4th of July Family Reunion - It's Been a While!

Over the 4th of July I traveled back to Southern Indiana to attend our Scott-Huffman (my mom was a Scott) Family Reunion. We usually hold it every 3 years but this time it had been 5 years, due to the pandemic. We got together on Saturday, at The Depot in Tell City, which is a small train station with a large meeting room.

My cousin's wife, Diane, made this beautiful quilt (sewn in basketball shapes and with the IU logo) to commemorate Burke Scott, who was on the 1953 Indiana Hoosier NCAA Basketball Championship team. Burke is now in a wheelchair, but he is still a hometown hero (for decades he could not buy his own drinks at a bar due to his local celebrity status!).

(Side note: Also on that winning Hoosier team was a player named Dick Farley, who was from my father's hometown, Arthur, Indiana. My dad always wanted me to be a basketball player, I suppose, since I was named Robert Farley Smallwood. Turns out I grew to 6'2" and I could shoot and play defense, but could not jump!)

The next morning we all went to church, filling the pews at the small Troy First Christian Church, where my parents were married about 70 years ago.

Then that afternoon we took a short train along the Ohio River and back, on the Ohio River Scenic Railway. The train went slow and easy along the tracks from Tell City to Troy and back, and everyone had pizza, and some had beer (OK- just me and my nephews!).

Then, after a much-needed nap at my cousin's place in the countryside, we headed to the family's property next to the Christ of the Ohio statue that overlooks the Ohio River.

My grandparents lived there 100 years ago, and raised their 10 children on that bluff in Troy, Indiana, the state's second oldest city, overlooking the river. They named all their kids after trues, nuts or flowers - I think they were in a Ripley's Believe It or Not edition (family lore). The oldest was Forrest Scott, from my grandfather's first marriage, but his wife died during childbirth (and he is buried between his two wives at the Bristol Cemetery). Then he married my grandma and they had 9 children, and one died at childbirth (Violet). They are:

1. Beecher Scott (Beech trees can live for 300 to 400 years! Uncle Beech lived to 96.) He worked at the General Electric plant in Tell City his whole life, after serving in the Navy. When my dad was courting my mom, he challenged Uncle Beech to swim across the Ohio River, and my uncle won. This shocked my dad, since he was strong, a tough guy boxer growing up. When my dad told me that story he said, "So you come from good stock."
2. Oak Scott - he was the wild one - smoked and drank his whole life (a no-no in that family!). He worked for the phone company in Indianapolis.
3. Hazel Scott (hazel tree/hazelnut) - she lived with her husband and kids in Torrence, CA, near L.A. They had one of the first Taco Bell franchises in the 1960s. I thought it was the greatest thing - free tacos! Later, she went into real estate.
4. Filbert Scott (another word for hazel tree) - he lived and worked for the phone company in Vincennes, the oldest city in Indiana. His daughter Christine is a hoot!
5. Wood (Woodfin) Scott - he lived in Kentucky, and was considered an outcast for doing so. (You see, in Southern Indiana, instead of 'Polack' jokes, they tell 'Kentuckian' jokes!)
6. Fern Scott - she married my Uncle Rich who was from Long Island, NY, after WWII. He came to Indiana to visit with my Uncle Beech after the war, and they got introduced. Aunt Fern moved to New York with him, with the stipulation that they had to come back to Indiana once a year. They raised 5 kids. My cousin Timmy lives in their house in East Meadow, NY, with his wife (their 2 kid are grown).
7. Olive Scott (my mom - she's almost 95!)- she still lives in my Iowa hometown, on the banks of the Mississippi. She was a champion marble shooter of Perry County, at age 8 - beating all the boys!
8. Mary Iris (iris flower) - she's 91! She lived with her husband and kids in Danville, IL. After he died, she went traveling around the country in an RV with her new companion, Chuck, and they would go to Texas every winter to square dance. They have been together for over 30 years now.
9. Ash Scott (Ira Ashley - ash tree) - he lived in California and had a chicken farm, then went back to Troy and ran a gas station, and then settled in the countryside of Georgia, working for the railroad. He had a tragic life - his car accidentally slid off the road and the car crash paralyzed his young wife, Joyce, and she was bedridden for decades. But still managed to raise my 2 cousins, George and Renee. They were both at the reunion this time.

So there is a century of family memories on that hallowed homestead ground. They never had running water or electricity, until the 1960s. And I remember my grandfather carrying buckets of water up from the river, hanging from a stick across his shoulders (back before the river got polluted), and he had a pig pen. The big excitement one reunion was when a boar got out of the pen and was trotting through town. I remember running barefoot, chasing that big ol' pig down the hill, while laughing wildly with my cousins. I also remember my grandmother putting her boot on chicken's heads on a stump and chopping their heads off, and they kept running around for a while, bloody and headless. Sort of an eye opener!

Within a few yards of that land is where a young Abe Lincoln used to give speeches and read essays to the public, when he was just starting out. He also used my family's mill (Huffman Mill) which was water-powered, to mill his corn.

That Sunday afternoon we gathered under canopies overlooking the Ohio River, and I grilled burgers and hot dogs - locally made smoked hot dogs - while my cousins made homemade ice cream (with the hand crank! No electricity!) The fresh ice cream went great with Diane's blackberry cobbler.

Then after the sun went down we moved our chairs closer to the edge of the bluff near the statue, and we watched the fireworks over the Ohio River, put on by the City of Troy.

The next day - the 4th, we gathered at a rented cabin in Derby, IN, and my cousin Brad cooked homemade pizza on the grill and made kettle corn, and the boys lit off some pretty impressive fireworks.

All in all, it was great to see family - in person - again. Family is everything.

Life in that part of the Country is lived at a lower, more deliberate pace. And I came back renewed and refreshed!