My cousin Tom passed away last week. He was a member of my favorite side of the family.

The Larson side of my family were mostly Minnesota farmers. They were Swedish, hard working and pretty serious folks. I loved them dearly and wouldn’t have traded my growing up years on the family farm for anything.

The other side of my family was 100% Irish and at times as I was growing up the grass on that side seemed greener. But then what could I expect they were Irish! 🙂

My Mom was born into the Touhey family and was raised by a copper mining father and a school teaching mother. The Touheys immigrated from Ireland and the brothers (my great uncles) all settled in Michagan and northern Minnesota and became iron ore miners.

Now which life seemed more glamorous, picking rock on dry, dusty farm land or moving from mine to mine excavating valuable iron ore? When I was ten years old the iron mining life seemed the most attractive to me.

I remember a picture hanging on our living room wall depicting a desert scene in Arizona where my Grandfather worked for a copper mining company. That picture invoked feelings of excitement about an occupation that had to have been much more exciting then the monotonous and sometimes painful experience of milking a cow by hand.

To further my attraction for the Touhey side of the family was my Mom’s sister and her family. They lived in the state which in recent years has become known as one of the ‘snowbird’ states. They lived year round in the state of Arizona.

My aunt’s name was Isabel but she went by the name of Babe. She was a beautiful lady and could have easily become a model had she chosen to.

Her husband Gene was my idol. He had graduated from the University of Notre Dame  where he had actually played college baseball. In my mind I can still see the old photo in our family picture album of him squatting in full catcher’s gear behind home plate catching blazing fastballs.

He had a hankering for Minnesota beer so whenever they visited our family he and our Dad would make a trip to town to go in search of some of that cold brew. Our Mom did not allow alcohol in the house so trips going in search of beer did not make her a ‘happy camper’.

Genie and Tom were their two boys. They were ten years younger than my brothers and I and we enjoyed watching the two ‘city slickers’ get acquainted with farm life. They were fascinated by our free ranging chickens who would lay eggs in a variety of places on the farm.

The two boys would spend hours looking for eggs. It took a lot of convincing to get them to understand that each hen would lay only one egg a day.

We did not have running water in our house so our bathroom consisted of a classy two-holed outhouse. I’m sure that had to gross the two young boys out and probably provided a topic for much discussion on the families long road trip home.

Because of the many miles between us we did not get together often but I always had a fondness for our two cousins. After all we shared some of the same DNA.

In those days we kept in contact mainly through the U.S. mail so we were able to follow the two boys growing up years, their high school graduations and finally their leaving the nest through information imbedded in our aunt’s letters.

After receiving word of cousin Tom’s passing I was reminded of a common interest we shared that I never got a chance to discuss with him. At the end of my sophomore year of college I questioned my direction in life and decided to apply for the Peace Corp.

I was accepted and with my fifteen credits of Spanish the Peace Corps folks thought I would be a fit for the country of British Honduras. Then a problem arose. The same date I was scheduled to leave for Peace Corps training turned out to be the same date our college men’s chorus was leaving by train for New York City to perform at  the World’s Fair. I chose the World’s Fair.

My cousin Tom and his wife Joan actually spent several years serving in the Peace Corps and it would have been interesting visiting with them about their experiences.

I often wonder how different my life would have been had I experienced a year or two in British Honduras as a Peace Corps volunteer. My blogs would have had a little different content I am sure. 🙂

So Tom and I will never get that chance to have our Peace Corps talk nor will we get to know each other as adults. To me he will always be that cute little energy filled eight year old climbing haymow ladders in search of that illusive chicken egg. 🙂

I am not able to mourn the man he became as I was not fortunate enough to know that man. What I do mourn is the fact that I will never have that opportunity to know him as an adult. Nor will we ever have the opportunity to sit around a campfire and reminisce those years gone when an eight year old Arizona kid discovered chickens lay only one egg a day. Rest in peace, Tom.

Until next time.