Stultz Family Reunion

When I was a little girl, if my parents had given me a choice between going to Disney World and spending a week at my Mayme's in Kentucky, I'd have been in the Bluegrass State before they could say, "Zip-pa-dee-doo-dah!"

It wasn't even a fair fight.

Then again, Mayme made things pretty magical. She stocked her freezer with Pudding Pops (and, just for me, peppermint ice cream that she'd bring home in a styrofoam cup from the Chimney Corner restaurant, "up the road"); she had Reese Cups in that same drawer where she kept the folded up Stultz Pharmacy bags, and she'd almost always let us go to work with her where there were not only calculators to play with but also giant rubber stamps with forms to fill out. It was Utopia for a kid like me, for whom office equipment was every bit as fun as riding a roller coaster.

And then there were our cousins - right across the street. BJ, four years younger than me, would be standing at Mayme's massive window, watching for our drive down Riverside Drive. Lori's laying in her king-sized waterbed - the one with the mirrors on the wooden canopy - eating Caramellos and spraying Sun-In in her hair, and then there's Brad. If he's not at the ballfield, he and his team are listening to WKEE and jumping off Lori's roofline into the pool two stories below.

With all of this going on, who WOULDN'T want to be there?

If you had asked me then if there'd EVER come a time when I'd go 18 full months without visiting this most favorite of places, I'd have said you were a few planks short of a paddlewheel. But that's what's happened. Growing up - and growing children - make visits harder to come by.

This spring, though, we Stultzes said, "NO MORE." It was finally time to reconnect with some of the ones we love the most.

We pulled into Greenup for Father's Day Weekend. On our way, of course, the boys and I drove through nearby Ashland. As we did, I had that same old bubble in my belly - the familiar excitement of "WE'RE ALMOST THERE!!!!!" just about made me explode, while I pointed out some of the spots with memories attached.

"There's the theatre they built when I was in junior high! That's the smokestack Mayme told us she used to sit on top of. We'd eat at that McDonald's on our way to Camden Park."

Decades-old memories still as fresh as yesterday.

When we finally got to Greenup, I was welcomed by the sight of barges on the riverbank and the sound of crickets in the ravine. There's the fire station's reminder that it's 9 o'clock, and the same train still roars by right around 11.

Some things never change.

Thank God for that.

Another thing that hasn't changed is the affection I feel for the people I spent last weekend with. It was an unbelievable treat to walk that riverbank - or drive it, if Freddie had access to Uncle Dave's golf cart - with some of my first friends. What's more amazing is how the next generation didn't meet a stranger, either. From teenagers to toddlers, Mary and Fred's great-grandchildren were instantly as thick as the blood that binds us all. If I thought it once over the weekend, I thought it a thousand times - how proud Mayme would be to see us all still together.

Just as many times, I thought about what a gift that it is to have a family that wants to be together; to have been taught - and shown - that some knots can't be untied is as magical a gift as I was ever given.

A Greenup Christian Church youth intern is living in the
apartment where we stayed. Somehow, while napping,
Freddie accessed these light up darts she had and figured out
how to turn them on. It looked like he was surrounded by
flares when I went in to wake him up!

Just before our cookout Saturday nite, Jones spiked a fever,
having had no symptoms all day. Cousin Brad
came to the rescue - driving all four of the Pressleys
to Stultz Pharmacy for some Ibuprofen ... and, for Freddie,
CANDY! Jones didn't want any, which shows how sick he was!