My team has green balls . . .

My first cousin, Doug O'Leary, has always been a favorite cousin with whom to party. I love to hang out with him. I always have. He's always makes me laugh. The sense of love that he shows for family is genuine and palpable. You see it in the interactions between him, his wife Nora, and his three children all the time. I've not been around him enough. Really. I wish that were not true, but we have always lived so far apart. When we were little kids he took great pleasure out of stupid stuff like fart jokes. What boy does not like fart jokes, right? He never forgets to remind me that I was the one that taught he and his sister, Lynn, the facts of life. The birds and the bees as it were. I was twelve. I am so embarrassed by that. That's why He loves to remind me.

I remember when the city of Detroit went up in flames during the riots in 1967. My mom and dad put my sister and I on a plane to New York City. My uncle Dick worked in the Empire State Building. I have no clue what he was doing there. I just remember being mightily impressed by where he worked. Back then, the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world. The day after we arrived in New York, Harlem went up in flames. Uncle Dick took all of us to Montauk Point, New York and I got to experience what it was like to surf for the first time, sort of, not that I actually stood on a surfboard and went for it, but I did get to belly paddle on one. My sister, Michele, and I flew to New York on a plane by ourselves. I remember looking out the window and seeing the white fluffy clouds and not really knowing what they were. My sister asked me what they were, and I remember distinctly telling her that that was the North Pole. I thought we were seeing the frozen great North. It's weird the crap one remembers.

Doug and Nora and his family have a wonderful camp on Lake Owen in Cable, Wisconsin. All the first cousins and their spouses gathered there a couple of summers ago to inaugurate the O'Leary compound. Our youngest cousin, Jacob, and his wife, Carrie, stayed on a cabin out on an island that required them to take a boat to reach each evening. It’s a short boat ride from the dock. Ten months later Carrie gave birth to their son Luca. The rest of us maintain that young boy was conceived in that cabin on that little Island during our family get together. If for no other reason than they were always late coming over to the mainland for family activities, the assertion is flatly denied by Jacob, but we are not having it. For the rest of us, it's just too romantic to let go. So, even though the months don't add up, we still maintain our conviction as family Legend. That’s our story and we are sticking to it.

We did not do much during my day and a half at his Camp, except to reminisce, smoke cigars, and look at the stars. We talked a lot about family and the disparate way that both of us were raised. His, a life of opportunity and wealth, mine, well let's just say a little harder road to follow. That disparity has never stood between he and me or his sister. I love them both very much.

Like I already said, I love Doug’s sense of humor. Because of his intention to continue to expand his camp, in fact he bought another piece of property next to his camp while I was there, he built an industrial-sized leach field to accommodate his septic system. On top of which he built a bocce ball court, covered in crushed oyster shells. Other than smoking cigars and gazing at the stars on a beautiful pitch black night, while sitting in chairs out on his dock, the highlight of my visit was getting my ass whipped in bocce ball. If one is going to play bocce ball at the O’Leary compound, one must don one of the shirts that Doug has specially made just for the event. All white short sleeved shirts, made as team apparel, are printed alternately with, ‘My Team Has Green Balls’ or ‘My Team Has Red Balls’. I'm laughing just thinking about it as I'm writing this. It was such a hoot.

He has the most amazing dog. A Griffin named Scout. A couple of years ago, I had never even heard of the breed. It is the fastest dog I have ever seen, it run circles around my dog, an Airedale, who is no slouch. It has a huge sense of humor, too. Scout loves to drive my dog nuts and then run just out of Teddie’s reach. Teddie gets so pissed off at Scout, but she knows she can't lay a glove on her.

All the camps around Doug are mostly second homes, some of the homes have served as family camps for generations. While we were on a walking tour through the area with our dogs, Scout would disappear down by the lake through the undergrowth to flush up birds or snatch rabbits. We would lose sight of Scout for minutes on end while we walked down the road. Occasionally we would hear her running through the underbrush in the woods, but we couldn't see her. At one-point Teddie was walking on the road ahead of us, she never followed Scout down into the woods, all of a sudden a deer came out of the woods about 50 yards ahead of us running on the asphalt roadway at top speed towards us, it's hoofs clicking and clacking on the road surface. That deer appeared to make a choice between running us over or running Teddie over. The deer chose Teddie. Teddie did not know what to do. She froze in place. That deer came barreling at her, galloping at top speed. At the last moment the dear swerved to the right and ran by us and boogied down the road. Moments later, Scout emerged from the woods at the same spot where we first saw the deer running toward us. It was an amazing sight to behold.