Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1593
Family reunions in Oregon
Good morning good morning. Hi hello howdy. Apologies to my west coast readers who like to read this right when they wake up, and to my east coast readers who expected this missive to arrive some four hours ago.
Greetings from PDX, terminal D, some posh private airport-lounge-for-everyone called “Escape.” It was forty-five dollars. I sort-of regret it but I have three hours to kill at this airport, and this important historical document to write, and the airport is pretty crowded today. I guess I can justify it since it’s been maybe six years now since I kicked myself of the habit of paying for the Delta Sky Lounge, so that is a couple grand I saved, and $45 I spent this once? Also today my Clear made things worth it. It is pretty much useless at RDU, but here at PDX on this Monday morning it saved me about 40 minutes I and I am grateful. They even let me keep my Ozium, which I believe was 0.5 oz over the limit.
They took my Diet Mt Dew though. I would call them bastards but they’re all working without pay now, so all is forgiven.
Apologies for saying “Happy Thursday” on my Friday edition and for the consternation it caused my dear friend and reader Suzy. GMHHAY regrets the error.
Anyway, yes. An amazing weekend with family. My sister came down with her husband Matt and their two kids, my two nephews Lucas and Rocky. My Uncle and Aunt came from… well I was gonna say PA but apparently they are summering in FL and AZ so they came from who knows where.
We all came for my… well, technically she is my ex-step-grandmother but she’s the only grandmother I ever knew on this side of the family. We came for her 90th birthday and it was lovely. I hadn’t seen her in ten years, and I swear she hasn’t aged a day. Still fit and in fighting form, still sharp as a tack and hilarious. They bought her a bike for her birthday.
I saw cousins and second cousins I hadn’t seen in 28 years. I met great aunts and uncles and all sorts of crazy extended relatives. I finally solved the mystery of “Webby” a mysterious gentleman from my childhood who was around in Fairbanks when I was young. I was told he was a relative, but he was not a Webb, even though his name was Webby, and I never understood how exactly. But I saw him on Saturday and talked to him for a long time. And his sister Nancy whom I also remember from my childhood. I met a bunch of cousins, children of Webby’s, who were all born in Fairbanks but left when they were young. I vaguely remember Nancy’s wedding when I was eight. It was CRAZY. They all moved out of Alaska in the early 80’s so my memory of all of them was very dim. It was awesome to meet them all, and their kids. One of the kids is seven and looked exactly like Jane. Actually there is a lotta weird look-alike stuff going on for a family that is not related by blood. Destiny!
I got to learn so many great family secrets and got timelines and exact relations for so many people sorted. I mean, of course with this entire posse, technically I should be adding “ex-step-” to all the relations, but it was all moot and it was awesome to see everyone. Especially the kids who, well, not kids now, but the ones who were kids when I was a kid and we played together but none of us had seen each other since my grandpa’s funeral in 1997.
(Florence is two to the right of me in the back row, there. Next to the guy in the white baseball cap.)
I want to live to 90 so bad now it seems awesome.
GREAT TIMES. Lots of hugs. Lots of catching up. A+ would do it again, see everyone at Grandma Florence’s 100th birthday.
OH and if Florence gets COVID it was not my fault I want the record to show I took a test right before the party because I am paranoid.
Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!
We are listening right now to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, because for some reason I follow Pink Floyd on Bluesky. I don’t think it’s an official acocunt? I don’t know. Anyway, I was in the cab just a little while ago — driver’s name was also Richard only he goes by Dick — and the Pink Floyd Bluesky account tweeted out a lyric to “Brain Damage” and the song got stuck in my head so I figured let’s give the whole album a listen.
It is… fine. Oh I did take this photo of a rainbow when I was walking back to the hotel from Fred Meyer last night so that seems thematically appropriate now, given the Dark Side album cover:
Man I got so much good GMHHAY fodder — both written and photographic — on this trip. Turns out it’s a lot easier to write about your life when you go do things. My cup runneth over.
Saturday before the birthday party we went to Elmer’s for breakfast, this PNW German-infused Denny’s competitor. We used to go there with my grandpa when I was a kid, and we had Val’s kids with us, so, you know, some deep hakuna matata shit going on here. CIRCLE OF LIFE.
Also Elmer’s had a bad-ass looking bar in the back and I really wanted to go there but I never had enough energy to pull it off.
Next we went to this giant cemetery, to whence I have been before, in 1997 for my grandpa’s funeral. My grandfather, grandmother, great grandfather, great grandmother, and great great grandfather and great great grandmother are all buried there in two separate locations. It brought back a lot of memories, since me, Val, Jack and Fred were all at this funeral. My nephew Lucas got to see the graves of his namesake great great great grandfather and grandmother, so that was really cool. Grandpa and grandma are stored in this mausoleum and they are really high up! We could not reach up there to leave flowers. We gave them quarters.
