Bill at West in New England started a topic on picnics. Several of my fellow Genea-Bloggers have posted on this subject so I thought I would also write a post on this topic.
There would be several of us: my parents, my maternal grandparents, my sister, her husband and two kids, my brother and his wife, and sometimes a friend or two that would wander over from a neighboring house. Ocassionally there would be cousins who also joined us. We had two picnic tables in our backyard so we would put the tablecovers over them and lay the spread out. I don’t know if we actually had barbecued hamburgers and grilled hot dogs or just sandwiches. What I do remember is my mom’s potato salad and the watermelon my grandfather would always bring. Due to the number of flies that seemed to want to enjoy their own picnic, my folks bought “food” covers so when we were not serving, the food was pretty much left alone by the insects.
Normally some or all of us had been swimming in the backyard pool so we were eating in our swimsuits. After the food was taken away and the picnic tables were empty, my niece and nephew (and any of my friends who were over) would turn them over, put blankets over them and make them into forts! This worked until my mother realized that we were being too hard on them and was afraid we’d loosed the legs or knock them around too much. Thus ended our fort building. Now why I thought we needed a fort when I had a playhouse my dad had built for me in the backyard, I don’t know! Probably because it was something different!
We had two full-fledged reunions at our house. My dad’s siblings, their families, and his uncle came one year to the annual “Descendents of Lloyd and Ella Amore” reunion that we hosted. For 3-4 days the Amore siblings were in the pool, in the kitchen, sitting out in the backyard, eating catered picnic food, and enjoying the yearly get-together. My grandfather’s family had their reunion one year at our house. This was the Johnson-Blazer reunion that was normally held in Champagne County, Ohio. Again, we swam, ate, played badmitten, and had a good time.
It wasn’t the actual picnic food that I remember. It was the family get-togethers and the fun times we had.
So how about you? What type of picnics did your family enjoy?
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