Kith & Kin

Baby Keith. Mom ’ s idea of putting the baby ’ s age right in the photo was a stroke of genius. My mother often told me the story of the day she and Dad brought Keith home from the hospital. They laid him on the couch, and I, two-and-a-half years old, looked at him and said, “Where’s his mommy?” At some point thereafter I comprehended the fact that my mommy and daddy were also Keith’s mommy and daddy, and that meant we were brothers. When we were still quite young, Keith and I had our own TV program. It was broadcast every evening immediately after supper. The two of us would go into the living room, stand in front of a large mirror, and put on a comedy show. Its high-brow humor consisted mostly of two little boys dancing around and acting silly, the larger one repeatedly hitting the smaller one on the head and pushing him off camera because he had made a comment that was, in the estimation of the larger one, stupid—while the smaller one gamely played along, always smiling, willingly...

Some memories stay fresh in our minds because they are so special or so amazing or so shattering that we play them over and over throughout our lives. Some memories, though, are hidden in the haze of our history and then surprise us by appearing when a random event triggers them. For instance, a couple of days ago I saw a bicycle and one of those hidden memories jumped out suddenly. I stopped walking for a second and carefully turned it over in my mind. Yes, I remember now—it really happened that way. I had completely forgotten. . . . The Bike I had picked out the coolest bike I’d ever seen from the all the bikes available in the bike store in little old downtown Fredericksburg. This was the era of Footsies , hula-hoops , Jarts , bell bottoms—and banana bikes. AI generated by Copilot Banana bikes had a distinctively elongated seat. They were usually bright in color, with high handlebars decorated with tassels that flapped in the wind. At some point I put plastic clickers...

Cousins on a summer day at the grandparents ’  house. My brother Keith is on the far left, and our cousin Scott is next to him. I ’ m next, standing with my arm around Scott. Loren is the tall kid in the middle with the New Mexico T-shirt on, and his sister Robin is right beside him. I never told anybody this before, but I had a crush on Robin — I think you can see why! I recently received a text from my brother Eric: “Just got word from cousin Robin that Aunt Karon died on June 1.” That was only three days ago. She was 86 years old. Aunt Karon was the fourth child born to my grandfather Weston Skaggs . Born in 1937, she was the family’s only girl. Her older half-brothers were Leo, Eddie, and my dad, Nyle. Weston’s first wife, Eva, passed away fifteen days after my dad was born; Grandpa remarried, and he and his second wife—we called her Buddy —had just one child, Audris Karon. Dad was born in 1936, so he and Karon were close in age. But I never heard him talk about their ch...

It ’ s December 1, 2023, and my brother Eric reminded me this morning that Mom would have turned 86 today were she still with us. Home at lunch by myself, I looked at an old picture of her, taken before I was born. She is young and slim and attractive; she ’ s pinning on a corsage, and she looks very happy. I looked at the photo and thought about Mom long enough for a painful lump of ice to form in my throat, melt, and come out my eyes. She was an amazing person—one in a million isn’t enough; she was one in a billion. Here are a few scattered memories of her that flutter around in my head from time to time. Days of Joy Mom knew how to raise boys. She knew what boys were like and how to handle them. She must have come by this naturally, because she wasn’t raised with boys—only her older sister. Maybe it wasn’t that she was a natural at “raising boys”; maybe it was just that she wasn’t going to let anybody buffalo her, be it a screaming three-year-old or a disrespectful teen. B...

“Carl G. Lytle cutting Holmes County Swiss Cheese in his general store in Fredericksburg, Ohio.” From the Cleveland Plain Dealer , August 5, 1963. You can disagree with me if you want to, but I believe if everyone everywhere could be raised in small towns, the world would be a better place. Having been raised in a small town myself, I am both an expert on this topic and completely unbiased. When I was a child, Mom told me our hometown, Fredericksburg, Ohio, had “about six hundred” residents. Well, she had it right: census data from 1970 shows there were 601 residents. That was the all-time high for the town (which dates back to 1850), though: the population has been steadily declining ever since. In 2020 the population was only 409. The Freedom to Roam When you lived in a small town in those days, you could walk or bike anywhere you needed to go without a parent. School, the general store, the post office, the bank, or down to the “crick,” it didn’t matter. Someone would be keepi...