The summer is here and that means it’s traveling season. At the end of April my family all traveled to Yorktown, Texas for the Woods Family reunion. This is my mom’s side of the family, and this reunion is the oldest family gathering in the state of Texas. I don’t know for sure when the reunion stated but the Woods family was one of the original founding families that Sam Houston took to Texas, so I think its been quite awhile. This year was special for two reasons, one sad and one happy. First my grandpa suspects this will be his last visit to Texas, for the reunion. From the vibe I was getting the family suspects the same, but he is a fighter and I give him better odds. Second our great-uncle John Allen passed down a fiddle that has been in the family for over 100 years to my sister. It was owned by my grandpa’s “free spirited bachelor uncle”, Monroe Woods. He was a character, he married a schoolteacher once but was “too free spirited for her”, and according to John Allen as long as you kept him in beer he would fiddle all day for you. He was a cowboy and would strap the fiddle to his saddlebags and take it on cattle drives. Monroe once rode into town with grandpa and said “You go to the movies and I’ll have a drink, meet me here when you’re done and we will ride home”. Well, grandpa came out of the movies, and there was a drunk Monroe and no horse. Grandpa asked him what happed to the horse and Monroe said, “I ran out of money, we best start walking.”
Uncle John Allen gave Kat the fiddle on the condition that she learn, and play for him, The Waltz You Saved For Me. When the time came she got her violin out but John Allen insisted she play it on Monroe’s fiddle “because it has that twang”. It hadn’t been played since Monroe died and took forty-five minutes for her to tune. John Allen stood in silence while she played and it looked like he was going to tear up. He even asked my mom if she knew how to waltz because he hadn’t danced since 1964.
The next day we went to the reunion at the family cemetery. Every year the graves are decorated and we sing hymns. Kat played amazing grace on Monroe’s fiddle as generations of the Woods family sang. Then we retired to the foreign legion hall and tore into a feast of home fried chicken, sweet tea, and more delicious southern fare. Sadly there is not a full film of her playing and I don't posses a hard copy of the partial, but you can view it on my facebook.
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