Cousin Wilson

Last Sunday Vickie and I drove to Fredericksburg and had lunch with my cousin Wilson and his wife Sharon – it had been around forty years since I’d seen Wilson. As I thought about our meeting I confess to wondering what we’d talk about, after all forty years is a long time. I needn’t have worried, the time flew by and I could have stayed at the restaurant well into the evening.

Wilson and I connected because his sister-in-law, his brother Doug’s wife, was doing some genealogical research and got a “hit” on her father-in-law (Wilson’s dad) in an article I had posted on a website. She contacted me via email.

Uncle Caskie’s family was my favorite Withers family. They lived in Northern Virginia and we lived in Maryland, and when our parents told us that we were going to visit them it was always great news. My visits to them are some of my best childhood memories. Looking back after writing the preceding sentence I realize that after the fifth grade those day trips stopped and that I seldom saw them from that point on; it was shortly after I started the fifth grade that my parents split up and my Dad disappeared for a period of time. After he returned to the area I saw Caskie’s family from time-to-time, but not often.

The fact that Caskie’s family was my favorite family is not necessarily a knock on my Dad’s other brothers and sisters (he had four sisters and three brothers who lived to adulthood), Caskie’s children were closer to my two brothers and me in age than the other families. Caskie lived in Loudon County, Virginia when it was still country and not gentrified countryside, there were hogs and chickens and cows and outhouses in Loudon County then, I imagine you’d be hard-pressed to find an outhouse in Loudon County today.

My memories include playing in hay stacked in a barn; a barn-raising with friends and family pitching in; butchering hogs; exploring nearby woods and climbing trees; inspecting Wilson’s tree house; and my favorite memory of all – the great hog pen shootout.

To be continued…