Is that Jell-O?

I love my extended family -- cousins included. I really do.

But it's hard to come away from your own family reunion completely unscathed. All those people, after all, are related to you or married to someone who shares your gene pool.

Family reunions are nothing more than Thanksgiving dinners held outdoors on a hot day instead of indoors on a cold day. And with no TV football relief.

Have you ever left a big family Thanksgiving dinner where at least one stupid argument didn't break out?

If you said yes, I don't believe you.

Any family worth its mashed potatoes and gravy would have at least a couple of knock-down, drag-out clashes on an average Turkey Day.

So there we were last Saturday at Sam A. Baker State Park under the oak trees, all prickly from the heat, having our family reunion.

Here's a formula you might find handy for your next summer reunion: To determine how many of your cousins and assorted twice-removed something-or-others will attend, add the temperature and relative humidity. For every digit over 180, subtract 10 from last year's total attendance, then divide by 2.

Try it.

This reunion dates back at least to World War II. Both my maternal grandparents were dead by the start of the war, and each year my mother and her four sisters and one brother attended the graveyard cleaning at Meadows Cemetery in the Ozark hills over yonder.

I'm not sure about the facts of what I'm about to tell you, but my version is that one of my aunts saved up wartime ration coupons so she could buy the ingredients for a banana cream pie to take to the graveyard cleaning potluck dinner. In an unforeseen and unfortunate turn of events, the pie was consumed before any other member of our immediate clan could get a taste.

Fact: What you cook for a family reunion or a graveyard cleaning potluck dinner is mostly for show. Over the years, some of my relatives have held bragging rights to certain dishes: my mother's chicken dressing, Aunt Esther's chicken and dumplings (but not her fried eggplant, which was identified this year as Jell-O by one misguided great-nephew), Kay's pies made with home-grown berries.

So when the banana cream pie disappeared before anyone close enough to prohibit legal matrimony had a taste, that was the corker. The next year all the family showed up for the graveyard cleaning right on schedule. But when dinnertime rolled around, our lot, pies and all, drove off to Big Creek and set up camp under some fine shade trees.

When we moved to Cape Girardeau, we were close enough to attend. And by then the reunion had moved to the state park, which is part of our family's history too, since my great-grandmother and grandmother once lived on Mudlick Mountain.

Every second Saturday in August there is a conversation that goes something like this:

Question: Do we have to do this during the hottest month of the year?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Why are we the only people in a state park on a Saturday?

Answer: Must be the heat.

Repeat over and over. You get the picture.

That, and looking at approximately 4,000 photographs of recent weddings, graduations, new babies and proms, is what our reunions are all about.

Some good news: There was so much great food at this year's get-together that I was able to bring home leftover fried chicken and cornbread.

Who says a family reunion can't have a happy ending?

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.