The DTB Cousins Club

The DTB Cousins club was started in the late 1970s. My cousins Darin and Troy were each born less than a year before I was, and we were all in the same grade in school. Naturally, when our families got together, we always played together. I can’t remember the exact circumstances under which the club was formed, but I do remember discussing what to call ourselves. One of us suggested using the first initial of each of our names, and the others agreed.

Since Darin lived in Utah, we usually only got together once or twice a year – usually at a family reunion. Troy and I both lived in southern California, so we usually saw each other every couple of months or so, but more often during the summer. In between visits, we would write letters back and forth. At some point, Darin suggested that we write our letters in code, which made letter writing more fun.

One of our favorite things to do together was build forts. From my journals, the first recorded fort we built was 8/19/78, when we were seven years old. Most of our forts were built during Burk Family Reunions (my Grandma Allred’s family) in eastern Arizona. We usually built our forts by stacking logs or dead branches against trees, boulders, etc. We would usually use pine needles for a roof to help keep in the warmth on rainy afternoons.

I remember one fort in particular on the banks of Patty Creek. It had been raining all afternoon, so we stayed inside our fort playing games. My dad came looking for us because my mom was worried that we hadn’t come back to camp. By the time he found us, he was sopping wet, but our shirts were barely damp.

We also built forts in the “jungle” (bamboo, bushes, and ivy) that surrounded my parents’ house or in the field behind Grandpa Allred’s house. Grandpa often took us hiking out in those fields, and we would come back laden with treasures – usually junk that people had just dumped out in the fields to avoid a trip to the dump. Grandma Allred used to help us collect leaves, and then would help us mount and label them in nature scrap books.

Another one of our favorite activities was writing DTB Cousin mystery books. We were all fans of the Hardy Boys series, and imagined ourselves as amateur detectives. Since we didn’t have any real mysteries to solve, we decided to make some up. Then, once we became famous, people would hire us to solve real mysteries. If nothing else, we figured that we would become rich from selling our books. Usually two or three of us got the book started. Then we would send it back and forth to each other through the mail. Whoever received it would read what the previous two wrote, write the next chapter, and then mail it to the next cousin. Using this format, we wrote at least three complete stories together: The Case of the Sneaky Robber, The Secret of the Black Creeps, and The Case of the Bucking Bronco, and started several others. Although these “complete stories” seemed rather long to grade school kids, by the time they were typed up they were only about 20 pages long. Some of the “chapters” ended up being about half a page.

Other fun club activities included: making our club flag, developing our club handshake, using our club names (Nirad, Yort, and Darb), making up secret signals in case we were undercover (one beep = run; two beeps = hide; etc.), making DTB Cousins ID cards and buttons, playing horseshoes together, building sand castles, playing games together, and making skits for the campfire programs. We even wrote the DTB Theme song for a camp Croon-a-tune.

Brad, Troy & Darin (1993)

Even though the three of us are married and have kids of our own, we still have a strong bond together. We roomed with each other in college, and were "best men" for each other's weddings. Now we live even further apart, and have our own lives, so we see each other even less than when we were kids. But when we do have a chance to get together, we often reminisce about the good old days and the fond memories we have of our club.