Streges.

I knew my father's mother, his brother (my middle-namesake, Keith), and Keith and EmmaLou's kids, my cousins, but that was our entire Hardin connection. There always seemed to be Streges everywhere. We were closest to John and Dennis' parents Walt and Erna, but we also knew Ray and Wilma (of the world famous Wilma cookies) and their daughter Karen, Alvin and Elma and their family, Lorraine and Joe and their family, various shirt-tail aunts, uncles, and cousins, and the not-unusual by-product of pathological family systems: the adoptees, prison inmates, mental hospital habitues, and mobsters that were only spoken of in lowered voices accompanied by eye-rolls and expressions of pity and disgust. Well, I might have gotten carried away a bit there at the end but I know there were some secrets.

This picture was taken in 1957; in the  back, Walt, Alvin, Ray, and Urban (aka Skeezix); in the front, Art, Alfred, Hazel, Lorraine, and Ernie. Mom would have been 35.

This next was taken at a family reunion in North Dakota in 1974; Mom would have been 52. That's (in the back) Ernie, Walt, Ray, and Art, and in the front, Lorraine, Skeezix, Hazel, and Alfred. Alvin had passed away.

Alfred is demonstrating the Strege family posture we came to know and love from photos: leaning forward, shoulders hunched, arms hanging simian-like at sides, challenging both the camera and the photographer. You might not know it from the pictures but this was--and there is no way to sugarcoat and I wouldn't want to--a bunch of tough, life-hardened folks. My mom was as tough as any of them.

Hardins: Ralph, Sandy, Bob, Sandi, Patty, Ronna, and Tom. In 2003 we lost to cancer the only young person this family has ever lost in my lifetime, Patty's husband Jim. I know it's pro forma to say that the loss of someone so young is tragic because they were "such a nice guy" but in Jim's case it was the unvarnished truth. I'll let one anecdote speak for all: they had a memorial service for him in Tacoma the summer he passed and around four hundred people showed up. At my service there'd be maybe fifty, and half would be happy.

The last four Hardins:

Thanks to Dennis for the Strege photos.