Remembering the Knoll Family

The Knoll family has always been and still is a very close knit family. I can remember as a child they always would at least meet once a year and sometimes more often. There would be Holiday times together with this enormous spread of home made foods of all kinds. I can still see in my mind this wonderful event of family visiting and stuffing ourselves with that special food. They would take turns having these get togethers at each others house but I think we met more times at Uncle Harvey and aunt Marys house.

I know that many times if you just happened to drop by to see Harvey and Mary, Harvey would always invite you to stay for a meal. Aunt Mary may be in the middle of preparing the meal and Harv would tell her to set more plates on the table. I always tried to argue with him to no avail and had to stay for dinner. They always open there house to anyone who happened to come by.

I remember when Harv an Mary lived on the farm just a mile south and a few miles west of Osborne. One time we were there when they were making soap. They had butchered some hogs and were rendering the fat in these big cast iron pots to make soap. As a young child this was amazing to watch this process.

We visited them many times on the McKinney farm taking in all the things of running a farm. Milking the cows, feeding all the animals and of course some more of those wonderful meals. Harv decided to take us duck hunting at a nearby pond where he knew there was several ducks. I was the only one who had a shotgun and we carefully creeped up behind the dam and peaked over it. The ducks took off flying away and circled around over head. They were flying quite high but I tried one shot and to our dismay I hit two ducks and they landed at our feet. I thought Harv was going to beat his stub off with excitement. (Harv had lost his hand in a combine accident many years ago.) When we got back to the house he had to brag to everyone about what a great shot I had made.

I remember the times we went to Uncle Anthony and Aunt Joann's farm. We would help with the chores or go hunting, but of course some more of those delicious home cooked meals.

These are just a few of many memories that are engraved in my mind of the many Knoll reunions and meetings. The Knoll family to this day still get together at least every other year. I just returned from the Colorado reunion last week. We all had a wonderful time visiting and playing games. But most of all it is great to see the love everyone has for each other. Very few families have this closeness that they do. As we get older and have lost some of our love ones we still meet and we know that they are with us in spirit. And we are all looking forward to that large Knoll reunion up in Heaven.