And it doesn't really matter how many there were. The only thing that matters is they were there in Schell City next to the Schell-Osage Wildlife Area, in Vernon County, Missouri, on Thanksgiving 1997. Adult Browns, Joneses, Currys, Fettys laughed and talked inside the Schell City Community Center. Outside the kids ran and hollered and generally were boisterous. Me, I was asleep in the car only to be awakened when brother Terry picked it up and dropped it a couple of times.
Terry does things like that.
He might have scared someone who didn't know him. The center, right across from the bank and 50 feet in front of the gazebo where the band plays when the town holds its annual Summer festival, had been set aside for this gathering of the clans. Us, we were a day and a half, more or less, by Chevrolet, from the sandhills of Monahans, Tex. In Schell City, It was cloudy and gray and the air outside was wet. Inside the tables bowed with the weight of the food.