Carry Me Back to old Camp Taylor

Last night I spent some time at the annual Bonfire in Camp Taylor, held in the rear of the next-door neighbor yards of Jerry McDermott and Carolyn Thompson, an event which has been going on for more than a few years. It is mostly a collection of families from Holy Family Parish who also live in the neighborhood. I was one of those for seventeen years, living at the bottom of the hill at the top of which the bonfire is held. It is when I attend events like these that I see the reason I am still struggling with my concerns about the Roman Catholic Church and my membership in it. As someone who has no wife or children of their own, no brothers- or sisters- in law who live down the streets, nor any cousins any where in Louisville, these are the people who have been my family most of my life and nearly all of them are, like me, members of Holy Family Church, a parish I voluntarily joined when I was 18 in 1979. They are the people with whom I am most comfortable breaking bread, drinking a sasparailla, or playing a round of poker - all of which could have been and was happening last night at the Indiana Avenue event. For many of those there, I am the "political guy." For others, I am the Bingo Caller or the Picnic Emcee. I know them and they know me through and through, and like the song on the old series Cheers, it is good to go to a place where everybody knows your name. It isn't that I don't have family - I do. But in this day when people live for years on a street or in a complex and manage to know only one or two people firsthand, it is good to be back and see fifty or so people all of whom are friends - or in a sense, family.