Cousins Make the Best Friends

 

Cousins Make the Best Friends

When you're a kid, cousins are more than just extended family—they’re your first best friends, your co-conspirators, your partners in crime. For me, time spent with the Barber cousins was golden, filled with scraped knees, laughter, and long summer days that seemed to stretch on forever.

I was still in elementary school when Aunt Nell and Uncle Dan moved their big family from Gate City out to Markeeta, Alabama. They settled into a house on the winding Markeeta Road between Moody and the far end of Lane Drive. Back then, that area was wide open for exploring—woods, fields, and the old strip mines that carved their way through the land like scars from another era. It was a boy's paradise.

Aunt Nell and Uncle Dan had six kids—seven, once Cindy arrived. Layne was the oldest, and I thought he was the coolest guy on earth. He played trumpet in the high school band and spent hours listening to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, working tirelessly to master “The Lonely Bull.” Next came Danny—quiet, thoughtful, and strong. He was into weightlifting and had a strange habit of inviting us to punch him in the stomach just to prove how tough his abs were. After watching a documentary about Houdini, I remember thinking that might not be the smartest challenge to offer.

Then there was Tony, the artist. He had a real gift and went on to become art director for a television station in Dothan before eventually answering a higher calling and becoming a pastor. Curtis was closest to me in age and probably the smartest of the bunch. He could identify every military aircraft by silhouette, sound, or shadow. No surprise, he ended up a teacher and later a school principal. Then came Stephen, the jokester and tagalong. He was always up for an adventure and usually the first to start laughing and the last to stop. Cindy, the first girl in the lineup, had to be a little tough growing up in that house full of boys, but she held her own with charm and a sharp wit. And finally, there was William—funny, energetic, and endlessly entertaining. He had this ridiculous trick where he’d tuck his ears into his ear canals, run up to you, and pop them out at just the right moment. It never failed to make us laugh.

Weekends and summer days were filled with adventures. We'd hike the strip mines behind their house, wade in creeks, and roam as far as the Cahaba River. Sometimes we’d end up at a place called Blue Hole, a swimming spot near the Trussville Golf Club, or clamber over the massive concrete ruins of the old Washer Camp from the coal mining days—remnants long since buried under layers of dirt and time. After a day out in the Alabama sun, we’d come back to Aunt Nell’s kitchen for a steaming bowl of her goulash with a slab of cornbread on the side. Looking back, I think I would’ve moved in with Aunt Nell and Uncle Dan if I’d had the chance.

Eventually, Uncle Dan answered the call to pastor at Markeeta Baptist Church, and later the family moved again, this time to Harpersville. They lived in a big two-story house we called “the Hill House,” perched behind a cotton field off Highway 280. It had a cellar—always a mysterious place to a curious boy. My sisters and I would visit, running wild through the cotton fields, walking the railroad tracks, and exploring every nook and cranny of that old house and town.

By the time they moved to their next house, Layne and Danny were both grown and married. Curtis had taken to showing off the model airplanes he built with painstaking care. One summer, Curtis took me fishing at a little stream that ran through a nearby pasture. I scoffed at the idea of catching anything in such a shallow trickle—until he pulled out a big bream with his first cast. After that, I was hooked—pun intended. We fished together many times after that, upstream at the spring-fed pond that fed the creek, often tying our rods to our bikes and pedaling off at first light.

It’s funny how vivid those memories are—fishing in the summer sun, climbing through woods and ruins, chasing each other around the mines, ending the day with a meal and a good laugh. Life was simpler, sweeter somehow. And even as time passed and we all grew up and scattered, those moments stayed tucked away in my heart like prized possessions.

Today, I’m on the downhill side of life, and I find myself thinking more and more about those days. We only seem to come together now for funerals, standing in quiet circles of grief, catching up in hushed voices. But I want to change that. We’re all retired now, or near enough to it. Wouldn’t a cousins reunion be something? We could sit around swapping stories—about the time Layne let us ride around the mines in his VW Beetle, or when someone stuck a dart in William’s head (we all remember it; no one knows how it happened), or that wild first car ride with our cousin Kenny.

There’s still time for laughter. Still time for stories. And if I close my eyes, I can still hear the cicadas buzzing over the pasture, smell the goulash in Aunt Nell’s kitchen, and see William running at me, ears tucked in tight, ready to pop.

Cousins really do make the best friends.