Consanguinity and Affinity

About this time last week I got a friend request from a cousin who lives in Kansas.
He told me that he planned to visit soon. I was thrilled when his "soon" turned out to be this weekend.
 He and I are not first cousins but we really didn't know or care growing up.
His Dad and my Mom are first cousins. His grandmother and my grandparent were next door neighbors when we were children. His grandmother, being  my great-aunt, and an especial favorite of mine suffered a daily visit from me. When her grandchildren visited, they were automatic playmates for me and my sisters.
During the earliest part of our childhoods, his grandparents/my great aunt and uncle had a grocery store. It was the old fashioned kind with a candy counter and a meat market. The proprietors lived in the back of the store so when we visited, we come go back and forth, essentially at will, between the store and the house. Our great grandmother lived just outside the side entrance to the store. My grandparents lived on the other side. It was a happy arrangement for a brood of cousins.
Our circumstances were enhanced by the fact that there were shade trees and swings behind the houses and store. A creek divided our family properties and that of others. The land sloped downward to the creek, offering big rocks and trees to climb. A rather large area where bamboo grew right up to the creek bank made a perfect spot to build forts and play hide and seek.
We trekked these areas yesterday when my cousin drove in from Kansas for a visit.
The bamboo spot that we called "the canes" remain, though now more overgrown. The houses are gone and also the store but there were iris bulbs along a fence line between them.

We also walked around the site of the property where his grandparents moved after they retired as grocers and moved across the highway and up the hill.
We were happy to find blackberry brambles in the spot where we remember picking them. We agreed that the jelly made from them remains unequalled. I found several surviving rose bushes and collected a fistful of rosehips from them to take with me as a souvenir.
Before he left we drove to the church where he remembered going to Vacation Bible School and then to the cemetery to pay our respects to people who contributed significantly to both our memories.