Author Archives: Katherine McCormick

Family Reunions at Disneyland

“Going to Disneyland every year is a Funk family tradition. It started when we were kids because Aunt Ce lived in Anaheim, so ostensibly we all went to see Aunt Ce but we were really just all going to Disneyland. And we saw Aunt Ce. So we usually met the Gritch kids, and sometimes Aunt Sonia, Uncle Ray, and Susie once a year and then we all went to Disneyland. But it was mainly the Gritch kids, and that’s why doing this girl’s weekend—we did this as kids, we would meet at Aunt Ce’s house and go to Disneyland. This girl’s weekend is re-establishing the tradition. We did it almost every year, certainly my family went up at least once a year but most years the Gritches came down and we all met. And when you guys were little, we met with Georgina and Rob once a year. It’s a family thing to do to meet at Aunt Ce’s and go to Disneyland, and then of course our family goes every year. We still meet with Aunt Lynne, or Georgina, Tina, and Polly so it’s still very much a Funk family thing.”

This is one of the traditions of family reunions in the family on the side of my informant’s mother. Though they also met in the summer at a lake in Minnesota every year, the Disneyland tradition was more intimate and only included the closer cousins, rather than the whole extended family. Disneyland wasn’t necessarily a central location, but it was a fun place that all ages of the family could enjoy, and all of the children of her generation have continued the tradition with their own children as much as possible. Indeed, the tradition is to see a rebirth in the form of a female family Disney trip, reinforcing the notion that Disneyland is associated with family. This would engender a good feeling in the family, because everyone would be enjoying themselves thanks to the locale, and thus would also be happy about those whey were with.

White Horse Ornament

“Your mom always lets me hang up my horse on the tree. She always puts up the tree and decorate the tree, but the horse is always left for me. She always had the brown horse and I always had the white horse, and so leaving the white horse always left me contributing to the tree just a little bit, so we could still do it together.”

This is a tradition enacted in the informant’s household every year since he was married in 1981. The informant and his wife would always want to decorate the tree together, but over the years when she quit her job to take care of their children, she often would decorate the tree at some time during the week while they were at work. Because it was a tradition that they decorate the tree together in preparation for Christmas, she always left him the white horse as a way for him to participate in decorating the tree (other than aiding in bringing the tree into their house). The white horse was important to them because they got the horses as a set, and therefore had meaning to them as a couple rather than just as individual ornaments. Tree decoration is a family activity, and this tradition has spawned so that everyone in the family always has at least one ornament that they put on the tree themselves if they will be there for that year’s Christmas.

Friday Pizza

Every work week from 1978 through 1998, my informant had pepperoni pizza on Friday nights. It changed pizzerias as the informant moved (Melo’s in Pleasant Hill, and then the main pizza place on Bainbridge Island), but the custom remained the same. The informant stopped when he moved to Hong Kong because he couldn’t find decent pepperoni pizza there, and then shifted the practice to the weekends when he returned to the United States.

This pizza was a celebratory event, a treat at the end of a work week no matter how stressful or easy that week was. It’s subconsciously carried on in his family, as Friday night is the most likely night on which they order pizza for celebrating the end of the week, relaxing afterwards and preparing for the week ahead. It’s an adaptable tradition, as it changed over time when other factors in his life changed.

Baseball-Inspired Game

This is a game played by my informant in his childhood in the 1950s in Guadalupe, CA, inspired by baseball.

“We used to play this weird game where one guy would be a first baseman, and he’d stand on the sidewalk in front of our house. Down on kind of the far side, and then the other person would be on the front yard of the house next door, because there was no fence between the two. And then the guy who was the firstbaseman would throw a ground ball that was really hard to get and you would try to field it, and the firstbaseman would count to five. And if you got it back before the time he counted to five it was an out, and if you didn’t it was a hit. The assumption was you have to get the guy before he gets to first base, and he would get there in five seconds. Then friends would come over and visit, and they would play, and it just kind of spread. It’s a bit tough because you need two yards, and not everyone had access to that, so it was played most often at our house. Or you could just use a big yard but again most people didn’t have it, but yeah. I tried to teach it to Jacquelyn, but she didn’t like baseball.”

This game is a variation of baseball, in which the players don’t have access to a team or a bat with which to hit the ball. It kept the children playing with the ball and thinking about fielding, mimicking the fieldwork that perhaps one would use in a real game. Baseball was one of the main sports of choice in this town in my informant’s time, and thus it could fuel the children’s desires to play and keep them practicing early. It’s quite resourceful, and demonstrated the importance of the sport given how much of their leisure time they spent mimicking it.

Camp Song

“The final campfire, we would sing a song, well, it’s been a while so I forget how it goes, but so our camp was on one side of the lake and on the other side of the lake was a Jesus camp. Apparently that’s what it was called, I dunno, but that’s what we called it. We kind of liked to mess with them a little bit, I dunno if we thought that we were better or something, but it was just a fun thing to do for us during camp. And so what we were singing about was really, I mean it wasn’t malevolent at all it was just a fun camp song, but the last line of the song was “AND NOW HE’S DEAD”* and we would just scream it across the lake. And we had all this fire, so, it would look at all scary.”

*At this line, all of the campers would shake their arms up in the air.

This was a custom enacted by the children at my informant’s camp. It always occurred at the end of the summer, a last huzzah of sorts. The religious camp across the lake was different from the camp my informant attended; it’s possible that there was something of a rivalry, or perhaps they just didn’t get along, but the screamed last line was a definite intentional goading. More importantly, though, it’s a tradition at the camp that unites the campers against the ‘others’ across the lake, and most likely played into numerous jokes at the other camp’s expense. It would be done on the final night to re-cement this impression and the unity among the campers before they had to disperse, ending the period of the summer to start a new one.