DATE FOR 1999 REUNION CHANGED

Well, the time is approaching again. It�s time to get your reservations in for the 1999 Foster Family Reunion, the last such reunion in this millennium. We will meet at the same place we met before, North Texas Baptist Conference Center. But due to a scheduling problem, we will meet on the first weekend of October instead of Labor Day weekend. The actual dates are October 1, 2, and 3. Some of us will arrive on Friday evening, that�ll be the 1st, and some folks will arrive Saturday the 2nd. We�ll break up Sunday after lunch.

This will be the 3rd reunion for the descendants of Dick and Dena Foster. We had 32 people attend in 1997 and 35 attend last year. I would like to see an increase this year too, since there is the significance of 1999 being the last year of the century, and see the reunion continue to grow bigger year by year. I know, I know, I know, the new century doesn�t officially start until 2001, but it seems everyone wants to celebrate the new millennium a year early anyway.

We have reserved Angel Lodge again. This is a very nice air-conditioned motel. We have a meeting room where we can share stories, look at pictures, view slides, play dominoes, sing, or whatever. There is a Ping-Pong pavilion, volleyball court, gymnasium, and horseshoes. And you don�t have to cook! We eat in the encampment�s cafeteria for breakfast Saturday and Sunday as well as lunch and supper on Saturday. For Friday�s supper and Sunday�s lunch, what we have been doing is going into town to eat at Luby�s.

The cost is $28 per person per night ($11 for kids under 18). The meals are $5 for breakfast and $6 for lunch or supper (children ages 2 to 10 are $4). When you send in your check, please include a note saying which and how many meals you�re paying for. Please make all checks payable to David Foster and earmark them Foster Family reunion.

If you remember, when I first started this newsletter, I was hoping we could use it as a medium to stay in touch with each other. We could share news with each other about what�s going on in our lives. But these Foster people seem to be either too stubborn or too lazy. Or both. Nobody will send me anything to print. Come on, folks. Write to me. It�s not all that hard. Or call me. We have phones here in East Texas. My address is PO Box 468, Elkhart TX 75839 and my phone number is 903-764-5218. The easiest thing you can do is email me. Send to [email protected]. I�m waiting to hear from you.

Bonnie and I took in an exchange student. She is a wonderful girl from Hamburg, Germany. Her name is Iska and she is talented both in art and music. She was a wonderful asset to the high school band, as well as our church choir and handbell choir. Everyone here at the church and in the school just loved her. Bonnie and I and Jonathan took her on a vacation during Spring Break. We went to San Antonio and Houston. We met Butch and Panki and Margy and Rob and watched a ball game. The Astros and the Cubs. Sosa went 0 for 4. We also went to Brazos Bend State Park and looked at the alligators, something Iska had never seen before. In San Antonio we took Iska to the Alamo, the river walk, the mercado and to Fiesta Texas. Her parents came to the US the last week in May and we had a wonderful visit with them and Iska�s little sisters, ages 3, 8 and 11. After school let out for the summer, they left and took a vacation on their own before going back to Germany. It was nice to have made such wonderful friends, if only for a short time.

I marvel that they raised eleven children to adulthood, losing not one in a time when almost all families suffered the loss of one or more children. I don�t know if it was Grandma�s insistence on �wash your hands and face before you set down to the table� and her good hygiene habits, boiling things, and all that, or just that they were an extremely hardy bunch or maybe just luck. I suspect it was all of the above.

Years later, when I got back to Oklahoma, after they had left the round porch farm I was saddened to see Grandma so quiet. She had changed from the Grandma I knew. In my early childhood Grandma was authority, righteousness. She could always provide a table loaded with good food and loving tenderness when you were hurt, but none dared disobey her. One of the two worst lickings I ever got was from Grandma. But that�s another story. Still, today when I hear younger cousins refer to her as a sweet little old lady, which she was in later years, I can only think, wow, you should have known that grand lady in her prime. What a privilege it was for those of us who did. Having Dena Hague Foster for a Grandmother was one of the best things that ever happened to that bunch of kids.

It is unfortunate that pictures of Grandpa and Grandma were mostly taken when they were old. Photography was a primitive art and not readily available when they were young. Looking at the old gray haired man in the pictures, you�re likely to forget that he could once swing an ax, climb a windmill, or subdue and harness a half wild mule, gripping the mule�s ear in his teeth while he fit the bit in its mouth. I witnessed that as he and Uncle Johnny argued over who would first set the plow in the ground behind the mule. Grandpa said Uncle Johnny didn�t have the weight to dig in and hold in case the mule got rambunctious. Uncle Johnny swore as how he could hold that mule as well as any man. The Hagues were a stubborn lot about certain things. Grandpa gave in and Uncle Johnny took the plow handles firmly in each hand while Grandpa led the mule by the bridle. It started all right but then the mule reared and lunged and tangled the harness and took off in a panic. Grandpa hollered, �Turn loose, Johnny, let him go!� But Uncle Johnny was too stubborn and he held on and finally dug the plow in and brought the mule to a halt. But only after he had been drug through the barbed wire fence. So there he stood, firmly in control of that mule but bleeding and torn and Grandpa mad and scared at the same time mumbling about �stubbornest man I ever knew� and � non compius mentus� and some other thing both in English and Latin.

