  Beer, Pool, and Darts The family returned to the lake for a while after the service, hung around and had a few beers in the sunshine. Northern Minnesota was in the midst of an unusual September heat wave, so temperatures were in the 80s and soon enough the stories started flowing. Eventually we were overtaken by hunger and we moved on into town to have dinner at the Ely Steak House. After dinner, we split up, with grandpa, Dolly and the kids going back to the lake and the kids and uncles hanging out in the bar area of the restaurant, playing pool and darts. It was funny to see my dad and his brother, still quietly competitive after all these years. I played a game of pool with my cousins and failed to sink a single ball (Im not a good pool player) then moved on to playing darts.
I did a bit better at darts. We kids spent a lot of time trying to remember when was the last time wed all seen each other. We decided it had been sometime in the mid-80s, very nearly 20 years since Id seen Jacks kids and much longer than that since all of us had been there with Connie as well. We closed out the bar and drove home just as Josh and I were figuring out we were pretty well opposites on the political spectrum.
Since Connie had gone home earlier with baby Eliana, I was the oldest cousin out that night. Josh is the youngest out of all of us, a twenty-something raised in Florida for most of his life. He and Johnny both have southern accents that really strike me as weird when I hear them, since Im just not used to hearing any of the usual Lindroos clan drawling like that! Most of them speak like theyre straight out of Fargo, or displaced Canadians. 
