A coupla weeks back, I was in Schpilkis mode.  Cousin Terry thought I needed a casserole so you know what he did today? He personally delivered this to me.  It was some kinda good too.  Spaghetti Pie, he called it.  It had Eye-talian sausage in it, green peppers, other good stuff. 

Cousin Terry is my…let’s see…I guess we are third cousins or some sort of “removed” cousins.  Terry’s grandmother was Aunt Millie.  She was a younger sister to my grandfather.  Aunt Millie was the baby there in the middle and my grandfather is the cherubic looking little feller there on the left.  This picture was made about 1898 on the Nickell Family property up by Lake Barkley, right by the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky.  (Sometime I have to do a post about my great-great Uncle Shelley Nickell who woulda been a blogger if he was around now and was quite the conservation hero in that area.)

Anyway, Terry is a kin people I didn’t really get to know until I was grown.  We would see that side of the family once a year or so when my grandmother would visit, but, I was a little kid and Terry was a grown up man who had kids older than me. 

After my Dad died in 1992, and his mother died in 1994 and when our Great Aunt Mimi died in 1994, I guess I was seeking family connection. My sister had married and moved away and my mother, during this time, sorta checked out and that side of the family was good enough to sorta draw me into their tight-knit circle. Terry inherited our Aunt Mimi’s house on the Cumberland River and thanks to him, his niece Barbara and other family members, I’ve been able to do some serious connecting with that side of the family and learn a lot about my grandfather and who he was.  

  I don’t think that was hard for Terry and the Brocks/Smiths to draw me and my bunch into their because our grandparents and all the siblings were tight.  Every picture you see of them, even as older people, they were always hugging and touching (I didn’t get that gene. Heh)

I’ve had some fun times with Terry and the other assorted Brocks/Smiths.  Terry and Kaye aren’t just my kinfolks but I really think of them as good friends that I’d have wanted to be friends with even if we didn’t share a lineage, ya know?  I am blessed to have Terry not far down the road.

Thanks Terry.

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