I have wonderful, wonderful friends. Family? My goodness! My whole family, my extended family, it gets along wonderfully well. We have these reunions. One time I had the most interesting conversation with a woman who asked me: “what do you do have a reunion?”

I told her that most of all the adults just sit around and talk. The kids go to the lake. Our nieces and a couple of our nephews are lifeguards. Because this lake Sylvia is so big and there’s an upper and lower lake bay water ski, fish, do everything. We just sit around and talk.

For one week that’s all we do is sit around and talk. On the odds year everyone comes here. In the even years everyone goes to Las Vegas. Some of them live in Indianapolis and they can go round-trip to Las Vegas for under $200.00. It takes our kids more than that to go from here. The big reunion is every other year. We used to do it every year but as everyone started to die off it got harder and harder. Our family in Saint Paul organizes everything because they’re closer.

My nieces live in Indianapolis now. They have decided that they will go ahead and do the organizing. I have a niece-in-law who works as an accountant who will do the finances. Then there’s another niece who lives in Indianapolis and she plans things for the kids. The kids and swim in the morning and in the afternoon but in-between times they play games and everything that night we have amateur night. And they make every family participate; every family has to do something.

I have a niece who has done a lot of family history and I know she knows the name of the slave owner who owned my grandfather. It was something like Steinhauser. I do know that he changed his name to Jackson. That much I know for sure.