Don’t let the “dead end” sign fool you.
Past the sharp turn onto route 58A, over the D&H railroad tracks and on the other side of the one-lane bridge awaits the opposite of dead ends: a big family farm sitting in the shadows of rolling purple-blue hills in central New York.
The little road might abruptly die, but the Broe Family — my family — on whose land 58A ends, couldn’t be more alive.
“See the silos over there? They’re still there,” my mom says as we make our way through the small town where she and my dad were both born. We approach the farm where my family has gathered every year for the past 50, an endless blue sky stretching ahead of us toward the peaks. “The barn is gone, but the three silos are there.”
The sights, smells and tastes of our annual picnic are how I remember them from my childhood — even after more than 10 years away — except for a big gap that now takes the place of the large barn that we used to scurry past, noses held tightly. The barn burned down in March, taking a piece of my Great Uncle Jim’s heart with it.
But even following loss, life goes on, and so does our reunion.
On an 80-degree day, a soft dry breeze blows the scent of barbequed chicken through the air as my parents and cousins, great aunts and uncles put aside the stresses of their overly busy lives and opt for spending a relaxed day together as family.
Gathered in lawn chairs and on old wooden picnic tables beneath a tall white tent, faces greet one another — some a little weathered, others more grown up and still more we are meeting for the first time. Arms embrace, cheeks get kissed; we reintroduce ourselves. We talk, we laugh, we eat. We spend a warm day on a grassy field, rows of corn and wheat in the not-so-far distance, getting reacquainted.
The annual Broe picnic follows a loose schedule so old-fashioned and easy that, even while there, seems completely surreal. Uncle Jim mans the grill — he always mans the grill — and we fill plastic plates with perfectly cooked chicken, Kim’s famous chili, potato salad and too many brownies. Kids with freckled faces that uncannily mirror those of their parents and grandparents eat their fill before running off in bathing suits for the rickety bridge that spans a small strip of the Susquehanna River, just past the silos. The non-kids follow because no one can miss watching another generation jump off the bridge that buckles under the weight of the brave as they leap, feet first, or sometimes belly, into the waters below. Silky mud slides between toes and flat rocks skip across the shallow surface. We chat and splash, together as family.
Then Uncle Jim revs the tractor engine and hitches up the trailer. Cousins who started the day shyly eyeing one another and lurking by their parents’ sides now sprint together from river to trailer bed, determined to get the best spots for the annual hayride. They land next to fun Aunt Mo, who, hat on head, leads a sing-along, starting with “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and somehow ending with “Free Bird.”
When we get back, we drift, like clockwork, to the field for a softball game that never seems to make it through nine innings before we all start eating again. Bats and gloves scatter across the field and a toddler rounds the bases on the shoulders of Cousin Johnny, landing safe at home “plate” — a tattered green Frisbee that is in pieces by the end of the game.
No one cares that a little dribbler off the end of a bat rolls past the shortstop, the back-up shortstop and the three back-ups behind that; we’re out here to be with one another, to catch up with a second cousin in right field. Catching the ball is secondary.
The second the blazing sun descends behind the closest mountain, 85 degrees turns to 50, and grown-ups and kids alike run to car trunks to retrieve balled-up sweatshirts. They knew this time would come; it happens every year.
A bonfire rounds out the day, boys tossing in anything they can get their hands on and billows of smoke wafting up to a sky saturated in starlight. We sit in chairs toasting marshmallows, watching the flames reflect off each other’s faces, spending our last hours together as family.
And this togetherness isn’t just in these generations of family that continue to gather on Jim and Joyce’s farm, but in those who once gathered and have since gone to rest in the cemetery on the rolling hills nearby. The day is like a trip back in time, where family can hang out and be ourselves, with no pretenses, because we all are standing on the land of our origin — where four generations ago our Irish-Catholic ancestors began a new life, and thus gave it to the rest of us.
For a half-century, though some faces have changed, not much else has. Fifty years after that first picnic on the Broe farm, a blend of generations continues to gather. It is in the perfection of this simple day that we are best able to remember life’s most valued blessings: each other, together as family.
Crowe is a staff writer for the Arlington Catholic HERALD.

(c) Copyright 2007 by Arlington Catholic Herald