Part 1: Friday
Part 2: Saturday
Part 3: Sunday
Every summer there’s a family reunion, and every summer since I moved back to Seattle, my mother has nagged me to attend. Thia summer, she didn’t nag as much as past summers, so what the heck, I said yes and went.
I’ve attended before, but it’s been decades. What I remember most is the heat — the reunion is always in sunny, dry eastern Washington, at the height of summer — and the boredom of spending days with hundreds of strangers. It isn’t even a Holland family reunion; it’s a reunion of folks claiming kin with my mother’s grandparents, Arnold & Magnolia Biebesheimer.
The Biebesheimer reunion I’d attended was mostly “Who are you?” over and over again, followed by trying to figure out my relationship to whoever I just met, which usually came down to a few strands of shared, distant DNA linked by marriage between people now dead for decades. At least, that’s what I remember, but I haven’;t attended since the 1980s, and Mom says attendance has been dwindling, reunion after reunion.
Last year, there were only a few dozen people, she told me, and this year’s event was almost cancelled because Uncle Luther, who hosts the reunion at his farm each summer, has been hospitalized for months, after being seriously mangled in a tractor accident.
Uncle Luther, by the way, isn’t my uncle. He’s ten years younger than me, and we’ve never met. The tractor he fell off and got run over by is the same tractor that killed his father in a similar accident, 20+ years ago. Tractors must be expensive, or maybe it’s a terrific tractor so all is forgiven, but if a tractor killed my dad and I inherited the farm, pretty sure I’d replace the tractor.
With Uncle Luther sidelined, this year’s reunion would be held in a public park in Straggle, the small town where my mother grew up, and where I spent a few childhood summers. Nice enough town, but it’s mighty small. Straggle is the kind of place where there’s one newspaper, and it’s published once weekly, and most people drive pick-up trucks, and most of the pick-up trucks have testicles hanging from the back bumper.
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Mom doesn’t drive any more, and Greyhound is an insult on wheels, so the plan was that my sister Katrina would drive us. Mom lives with Katrina, drives her wherever she needs to be, and takes her to the reunion every summer, so this was ordinary for them. They’d rented a room in their ordinary hotel in Straggle, and I’d be sleeping in the recliner. We’d drive over on Friday, the reunion was Saturday afternoon, and then we’d drive home Sunday morning.
My personal quirks play into the story, so I’ll recap those for newcomers: I’m anti-social, and not close with even my immediate family, so a get-together with extended family I barely or don’t know was way outside my comfort zone. I’m atheist and pinko, but my family’s religious and conservative, and the town is moreso. I’m phobic and fearful riding in cars, so hours on a mountain freeway wouldn’t be fun. And I can’t stand TV, but Mom & Sis both live their lives with TV as the backdrop, and I knew there’d be hours of it every night in the hotel.
Sleeping in the recliner is a plus, though. I sleep in a recliner at home, and I’m typing this from my recliner. My back doesn’t like sleeping flat.
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It’s a four-hour drive over the mountains from Seattle. Mom took the front passenger seat, and I shared the back seat with Barney, Katrina’s dog who’s soon to be dog emeritus. Barney is shaggy and old, completely deaf, 75% blind, on meds three times daily, and confused about everything except eating.
From my back-seat vantage, I couldn’t see much of the driving, which is best for my car phobia. Not much leg room in the back seat, though, and my knees started seriously and painfully cramping after three hours or so. I’ve been to Straggle many times before, but never been so happy to get there, just to get out and straighten my legs.
Mom & Katrina have stayed at the same hotel in Straggle for years of reunions, but now it’s “under new management.” Like Barney the dog, it’s not what it once was.
When Katrina opened the drawers to put away her change-of-clothes, she discovered a previous guest’s medicines and eye drops in the top drawer. In other drawers, she founds opened bags of chips and chocolate. The room’s landline didn’t work, and the unexpected extension hanging on the bathroom wall also didn’t work. Like Straggle’s politics, one of the beds was tilted to the right.
Katrina and Mom told me the hotel had a pool, but last summer the pool had been closed for repairs, and this summer it was gone. Instead there was fresh concrete and an expanded parking lot, where the pool had been.
Best of all — and I mean ‘best’ un-ironically — the television didn’t work. The hotel’s other issues were a frown for Mom & Katrina, but lack of TV was a serious enough matter that Mom sent Katrina to the office to complain. The manager told her, and Katrina told us, “We’re switching to a new cable company, but their service isn’t compatible with our TVs, so right now none of the TVs are working. It’s only a temporary issue, though. We’ll have TV again by early August.” Not good news, for folks like Mom & Sis, hoping to watch back-to-back-to-back episodes of Law & Order: SVU in late July.
All this sounds like what you might expect at the Hotel Straggle, but the Hotel Straggle was a few blocks down the street, and looked like a nice place. We were staying at the local branch of a famous and familiar nationwide chain. Maybe you’ve spent the night, or at least seen their commercials, but the ads were not filmed at their Straggle location. Not that I’m complaining. I have no standards, and having no TV greatly improved the weekend.
Mom and Katrina recommended The Ox Cart for dinner, and it’s only a block from the hotel, so we walked. It was 88° out, and Mom walks very, very slowly with her walker. Walking a block took 15 minutes, and we were all wet with sweat when we got to the restaurant.
When in Straggle, though, eat at The Ox Cart. The sign brags that they make the county’s best burger, but they also have a complete Mexican menu (Mom had an enchilada) and a complete Chinese menu. I had the #19, which was sweet & sour pork, plus chicken & broccoli, plus three of the biggest prawns I’ve ever seen, plus a generous dollop of fried rice, all pretty good, only $15.99, and served with an unasked-for jalapeno pepper as big as my penis.
When we got back to the room after dinner, Barney had shat on the floor, but Katrina was understanding. “He’ll whine to be let out, but you only get a few minutes notice, and nobody was here to hear him whining.”
Deprived of TV, Mom & Katrina & I were forced into a few hours of pleasant conversation, about Mom’s childhood in Straggle, and our many family visits to Grandma (Mom’s mother) at her farm on the outskirts of town. The hotel room didn’t have a recliner, but I slept nicely in one of its wooden chairs, while Mom and Katrina snored in the beds.
7/28/2025
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