Summers were the best of times at the old house, not only for the warm weather and no school but because there would be plenty of people around pretty much all the time to take my mother’s eye and mind off of me for a while.  We had our very own swimming hole just down the road at the Darlings’ house where the boys had dammed up a section of Valley Creek and created a deep pool with a sandy beach and a wooden bench nailed between two trees to sit on.  There was fishing to do, and berry picking, exploring the woods or listening in secret to my mother and Janie Thompson gossiping about everybody they knew or hearing my dad cursing like a trucker as he wrenched his finger working under the hood of a ’56 Chevy wagon.  I learned my best cuss words from him.

But the hands down happiest summer memories for me were the big family picnics.  It seemed like almost every Saturday all the aunts, uncles and cousins would align and converge on our farm. Aunt Jeannie, who worked for a beverage distributor, would bring the beer and soda, Aunt Doris would bring macaroni salad, and so on.  Whoever had would bring it along.

            It wasn’t so much the food I remember—although my mother’s potato salad has since attained legendary status—as it was the sheer spectacle of it all.  It was like being plopped down splat in the middle of a colorful circus, and one where I felt pretty safe to have a good time in. 

With a few beers under their belt, Grandmom Sheetz and Aunt Jeannie would start jitterbugging on the kitchen lawn, wildly swinging each other back and forth with one hand while still keeping their bottles upright in the other. 

In the front yard, some of us kids would be playing a fiercely competitive game of badminton, our favorite sport of choice, whacking that birdie back and forth like we’d like to whack each other.

My older brothers played football in the side yard while my cousin Kathy and I snuck around taste-testing all the goodies laid out on the picnic tables and watching what the adults did to get fodder for our mimic acting.  Kathy could imitate her elders with remarkable accuracy and whoever didn’t show up for the picnic was fair game for her mocking skills.  Her family and mine were the biggest, with six and seven kids respectively, so there was always somebody to make fun of.

My cousins loved exploring the huge, crumbly barn behind our house.  Part of it was so old it had caved in but the hay loft was still intact and most of the roof was still attached.  We’d spend a couple of hours jumping out of the loft into the cushy straw below, even though we’d been told ten times to Sunday not to go near that barn. 

Back at the barbeque, my father would start flipping burgers and hot dogs once the coals were hot enough on the charcoal grill, the heavenly smell wafting through the yard, as he and Uncle Jack loudly complained about their jobs or yet another losing streak for the “damn dumb Phillies.”

When my father gave the word, we’d all sit down to feast on burgers, potato salad, fresh corn on the cob dripping with butter, four kinds of pickles and two kinds of olives as well as all the fixings.  We didn’t have a lot of money, so it was never anything fancy or expensive, just basic picnic comfort food. 

There might be a cake or blackberry pie if one of the aunts brought it, but dessert was usually watermelon, eaten ice cold in thick, dripping wedges.  This was accompanied by a seed-spitting contest to see who the most powerful blowhard was.  My brother Jim usually won and holds the top honor to this day.

After dinner it was back to dancing, badminton or whatever other activities had been suspended for dinner.  More bottles of beer were passed around to the adults and the gossip and stories started to flow like Valley Creek in a flash flood.  We kids would grab a stick and toast marshmallows over the glowing coals in the barbeque grill.  I liked mine charred black and crusty with a hot, gooey center.  Mostly, though, we’d just find a place to go to laugh and carry on while the adults got drunk.

At dusk, some of the older cousins would sneak a few beers and walk up to St. Peter’s Church to get away from our parents for a while.  My sister Carol tried to scare us younger ones out of coming along with tales of The Catman and his evil doings in the woods next to our house.  He was dressed all in black, she said, and had great, dripping fangs and fingernails four inches long, sharpened to razor points to torture his victims with.  He lived in a cave and only came out at night to stalk unsuspecting travelers, ripping them to shreds with his cat-like claws.  He especially liked young girls.  Frightened by the images she was so good at conjuring up, we jumped at any little sound in the darkening woods on both sides of the road as we trekked up the hill.  Would this be the night The Catman got us?  Kathy and I hurried to keep up with the older siblings, practically tripping over them in order to stay close enough not to get eaten.

When we finally reached the church graveyard, our shivery fear eased up a little and we started walking around among the ancient tombstones, trying to read the epitaphs in the increasing gloom. 

“What’s that?” my sister Evelyn asked, pointing at something near the church wall.  We all looked up and there amid the headstones was a ghostly white face bobbing up and down as it moved from grave to grave.  I screamed, then Kathy screamed, then Evelyn, and without another word we all tore back down the hill, our hair streaming in the wind, legs pumping faster and faster, looking back over our shoulders expecting any second to be overtaken by the eerie apparition and get sucked down into the bowels of Hell never to be seen again on earth. 

What a sight we must have been to the adults still sitting around the picnic tables under the apple tree, a veritable clan of banshees screaming and running wildly for the safety of the house.  When we were finally able to talk and tell the others about what we had seen, my father, ever the avenging warrior and debunker of childish myths, took Uncle Jack with him to investigate.  Our ghostly visitor turned out to be none other than a wayward white-faced cow who’d somehow gotten out of its pen and wound up in the graveyard.  We all felt like fools, being scared witless by a lowly cow, but I still to this day blame it on Carol and her scary tales of The Catman for putting us in such a vulnerable state.

When it came time to leave, we’d all gather around the cars.  My mother and her sisters would always take at least ten minutes each to say goodbye, although they’d already had the better part of a day to catch up on all the news and juicy family dirt.  Kathy and I promised faithfully to write to each other until the next picnic.  As the cars streamed down the long gravel driveway, we’d stand waving and shouting “bye! bye!” until the twinkling taillights faded and finally disappeared in the distance.