And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line.

This entry I will reflect upon one of my earliest childhood memories. I was maybe 2 or 3 years old and my parents and I went to Holly Ridge, to my great-grandparent's farm for a family reunion. Everybody I know laughs at me because I am either going to one or just came from one. We have several family reunions a year and they last at least couple of days.

We were there on a Friday night, and all the women (my great-grandmother, my grandmother, great aunts, aunts and my mother) were hanging out in the living room of my great-grandparents olden and modest home situated on 55 acres of cotton fields. While I was sitting on my mother's lap, I witnessed all the women taking turns stroking a wooden stick though a hole in a lid that was atop a very large crock jar. Everyone including the one who was stroking away, seemed to be enjoying themselves, laughing and carrying on and such. I had decided that I was missing out on an obvious great time involving this foriegn thing in middle of my great-grandparent living room, because everyone was involed. This activity looked like a big game to me, like tag or something.

I started to buck around in my mother's lap, pointing at the strange thing that was the center of all the attention and someone asked me did I want to help?

This same somebody instructed me to grab the wooden pole and move it up and down. After a few pitiful baby strokes, I had enough and really did not understand what the big deal was. She told me "Oh no, little girl you ain't done yet, so I commenced on in the same repetative motion for what seemed like forever. That lasted for maybe an entire minute before I was allowed to resume my position on my mother's lap. Everyone there seemed to get a real kick out of the fact that was I not interested in helping them any longer.

The morals of this story is that, (a) even when there was a special occasion going on, the chores were not ignored at the great-grandparent's house and (b) a butter churn is certainly nothing to get jealous about.