Knocking on doors

Sept. 6, 2007

Dear Julie,

I think it was the musical philosopher Carole King who asked, "Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore?"

Some people do. My great-aunt Lelia grew up in McLeansboro, Ill., current population 3,000, and as far as I know left only for vacations in sandy places.

Last weekend, she turned 100.

A few hundred relatives from Texas and beyond, people who couldn't stay home, descended on McLeansboro to wish her an even longer life. Five of Lelia's six children didn't have to travel at all. They live in McLeansboro, too.

The other child, Clara Nell, lives 100 miles away in Kentucky. Every family has one.

A big screen in the big Baptist church where the reception was held Saturday showed a photograph of Lelia at 16. She was very pretty. Her hair was bobbed like a flapper's, though I don't think she qualified as a flapper in other ways. She married a funeral home director and settled right down.

Nobody had counted up the grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, but they swarmed around her. Standing to acknowledge everyone, Lelia waved her pointing finger around the room. She reminded DC of the pope giving his blessing.

Lelia is still pretty. Still living at home. One of her daughters, Marilyn, lives with her now. Every morning, Lelia bakes a cake or a pie. Every afternoon at 3 o'clock Lee Ann, Daphne and Kitty, the other daughters who live in town, arrive at for dessert and coffee. Their mother is a good cook. I don't think that's why they come.

DC and I arrived at the cabin on the Castor River late Saturday night. It didn't matter. Castor Fest 2007 had already been canceled.

Everyone decided too much was going on this year. We were getting in late, and our niece Darci was leaving early the next morning for St. Louis to catch a plane to London. She's studying theater there this semester.

Her parents came from western Missouri, one sister from Orlando, Fla., and the other from Kansas City to see Darci off and spend some time with family. Traveling, traveling, traveling. "Looking for something, what can it be?" sang that other philosopher, Joni Mitchell. Maybe aunt Lelia knows.

DC's other sister Danice and her husband Larry are visiting from San Diego. In place of performing at Castor Fest they put in posts for a new dock at the pond behind the cabin. The dock is needed and tangible. A performance becomes part of you.

Castor Fest dates to Labor Day weekend 2003, when DC drove a load of lumber out to the cabin and we built a stage. Every year since the nieces and the rest of us have put on a show lit by tiki torches. Owls hoot, coyotes howl. So do we.

The Castor Fest stage has held dancing and musical performances, soliloquies and at least one near-death experience involving DC and flaming cups.

We were too busy traveling to have Castor Fest 2007. I understood and concurred. But where were we going? What are we looking for? Rumi says:

"I have lived on the lip

of insanity, wanting to know reasons,

knocking on a door. It opens.

I've been knocking from the inside!"

Two almost impromptu performances did occur at the dinner table. Darci's uncle Paul dressed like a fortuneteller and predicted her future in London. He foretold her having tea with the city's most famous queen -- Elton John -- and that she'd have trouble driving on the left side of the road since her family is so conservative.

DC's sister Danel read a poem she wrote about our late great beagle Alvie. Alvie wore a turban and played a fortuneteller at Castor Fest 2006.

Alvie, the greatest wanderer of us all, was at the cabin in our memories, following his nose wherever it has taken him now.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a reporter for the Southeast Missourian.