Roger's Roundup
When I got married in 2001, I gained a whole new family along with Shirley, my wife who passed away in 2013. I got two new, fully-grown sons, Bubba and Brian. Throughout my married life, they (with some assistance from their wives) provided me with six grandchildren. Though I don’t see Brian and his clan too often (they live in Albuquerque), Bubba’s family lives in Colorado City, so I see them fairly regularly. At least, I did pre-COVID.
Travel restrictions and social distancing have made it not very practicable to leave Snyder too often, so it was nice to get out of town this past Saturday for the annual Iglehart family reunion, a tradition planned and implemented with gusto each year by Shirley, while she was still with us.
Iglehart was (I think?) Shirley’s mom’s maiden name. Although no one has taken over the reins of the fete with as much aplomb since Shirley’s death, we’ve managed to have it each year, and it’s been nice.
This year’s reunion was about the same as it’s been for the past several years. Fewer people made the trek to Colorado City’s First Baptist Church gymnasium than usual this year, citing the virus as their reason for absence. We had about 15 people.
I had to work in the morning, so I didn’t make it for the 10 a.m. start. I rolled up about 11:30 with my contribution to the day’s couple of feasts: Two premade pies from Wal-Mart, one cookies and cream, the other key lime.
I also brought a 12-pack of Diet Cokes for personal use, and a pile of games. Lunch is always sandwiches and chips, while dinner is usually tacos or something similar. Good stuff
Other than family, games are my main focus at the reunion each year. While Shirley was around, we ran a little Texas Hold ‘em penny-ante tournament.
Everybody brought a couple of rolls of pennies (Actually, the way it worked was, Shirley and I brought a lot of rolls of pennies, and people bought them from us at the reunion) and we played until one person had all the pennies. The winner also got a “trophy,” which was always a ceramic piggy bank with info about the tournament and reunion printed on it. It was fun.
This year, we played board and card games. Ticket To Ride, Wits and Wagers, Forbidden Island and Skip-Bo. Don’t have room to go into what exactly these games are in this column; maybe I’ll talk abut them in future columns. Well, y’all probably know Skip-Bo already.
I did get in one game of chess with my oldest grandson, Bradon (Bubba’s son). I think I was winning, but he got in a sneaky move and won. I mean, he cheated or something, yeah, that’s it. Can’t have my grandson beating me at chess!
Oh, one other tradition: Each year the event organizers do that thing where you have a lot of small items in a jar and people try to guess how many there are. A kid usually gets the jar and contents (usually candy) at the end of the day, but the guessing winner gets a door prize. There was only one “kid” this year, Bubba’s niece’s son Madden, and he got the candy-filled jar. I guessed 145 pieces of candy, more than anything to mess with grown nephew Logan, who guessed 144. But turns out there were exactly 145 pieces in the jar. I won an umbrella.
All in all, it was a worthwhile day. One of these days, this quarantine will be over and I plan on visiting my Colorado City family a bit more. And playing more games.
Roger Cline is staff writer for The Snyder News. Comments on his article can be made to roger@snyderdailynews.com