West Virginia

Dad's family is from the hills of West Virginia. Upper Tract, West Virginia, to be exact (no lie, that's the real name). As a little bit of background info, here's some stats on Upper Tract, WV. The population is 897. Of those, 891 are white, 1 is Asian, 1 is Black, 1 is of mixed race and the other three are Hispanic. The average family income is $29,000 (poverty level for a family of 4 is ~$21,000) and everybody goddamn knows everybody and their business.

Every Easter for most of my growing up time we used to drive up to West Virginia to spend the holiday with my Dad's extended family. All of his immediate family live in MD, except my grandparents, who split their time between their house in MD and their house in WV, but the majority of the rest of them live in the Smoke Holes of WV.

The house up in WV belongs to Grandad D. It is a single floor home that sits atop 80 acres in the mountains of the Middle of Nowhere, WV. There are four bedrooms and a single bathroom. During Easter, there are four married couples and seven grandkids inhabiting this house (ie 15 people). Occasionally there might be a dog or two. All of the true adults get the bedrooms and all the kids get either the single cot, a couch, or the floor. The logistics of cramming 15 people in this tiny house get a little tricky during meals and when Kelly takes forever in the bathroom.

When I say this place is Middle of Nowhere, I seriously mean it. The closest major store is a Super WalMart that is open 24/7 and it's over an hour away. There's really nothing but rurally scattered houses and a shitload of churches in between. We also don't get cell reception within a two mile radius of the house.

Sometimes we would go up to WV because Dad would be installing something in the house, or helping out a cousin, or whatever. Back when I was a kid this house did not have air conditioning. It did not have cable. It did not have any games (except Monopoly, which you can't play by yourself). And it did not have a VCR. There were also no kids to play with, and even after my brother was born, we're seven years apart so it's not like you can have a two way interaction with an infant. West Virginia is seriously boring (though not as miserable as Cooperstown, NY). I ended up playing a lot of Gameboy and I read a ton of Goosebumps books. It's not nearly as bad now as it used to be, but jesus it sucked when I was a kid.

An odd part of the house is the third bedroom. It has the goddamn squeakiest bed known to man. The mattress rightfully belongs in a bouncy house and the awful squealing noise it makes when sat/slept upon  is enough so that I can't sleep on it because every time I move I re-wake myself up. For a long time my Grandma referred to it as the "Honeymoon Suite" and I never understood what she meant. The day that I actually understood the joke I was so horrified that I never wanted to touch that bed again.

One time when we were on our way up to WV for Easter, I got sick. I was pretty young (Danny wasn't around yet) so I'm not really sure what kind of disease I had, but I do remember throwing up all over the place. I accidentally threw up on my new white stuffed bunny that I had gotten for Easter that year, and I remember getting hysterical because I thought I had ruined it forever (bunnies are white; barf is not). From all the close quarters living I basically got the entire family sick. There were so many barf buckets around the house that week it wasn't even funny.

Several years ago Danny brought a friend with him to WV. I'm not really a fan of Whiner to begin with, but this really annoyed me. He's a year older than Danny so he was probably 10 or 11 when we invited him to head up the The Hills for the weekend. Problem is he neglected to tell us he gets car sick. Of all drives, the one to WV (especially while driving through the twisty turny mountains) is not exactly conducive to people who get car sick. Two hours in Whiner is puking all over the backseat of our minivan and himself. What is normally a four hour drive turned into an eight hour drive because we had to stop so Whiner could puke not in the car, and stop so his mom could call in anti-nausea drugs to the nearest WalMart (my family and WalMart obviously have some sort of deep connection).

There's also the D family reunion. Now, Mom's family, who hails from an equally backward Pennslytucky town knows how to throw a party* (ahem, I mean reunion). Dad's family, on the other hand, hosts the most awful family reunions. Since Dad's parents are both the youngest of many children, everybody who shows up is old. Old people don't do fun stuff, they just sit around and talk. There is no music, no dancing, and nobody close to my age. Think my parents age (~42) and up, and then 15 and younger. My first cousins on my Dad's side are my age, but they've long since gotten smart and make lame excuses on why they can't come. Unfortunately, my mother (who isn't even blood related to the family...wtf?) got suckered into being in charge of it, so I'm forced to go just about every year. Let me just put it this way: one of my somehow related adult relatives showed up to our family reunion in camouflage underarmour. Camouflage underarmour. At our family reunion. She also has a wonderful permed mullet, courtesy of 1985. She's super nice, but still, her wardrobe choices leave a lot to be desired (this is the same woman whose Christmas cards consist of her three daughters posing in their respective camouflage with the most recent buck they've shot). The most interesting thing to ever happen at a D Family Reunion was when a man named "Rabbit" (seriously) crashed our reunion. He closely resembled the miner from Toy Story 2 and he must've hollered "YYYYEEEEEEE-HHHAAAWWW" about 20 times. I swear I couldn't make this shit up.

*In comparison, S family reunions frequently consist of day drinking, night drinking, drinking, jumping into swimming pools from the roof, speaker-blowing music until 3am, dancing, my uncle dressing up and singing as Elvis, and the occasional 911 call.