Preparing for the kinfolk

On Monday afternoon, Mema Price and Mom were baking up a storm and doing laundry in preparation for all the company that was about to descend on their house at the end of the lane.

When the undertaker and his minions brought Gran’s body back from the funeral home in a casket, the boys watched their every move while sitting along the staircase from oldest to youngest.

Once the three men brought a large ornate box on wheels through the front door and placed it at the far end of the living room, the undertaker directed his underlings as they finished getting everything set up.

“What’s that?” Cecil questioned looking at the decoratively carved pine box.

“That’s a casket,” Paul blurted out.

“Where’s Gran,” Fred wondered with questioning eyes.

“Inside the casket,” Buck explained looking up the steps at his younger brother.

“She can’t breathe in there,” Fred worriedly stated with frown lines protruding from his forehead.

“Dead people don’t breathe silly,” Paul mocked his little brother. “That’s why they’re dead, Pork Chop.”

Fred gave the other three boys a frustrated look.

As soon as the men hung a curtain rod across with long flowing burgundy curtains that reached the floor as a backdrop, they brought in bouquets of flowers and arranged them around the base of the casket’s platform.

Later that evening, the rambunctious brothers were playing in their bedroom when Uncle Walt and Cousin Robert arrived by taxi. The foursome spied on the scene from the front window above the porch.

“What are you doing here?” Mema questioned her brother-in-law with her apron on and a pinch of flour on her nose. “We thought you were driving up from Texas and wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow?”

Walt told his son, a lanky lad with a thick black mane on the top of his head, to get back in the car. “All righty then. We’ll come back on the morrow,” he stated in his Texas twang.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Catherine kissed brother-in-law on the cheek as he removed his black cowboy hat and twirled her around.

“We planned ta drive,” Walt laughed shaking his brother-in-law Ralph’s hand. “But it woulda taken way too long and we wanted to be here for ye Mom Huggins wake.”

“What airport did you fly into?” Pop questioned the pair.

“Harrisburg with a connecting flight in Philadelphia,” Robert noted while Mema hugged his neck as he looked up and spotted eight curious eyes watching their every move.

The boys all ducked their heads back inside the window and fell to the floor laughing.

“The women have dinner waiting for you on the stove,” Pap Pa exclaimed.

But before they could get up the front porch, another taxicab pulled into the driveway. It was Uncle Harry and his boys – Leroy and Walter.

“Well, if that doesn’t beat all,” Mema was acting like a schoolgirl as she ran back down the steps and down the short sidewalk to the driveway to greet her brother and nephews. “Chalk it up to perfect timing.”

“Walt and Robert only arrived a few minutes ago,” Pop mentioned greeting his uncle with a handshake.

“We saw them at the airport in Harrisburg,” noted the well-groomed man with graying sideburns and the perfect tan. “But you had already got into your cab; so we couldn’t catch you,” Harry greeted his brother-in-law, Walt.

Pop grabbed their suitcases from the cab driver while Mema kissed her nephews, Leroy and Walter. Leroy jabbed his brother and motioned upward as both boys spied their cousins gawking out the window from the top floor.

After all the visitors ate until their hearts were content, Walt asked his nephew Cloyd, “So where’s all ye otter chilrin?”

About that time, Cloyd and Evelyn’s four oldest children came scampering into the kitchen and when Buck stopped short the other three all hit into the other with little Fred falling on his caboose.

With a jovial laugh, Harry asked, “And who are these four little rug rats?”

“These are our four oldest,” Pot-bellied Cloyd proudly stated spouting off their names and ages.

“They are sproutin up like weeds,” Walt let out a belly laugh and put his arm around the tall lanky young man sitting next to him. “You boys member my son Robert?”

“I remember Bobby,” Buck answered his great-uncle’s question. “He took me for a ride on his pony, Pineapple.”

In a husky voice, the dark-haired young man said, “I member ye too, little buddy.”

Harry piped up. “You probably don’t know who I am?”

“Sure,” Paul interjected standing straight as an arrow. “You’re Mema’s brother. I knew right off by your California suntan.”

“Well don’t that beat all – smart and observant,” Harry jovially gestured.

“We were looking at the family tree in Gran’s Bible that sits on the coffee table in the living room,” Cecil proudly noted.

“In that case, who are my two boys,” Harry challenged.

“Leroy, there,” Buck noted pointing to the older boy with a short mane of brown curls, “is sixteen, and born in 1932.”

“And Walter, who was named after Uncle Walt,” Paul remarked as if his comments were rehearsed while addressing the younger of the two with short blonde curls, “is ten, born in 1938, so we’re exactly the same age.”

“Why don’t you boys take our guests upstairs and show them where they will be sleeping during their visit,” Mom commented. All seven boys went upstairs talking up a storm.

“That’s a lot of boys in one house,” Harry noted.

“And they’re clucking like a bunch of chickens with a fox in the hen house,” Walt remarked as all the adults laughed.

This story, the third of six about my father’s family set during the summer of 1948 in Perry County, Pennsylvania, was taken from my book “Little Town Along the Susquehanna,” which can be found on Facebook.