I�m not sure but I think it was that same mule that brought about an event that haunted Uncle Tawdy his whole life. Named Thomas Norwood Foster at birth, his older brother, our Uncle Hague nicknamed him Tawdy when they were little and the name stuck for many years. Grandma always called him Norwood but Uncle Hague taught me to call him Tawdy. Uncle Tawdy couldn�t have been more than 15 or so when it happened. It came about this way:

A dead tree had been chosen to provide wood for the winter, so on a crisp Autumn day, Grandpa and his two sons, Hague and Tawdy harnessed a team to the wagon and with axes and a cross cut saw drove down to the woods where they maneuvered as close as they could to the dead tree. The mule came down tied to the back of the wagon. His role was to drag the logs and limbs back close to the wagon as they were cut. They called that �snaking� the logs through the woods.

They were by a creek, or branch as they called it, which had �quick sand� in places, a danger we were often warned about as children. And the mule got stuck in it. There was a lot of yelling and pushing and pulling and they finally got him out, but the mule had suffered a broken leg and lay there unable to stand. There was only one thing that could be done. Put the suffering animal out of his misery. At Grandpa�s instruction Uncle Hague took me, about 4 at the time, back to the house. I don�t remember much else about that day except that Grandpa kept me in the house. The rest of the story I heard from Uncle Tom, he didn�t like to be called Tawdy or Norwood as a man, and that was many years later. Hague had come back from delivering me to the house and they all just stood mournfully for a time while the mule struggled on the ground and its suffering got worse. Each one knew what had to be done. But still they stood. Finally Uncle Tawdy, torn with grief and pity and with tears in his eyes picked up the ax and did it. One clean hard blow to the head and the poor beast suffered no more. Uncle Tawdy always blamed his elder brother and his father because they wouldn�t move first. Decades later, Uncle Tom said he could still see the look in that mule�s eyes like he was pleading for help. Several times Uncle Tom and I talked about this and I shared his feeling and with him placed the blame on Grandpa and Hague.

Editor�s note - I don�t know how many times I heard Pop tell this story, but it was certainly many times, and I remember how Mama used to cringe every time she heard him tell it. In fact she hated this story and she hated for Pop to tell it. Brownie gives some interesting insight into the story that I never heard before and I appreciate getting to �hear� it from someone else� perspective. But actually, Pop�s version was just slightly different in one respect. Pop said that Grandpa and Uncle Hague gave him instructions on how to do the deed. They explained to him that he was to hit the mule just behind the ear. That way he would only need to hit the mule one time. They then left him there alone with the mule and the ax. Pop stared at the poor animal, not wanting to do this thing at all, and then, when he finally brought himself to do it, he sort of �choked up� and hit the mule square between the eyes. Of course, that effort failed to discharge the mule and Pop had to do it again. So a second swipe came, and then a third. He said he looked at the mule�s face and saw the misery in his eyes, as if the mule was pleading with him to get this over with. Finally, Pop knew that he had to �do it right� and remembered to do what Grandpa and Uncle Hague had said. It was then that he delivered �one clean hard blow to the head and the poor beast suffered no more.� I think Margy will concur with my recollection of this story, and wonder if Uncle Hague�s sons, Hague, Gary and Travis, might have something they could add.

Well, Grandpa got blamed for a lot. I�ve heard him blamed for being a poor business man, being too easy with credit, planting a crop too early or too late, buying a cow with a leaky teat, and selling the piano. I�ve even heard him being blamed for being too tight with his money, and that during the Great Depression of the thirties when the dust bowl drought brought 3 crop failures in a row and he still had seven mouths to feed, Grandma, Aunt Eugenia, Aunt Dru, and Lila Lee, Hartsel, and Dena Fay. Well, if we want to blame him, I�d rather blame him for not owning 50 oil wells so we could all have grown up really rotten. On the other hand we can praise him for being a survivor, for the care and feeding of eleven children to adulthood and losing nary a one, for being a rock of moral virtue, he didn�t drink or gamble or chase with women, didn�t cheat, lie, steal or smoke dope. He worked hard, made every dime honestly, gave it all to his family and in his 93 years spent on himself for only a little pipe tobacco, the simplest of clothes, and on rare occasions a cheap cigar.

I asked him once if he ever got drunk. �Yep,� he said, �one time. I came home from cowboying with a little money in my pocket, stepped up to the local bar, had a few drinks and proceeded to get in a fist fight with another drunk. The sheriff broke it up, threw the other drunk in jail and marched me out to my father saying, �Mr. Foster, here is your son Richard. He will tell you what he�s done.� It was very humiliating and the next morning I had the worst headache of my entire life. I decided that was the most stupid thing that a man could do and never touched it again. Anyway, your Grandmother wouldn�t allow it.�

I figure this must have happened when he was 18 or so, around 1889. Our history books tell about Billy the Kid and other gun fighters of that time as if they were the history of this country. Not so!

While all the hell raisers were getting their names in the history books, Thomas Jefferson Foster was teaching his children to follow his lead, to work and to strive to raise a family, go to church on Sunday, abide by the law, and love the Lord thy God, doing harm to no man but only good to the best of their ability. It was these men and women who laid the foundation and who built this comfortable and prosperous land that we enjoy today. It wasn�t the characters like those in �Lonesome Dove� the movie, or Michener�s book, �Texas.� It wasn�t the gunfighters, or the robbers or corporate raiders, or oil barons who build this marvelous country, this peaceful and prosperous land. It was those law abiding, God fearing, peaceful and hard working citizens like Thomas Jefferson Foster�s children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. And, thank God, it looks like they�ll continue doing it.