Please forgive me if I seem a tad excited over last night’s news.

I am not talking about the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News or ABC News. I am talking about real news. News that affects you and me.

Can you say Hatfield and McCoy?

Can you say Families Feud?

How about this? Last night I received a phone call from a real relative of the Hatfields asking me to attend the September 2006 Hatfield Family Reunion along the Little Tug River, at Ben Creek, W. Va.

My mission, should I accept it, is to capture on video, the coming and goings, the doings and don’tings, the family and friends.

Ever since seeing that wonderful Henry Fonda/Sylvia Sidney epic romance movie, “Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” I have been intrigued by the Hatfields and McCoys’ almost 30-year feud from 1863-1891.

What caused it? What fueled it? What was the truth? How much is fiction?

Lo and behold (this may be the first and last column for that expression), little did I know in 1973 when I was a third-year law student in San Diego, that my roommate would call 33 years later with the following offer:

Eugene Jewel Toler, a Hatfield relative by blood, has offered to pay my air and car travel, lodging and incidental expenses, along with a daily fee for my video archival and subsequent edited DVD.

Think I will have any fun?

For me, there is nothing more fun than a family reunion.

A family reunion is all about fun, even if the fun evolved from an historic family feud.

The truth of the Hatfield-McCoy feud will never be known no matter how much research we peruse. Therefore, instead of my sharing now the highlights of the Hatfield-McCoy Feud Timeline, let me later share these and other speculations I will hear this fall when I meet Darrell, Larry, Steve and Lloyd Hatfield, among others, originators of such expressions as “ Uglier than a mud fence” and

“Homelier than a cornfield.”

Reunions are all about memories. Memories are all about families.

One of my favorite remarks on memory comes from the writings of Ernest Holmes.

“Memory must be the storehouse of all ideas that have passed through my mind. Memory is active, for my thoughts come back to me. My thought is conscious of my body; my body is operated upon by my thought, and it must be operated upon by my memory, since memory is active; but since memory is the result of conscious thought, memory of itself is an unconscious operation of what was once a conscious thought.”

Try that on the family after some homemade moonshine.

At our last family reunion, held at Mountain Home, Arkansas, it was no surprise to Dad and his two younger brothers that each storyteller had his own distinct version of a shared experience. Sound familiar? I can see you smiling now.

Dad, then being the oldest, always acted the wisest. Now that I am almost the oldest, I am wise enough to know better. Excuse me, can you download to your iPod?

When I was a kid, POD was an acronym for our Oil City Senior High 12th grade required civics class entitled Problems of Democracy. We used to say the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of every class until that became a problem in democracy.

Speaking again of family problems, despite the treachery and tragedy of the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, there is also the story of star-crossed lovers, Roseanna McCoy and Johnse Hatfield. At 18, Roseanna not only flew the McCoy coop, she zipped off into the bushes to run away with bootlegger and womanizer Hatfield.

After having an affair with Roseanna, the young Hatfield refused to marry her, ignoring his responsibilities as the father of their daughter, the-yet-to-be-born Sarah Elizabeth. When Johnse Hatfield finally did tie the knot, he held out for Roseanne’s 16-year-old first cousin, Nancy McCoy.

Hey, what was good enough for Charles Darwin and Abe Lincoln must have also been good enough for the Hatfields. What’s a little fourth-degree consanguinity but a great way to add some home cookin’ to one’s family reunion?

If you cannot wait for more Hatfield-McCoy trivia, may we suggest a Google search which will take you to such exposes as: www.libby-genealogy.com/hatfield-mccoy.html, www.blueridge country.com/hatmac/hatmac.html, www.matewan.com, www.hatfieldmccoy

marathon.com, and www.wvculture.org/history/notewv/hatfield.html.

Good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we’ll see ya next Saturday, April 1, and that’s no joke!

Jim’s columns are in the archives at www.southwhidbeyrecord.com.