Nobody knows their neighbors...

No one gets involved in their local community, because they might be moving without their jobs or with their jobs next week...

There are all kinds of stories out there about the loss of community.

It isn't gone; it has changed. The move is from geographic to the Internet.

This was obvious Sunday when an Internet community gathered at a surprised Anneta, with cars filling up the firehouse parking lot bearing license plates from nine states. The food at the “reunion” was familiar -- green beans cooked with whole potatoes, watermelon, sweet corn, ham, meatballs, lemon sponge cake...

The tie was membership in a website called myfamily.com. Organizer Bob “Bubba” Huffman, who grew up “across the field,” spent a career in the military, lives in Louisville and got interested in his family history at a funeral of a cousin in Clarkson back in 2001. He lugged an 800-plus-page family history book to the firehouse meeting room.

One woman from the Indiana-Wisconsin border met a long-lost cousin, only to discover he lived four miles from her home. Another woman found a baby picture of her late husband. There was an album cover of the Tomes Family crossing on the Green River Ferry, six young brothers who would go off to World War II at the same time and come home.

There were a few comments about “you don't look like your e-mail address,” but it was an old home week, and Bubba's already working on next year's get-together. They missed the Oklahoma member, but folks got there from Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. (Story and photos by Royce Williams)