Meeting Cousins in 2025
In the summer of 2025, I took a trip to vist some distant family members I had never met, in a part of the US I'd never been to. Mom had been working out her family tree for some years, and traced her family line, the Hinkles, back to a town called Mountain View in Arkansas. Another branch of the family tree had travelled to Elk City, Oklahoma and I have living cousins in Norman, Oklahoma today.
The first cousin I met was Candy in Norman. We met in the Airbnb I was staying in,
and she brought tons of family photos to show me.
Candy's mother ran a general store in town where kids would buy sodas and sandwiches for lunch.
Candy's father was the best barber in town, and cut hair for some of the big local names. Between the two of
them, they seemed to have a family that was very well connected in the community.
Candy also spoke fondly of working on the family farm as a child, where they grew peaches, watermelon and okra.
Today, Norman benefits from being the home of Oklahoma University - famous for its top sports team Sooners. The town was gearing up for a (American) football game to kick off the season when we arrived, but we would leave before the big game.
In Mountain View, I was extraordinarily lucky to meet my cousin - the force of nature Wanda. She lives on the Richwoods farm that has been in her family for more than 150 years. She knows everything worth knowing about the Hinkle tree, and detailed how we were related (6th cousins).
