Kith & Kin

Thanksgiving is perhaps the best holiday of the year, filled with many traditions in our house. The day goes something like this. . . . Mama is up at 6 to put the turkey in. Back to bed briefly. Up at 7 to put the ham in. Showers. Takes the dog on a walk. It’s now 8 am. Time to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Slam the vacuum packs softly on the edge of the counter so as not to awaken an irritable male. Like a grizzly bear, the household male is hibernating, and, if awoken accidentally, is likely to come out of his cave in what could be called a “mood.” Put the cinnamon rolls in the oven on the rack below the turkey and ham. Wash up dishes from the morning’s preparations. Get out the mixer, corn, corn meal, and other ingredients to make Mama’s Famous Corn Casserole. Mix ingredients thoroughly, according to the recipe. Pull cinnamon rolls out of the oven and drizzle frosting over them. Set them on the counter, knowing that their scent will awaken Papa Bear as it wafts t...

Remember that Youtube video of two seventeen-year-old guys trying to figure out how to use a rotary phone? It was funny to my generation because nothing seems simpler or more obvious to operate than a rotary phone. But to kids who have never worked one, it’s pretty much inscrutable. Early in elementary school a teacher asked our class to draw pictures of what we thought the world would be like in 1980 when we were to graduate from high school. My picture featured people going places in flying cars and zipping through the air via jetpacks. As I grew older, I read a lot of Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury science fiction/science fantasy stories in which robots would do all the work for people and where huge computers that took up rooms full of floor space could answer questions. Surely those would be integral parts of our daily lives in the far-off future year of 1980! Well, I got a lot of that wrong. Even in 2022 (1980-plus-forty-two), we’re still not zipping around in flying cars. A...

Her voice was ever soft, Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman. William Shakespeare,  King Lear , Act 5, Scene 3 Her face was round and soft and wrinkled, the way a grandmother’s face should be. She had a warm smile and a quiet laugh. Her full name was Lorena Oretha Gill Skaggs, but we all called her “Buddy.” She was born in 1905 in Fayette County, West Virginia, and she died seventy-three years later in Fayette County, West Virginia. She was mother to four children but gave birth to only one. She was of small stature and somewhat shy, but she had an inner strength that allowed her to placidly take things as they came, responding with a quiet, “Well . . .” She married my paternal grandfather, Weston Wills Skaggs, in 1936, and they remained married until her death. She was Weston’s second wife. Eva Grace Holliday Skaggs Weston’s first wife, my paternal grandmother, was Eva Grace Holliday, who was born on July 11, 1906. According to one of her cousins, “Eva was a ...