Bingo is a Family Value

My previous experiment, OSTRICH
(Obtusely Still Try to Relentlessly
Ignore and Continue Hobbling)
was, oddly enough, unsuccessful.

This afternoon, I was lying in bed, thinking about what to write while experimenting with RICE (rest, ice, compression, and elevation) for my bruised foot. I got the munchies and reached into the nightstand for some Bingo loot, a giant-sized Hershey bar I had been saving for just such a situation. If you're doing a double take because you don't associate Bingo with chocolate, I can assume you're not family. Those of you now nodding and drooling know exactly what I mean.

Two weeks ago was the annual Dusek-Olsovsky Family Reunion. For more years than I've been alive, the descendants of the Duseks and Olsovskys (my grandmother was an Olsovsky) have congregated in the Guardian Angel Catholic Church Parish Hall in Wallis, TX, on the fourth Sunday in April. I've missed very few of these reunions, and my kids are just as determined to go for two, very important reasons: (1) each family must bring a dessert and we come from a long line of fabulous bakers, and (2) bingo.

The inside of the church. Guardian Angel is one of the beautiful painted churches in Central Texas. Our family is one of the many Czech families that settled there in the late 1880s. I suck at genealogy, but I have learned two important facts:
(1) Great-great (ish) grandpa had to renounce allegiance to Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the much hated
occupier of Moravia and other places and the catalyst of WWI, which is kind of ironic: "Yes, we know you hate the jerk,
but do you pinkie promise not to be his loyal subject?" I imagine Great-great (ish) grandpa rolled his eyes and said whatever the Czech equivalent of "I'll try" or "Whatevs" or "Sure, you moron" is. (2) Great-great (ish) grandpa's dad (who never emigrated) was named Peregrin Dusek. Peregrin: Just. Like. The. Hobbit.
No wonder we all like to eat and run around barefoot!

Eleanor in 2007 with some of her winnings. That is the
expression of unbridled aggression, the savage intensity
of a four-year-old Attila, intent on decimating an army of
letters and numbers so that she can ravage a table of
hapless sugary items and cheap toys. Cross her at your peril.
Her cousin Christian appears somewhat despondent with
his sad little box of juice packets. 

After lunch and the business meeting, someone says, "Bingo!" and children emerge from tables, run in from tossing footballs and shooting hoops on the covered porch, and descend upon the opened treasure chests where thousands of bingo cards, some barely held together and peeling with age and covered with stray marker, others brand new and shiny, lay waiting. When I say 'treasure chest,' you should not think about a pirate's treasure chest, because that is entirely too small. These treasure chests are so massive that is entirely possible some poor bingo player may have once leaned in too far to get a luckier card and fallen in, buried forever in the vast drifts of condensed luck. Kids who are too young to keep up with numbers and letters sit with a mom or granny, who usually plays three or four cards at once. My kids are very serious about bingo, and that is because every one of the 45+ families brings prizes. A row of four or five long tables is piled high with dollar store toys, candy, snacks, sodas (and, for some reason, this year, a fern), and we play bingo until every item is gone. It is like combining Halloween and gambling. After ensuring that all three kids had won several items, Mother and I scored a few treats of our own, including the delicious Hershey bar I savored today while experimenting with Staying Still as a means of healing my foot. (Shockingly, this is working quite well. Does the medical community know about this?)

All of which explains why, when I ask, "Do y'all want to go to the family reunion?" all three children light up, sort of like when you wave bacon at a dog or rattle a jar of Kitty Krack, and even Bruce, who rarely leaves the house by choice, perks up and says, "The one with bingo?" No one complains about the car ride, or interacting with people they don't know very well, because it is so worth it. As I once did--as probably all adults once did--they'll sneak back through the dessert table at least twice while the grownups are distracted, before heading outside to play until that magical moment when someone yells, "Bingo."

I have two very specific childhood memories of the reunion. One was that we had to drive up from Corpus to attend, which seemed forever at that age, and either there weren't a lot of bathrooms on US 59 at that time or my parents chose not to stop at them, so I vividly remember at least one time pulling off to the side of the highway to look for a bush. Those of you from South Texas are laughing right now, because you know there's no such thing, just tall grass, stickerburrs, and snakes. The other was that horrible, horrible time when I got the chicken pox right before the reunion and had to be quarantined in the Winnebago. Imagine: no multiple trips through the dessert buffet, and (really, this could constitute child abuse or possibly some sort of war crime) no bingo. Here's a poem about that tragic day that I read at NeWorld Deli last month.

Solitary Confinement on the Open Road

Wallis, 1974

The open road was closed,

the Winnebago a quarantine.

They took me to the reunion,

an annual tradition, barbeque

and bingo, running on concrete

under shade of metal awning

of the Guardian Angel Catholic

Church social hall, anticipation

squashed like a South Texas

mosquito thanks to a badly timed

outbreak of chicken pox.

I spent the reunion alone,

itching, pock-marked, forbidden

from socializing or scratching,

listening to the fun I wasn’t having,

confined to the Winnebago,

visited occasionally and at distance

by cousins who were known survivors,

fed from a plate curated by my mother.

No thrill of hearing letters and numbers

that could spell a bag of candy or new toy.

Just me alone, failing not to think

about itching, stung by boredom,

completely unable to scratch it.