Growing up family reunions were something that I looked
forward to every summer. We always have had a very close family and getting
together at a family reunion was like hanging out with your absolute bestest
friends that you haven’t seen for a whole year. We always had two reunions that
we went to. The first was Grandma Golding’s brothers and sisters families, the
Hamblin Reunion and the other was my mother’s family’s reunion the Golding
Reunion. We would meet at various locations depending on who was putting the
reunion on that year, but mostly we met at Avintaquin
Campgrounds just off of
Highway 191 between Castle Gate and Duchesne. We always had quite a large group show
up. My guess is that there’d often be 40 -60 of us. For us kids that things
that we looked forward to the most were the games. We would have a softball
game, horseshoes, and box hockey (we’d through horseshoes for hours and hours,
often into the night). Sometimes someone would bring a barrel with a saddle on
it and the barrel would be tethered by four ropes and tied to trees; we’d sit
on the saddle while cousins would pull on the ropes trying to buck us off.
There was always a huge potluck lunch followed by a cakewalk. In the evening
we’d have a bonfire where we’d roast hot dogs and marshmallows. We loved sitting
around the fire telling stories and singing songs. Every year we’d beg Uncle
LaVell to sing his name song. Then Sunday morning we’d have a Priesthood
meeting followed by a Fast and Testimony meeting. It was always sad to see the
various families slowly begin to leave. Some I’d see again quite soon others I
knew I wouldn’t see until next summer.
