Rediscovering Places in the Heart : A family reunion in North Carolina rekindles memories of people and times long past.

It’s happening all over America: Slashes in air fares have made it irresistible for far-flung friends to regroup.

A September wedding in Wisconsin will suddenly be attended by two more of the bride’s California siblings. Instead of one house guest, a couple in Nantucket is expecting three: New England transplants whose roots never quite took hold in the West.

When times get tough, people tend to become more introspective. They seek out the familiar and reassuring.

Reunions of all kinds are booming--high school reunions, college reunions, church-camp reunions, military reunions, family reunions. By plane and car and train, travelers are heading for somebody’s heartland to catch up with aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents. Children are meeting cousins they didn’t know they had. Newborns are being presented as the ultimate show-and-tell.

My sister--passing through Oklahoma in July, of all months--could not get a hotel room in the small town of Sulphur because of two major reunions. The spillover left only one vacant room in nearby Davis.

In June, I tagged along to a reunion of my husband’s mother’s kin in North Carolina. Twenty-four of us--ranging in age from 6 to the mid-80s--agreed to meet in Fayetteville, a two-hour drive south of the Raleigh-Durham airport.

Only two cousins still live in North Carolina; the clan is scattered through Oklahoma, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Washington, D.C., and California. But North Carolina is home for those Tar Heels. It’s where they grew up and went to college and got jobs; it’s where parents lived and where ancestors are buried.

We agreed to meet at the Marriott Courtyard hotel on Sycamore Dairy Road, near the U.S. 401 bypass in Fayetteville. We had maps and confirmations.

There was only one problem. When we left the highway at the “X,” the hotel was not there.

“I’ve honestly never heard of it,” said a cheery clerk at a 24-hour gas station-convenience market. “Are you sure it was in Fayetteville?”

We pulled into a Mercedes-Benz dealership. “I drive that road every day,” a salesman said. “I promise you there is no hotel on Sycamore Dairy Road.”

We used a pay phone to try the number on the hotel’s letterhead. “Where are you?” my husband asked.

“One moment, please,” answered a harried young man, putting the call on hold. He never came back.

It was almost 7:30 p.m. We decided to drive straight to dinner at the Pantheon restaurant--which was not only on the map but known to the Mercedes dealer.

There, after the first round of hugs and “my-how-you’ve-growns,” the early arrivals nodded wisely and filled us in: The new Marriott Courtyard will have a Sycamore Dairy Road address once the street is built through. For the time being, you approach it by an unmarked loop off McPherson Church Road. “That’s Southern,” my husband said.

Between camera flashes and toasts, I savored the Robeson family talk. Cousin Emily, a stately white-haired woman who lives in nearby Tar Heel (population “maybe 80”), brought the framed original of a pre-Revolutionary War land-grant document given to Col. Thomas Robeson. It was signed by King George III.

Her remarks led to a lusty exchange as to whether the family surname should be pronounced “ROBE-i-son” (as most of the family says) or “ROBB-i-son” (preferred by the cousins still in North Carolina).

William Bartram Robeson, Jr., an erudite bookstore proprietor from Greenwood, S.C., offered this insight:

“My mother, coming from Nova Scotia, pronounced it ‘ROBE-i-son.’ My father, a North Carolinian, said ‘ROBB-i-son.’ In Red Springs, where we grew up, they were always called Mr. ROBB-i-son and Mrs. ROBE-i-son.”

Around-the-table memories involved childhood visits to Ashwood, the family’s ancestral home . . . tales of fireflies glowing in the piney woods on hot summer nights, of songs that erupted from rocking chairs and were echoed by unseen neighbors along the red-dirt roads. Fearsome tales of chigger bites and black snakes and water moccasins.

The next day, armed with sun hats and insect repellant, we drove east through Elizabethtown and meandered down country lanes until we found Ashwood, now a tender shambles near the banks of the Cape Fear River. Its weathered gray walls were sagging; its roof was open to the sky. Wild roses grew near century-old oak trees. Veils of moss hung from the branches.

While older family members fought tears or searched for the weed-choked site of an old ice house, a 6-year-old announced confidently: “Don’t worry, Granddad. We can fix this place up. The fireplace still looks great.”

That reminded me of a dear friend who recently fulfilled his wife’s last wish before she died of leukemia: He mailed the invitations she had addressed to the 50th reunion in Arkansas of his World War II infantry unit.

He’ll be there for sure. Hope, faith and steadfast love are honored guests at reunions.