when the four came back over the hill, and one of the girl's peasant blouses was on backward. I think it is pleasant, getting to the countryside once a year with the assembled family. I don't know if I could take the big event more than three times each year: July Four, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Most of the family group also get together on New Year's Eve, but I opt out of that, claiming that it's against my religion. The tradition of holidays is wonderful! A picnic in the park, cold hot dogs and warm beer, with people who somehow are or claim to be relatives even once, twice or three-times removed the Wilburns reciting Father James' most recent sermon, and the Fourth of July Salute. This is a dance done the last twenty-five years by Alice Dern, wearing red, white and blue tights, and a top hat complete with a burning sparkler. She starts tapping to the recorded music of Yankee Doodle Dandy and You're A Grand Old Flag, ends after twenty seven minutes of patriotic songs with Stars and Stripes Forever. Impressive, memorable. It was cute when Alice was six years of age. Now at thirty-one and her hair done up specially in Shirley Temple curls and painted-on dimples she still performs as a Star of Tomorrow. Of course, we applaud. Unfortunately, she promises to return next year. Celebrations are neat things. Makes you appreciate a country where we can still celebrate with family, such as they are, and the rest of the year on our own. Light up the sparklers! Be careful where you throw that firecracker! Todd and Jeremy Wagner, Lucy and Suzie, put your clothes back on and bring back my beer! |
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