as visions of patios danced in my head

everyone has those family members that they see maybe once a year and think of even less. sure, admittedly, they can sometimes be the scarier swim club members of your gene pool but deep down, you know they are still family. no matter how much chlorine you try to dump in the pool.

as another summer-picnic-season draws to a close, i knew i had still one last picnic to get through on chuckie's side. the chuckinator is the only female descendant who managed to escape the pleasures of alcoholism. so when the offer of spending an otherwise beautiful day with the mountain people arose, i rightfully tried to find an excuse.

i failed miserably in my attempts to lie my way out of going. at least, my otherwise cunning cousins would be there with me to snarl at the mountain people. unlike me, however, my cousins are still being subsidized so the choice to picnic or not to picnic was not entirely their own.

so we travel, the three she-devils of my family and my poor husband who feared an attack by one (or all if the smell of blood taunted the others) at any time made the hourlong journey to the mountain folk.

the running joke in pennsylvania is that therein lies philly and pittsburgh on the edges of the state with pennsyl-tucky or pennsyl-bama in the middle. our journey dear reader, took us not only into pennsyl-tucky, but also northward into god's country. goddess help us.

my uncle's directions told us to turn left when we saw the brown cow with the white tail. we weren't udderly convinced he was joking.

so as we drove these increasingly twisted roads, with more cornfields than cornrows that i ever did see living in the ghetto, we entered into the land of "no trespassing" signs and wondered aloud how serious its poster might be.

"my gawd," one of the she-devils gasped, "he really is trying to lead us into the woods to kill us."

"nahhh, he's not the stupid." chimed the other. "he's got the chuckinator with him. he knows he's safe for now."

upturns, downturns, past clapboard houses and around white steeple towers, the road lead us into the sleepy little 'burg of slatington, population 50 if you count the sisters and wives as two separate people instead of one.

but what before my wondering suburban eyes should appear? mountains of slate, with no home depot check out lines in sight! as my lip quivered in joy, my husband turned to say, "you know that is how stone and slate came to be. they are carted from the wall of slate in your mountain people's backyard and trucked to the salivating stores you suburban wives crave."

needless to say, even the tanned, gold-digger cousin barbie that showed up didn't cause much of a stir. although once or twice her tanned face -- and with any hope, one day leather-like -- turned to face the three she-devils, perhaps the palest people on the planet to exclaim the virtues of the tanning booth or her new beemer. if it hadn't been for the mountain of slate behind her, i can say things probably would have gotten ugly.