On Sunday, after saying goodbye to my sister and her family, Jack and his wife Fred and I drove about an hour southwest to a town called.. um… I don’t know. Mmm Wikipedia says Forest Grove, Oregon, to this awesome old Masonic Grand Lodge that is now a hotel, bar, restaurant, movie theater, oh my god I loved that place so much. But also it was the actual grand lodge for my great grandpa, my grandpa, and his brothers. My great uncles planned to retire there until the Masons sold the place and turned it into a hotel, my 2nd cousin explained somewhat bitterly, as this explained why he did not save anything for retirement. The Masons let him down.
Anyway, we met up with three of my second cousins, two daughters of my great uncle Burrell and a daughter of my great uncle Ken.
We were also supposed to meet up with a fourth second cousin, and I was very excited because her name is Jane Webb and apparently she is a flaming liberal and a speech pathologist and travels the world and recently converted to Catholicism. But there was a scheduling conflict and she couldn’t make it, so that was sad.
But the other three were great, two brought their husbands, one was named Rick. One of the cousins I had visited when she lived near Petaluma, CA in 1984 or so for a family reunion and I remember that trip very vividly and have a ton of photos from it and I could never piece together exactly how they were related and now I have it all worked out and it was great.
And GET THIS SHIT: I have learned that there exists in the world a 78 RPM Acetate recording of my father being born in Barrow, AK in 1941. And apparently it has his first cries, and it has my grandmother’s voice (Richard’s first wife Millie, who died six years before I was born). We think Jack has this record now, but he did not know it. A cousin had it. Best I can figure is that Millie and Richard mailed the record back down to Oregon to his parents and grandparents, and one of the cousins got it through the years and deaths and house cleanups and whatnot. She mailed it to Jack with a bunch of other stuff and he knows where his 78s are but has had no way to play it and it is unlabelled so he forgot through the years.
I HAVE to hear this thing. That is very very exciting to me.
I had the best time and McMenamins Grand Lodge is a great looking hotel boy are you guys going to see a ton of photos from that place over the coming weeks. I also bought a shirt. Traveling is so cool you see so much great stuff you don’t see in your back yard.
Except travel also sucks. Real paradox there. Maybe Motorhomes ARE the answer.
These two branches of the family are connected through my dad’s dad, also named Richard. Florence is his ex-wife. So, you know, the whole Florence birthday crew have memories of grandpa from when they were married — and they stayed very good friends long after they were married. So a lot of those kids think of him as a grandpa and most of the adults had fond memories of him. But they are not technically related to the cousins we met Saturday anymore, and a lot of the Saturday crew never knew the Sunday cousins.
It is funny because there are military contractors (found out I have a cousin who reads GMHHAY from “somewhere in the middle east” and it is not entire clear what he does for a living. Hi Scott!) on both sides of the family. And clergy on both sides of the family. The name Webb is on both sides of the family, they both spent lots of time in Alaska and Oregon and it is all… somewhat coincidental and I could never really sort it out. And my parents aren’t around to ask anymore, and when I did ask them, well, sometimes the explanation was hazy because they didn’t know or sometimes the explanation was hazy because there is so much good juicy scandal goin on on this side of the family.
But Florence is 90 now and grandpa’s gone and GiGi DGAF anymore and will tell you anything you ask her and it is just great. SO MANY LIFELONG QUESTIONS ANSWERED.
Today is Jane’s birhday. I am sad I will not see her. But it was the right call. Going to try and get her on a phone just before I board my plane so I can at least say happy birthday. And even though I won’t get to sleep till 1 tonight, I am getting up at 6:30 to see her in the morning and take her to school. I miss my girl! Val took the approach of pulling her kid from one day of school and then rushing home so as to not miss any more. I wanted to get the extra day with family. So I left Jane at home. No good solutions. Kids in school really hamper travel plans.
But I am so happy I got to see this whole group of family members. I tell people my family is small — like 12 people. And technically that is true, but when you broaden your definition, man, this thing is infinite.
Since I have no Jane anecdote for today I will leave you with one from my nephew. We were sitting alone together at breakfast at the hotel and I asked him how his day had been yesterday, did he have a good time flying and driving.
AND HE SAID NOTHING. Just like Jane. Didn’t want to tell me a thing. Kept his cards close to his chest.
Runs in the family.
Got a post-rock playlist for you today. This is a good’un. I hope you like moody broody sometimes noisy sometimes jazzy rock and roll. Yes, Jazzy. A dirty secret of post-rock, sometimes it gets jazzy. But you know what is awesome? Country post-rock. Witness; the first band on this playlist, Slow Teeth. My god I love them so much.
Talk to you guys tomorrow! And hopefully on time.
—
Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.
Love this!