“WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT THUMPING SOUND?” My father yelled over the hum of the RV generator. Our very large family (nine kids and two adults, last time I got a correct count), was on our way back from our annual family reunion in Tennessee. Something, somewhere, somehow, had been making a dull thumping sound in the RV ever since we left for home. We looked everywhere. Mom checked to make sure no one’s antsy feet were kicking and no cabinet doors had come loose. There was something making that noise, and we just couldn’t seem to find it.

In every good Italian-redneck family, family reunions are unparalleled. There are few circumstances in life when it is acceptable to make or consume hot dog pizza or utter the words, “Just make sure all the little kids are in the house before you try (insert hair-brained idea here) …” But such is the joy of our loud, rambunctious get-togethers. Our family knows how to have a good time, and with 40 aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, grandmas, grandpas and random vagrants in the mountain house for a weekend (or two), you just never know what will happen.

Our RV — a 1998 Winnebago Brave lovingly dubbed Willis — rumbled into my aunt’s front yard where we set up camp on the evening of July 3. Before you could blink, Willis’s awning was extended, a campfire was made, and my little brothers were squishing fireflies (sometimes a 6-year-old has to do what a 6-year-old has to do). The warm summer air was thick with smoke, laughter, contentment and some unnameable odor that we could never quite blame on anyone we loved.

Willis’s bays were full of sports equipment; his carpets were gray with dirt tracked in on countless tennis shoes and boots. My big, wonderful family sat around the campfire and the family animals gathered around. Pickles and Duchess (my aunt’s cats) and Lucky (my Aunt’s dog) were in close proximity to the festivities at every turn. They circled each family member in turn, hoping and praying that someday, someone, would drop their dinner. They were in luck; in our family there is a tradition that has spanned the many generations before me and that my generation will pass on to our children: No one EVER goes hungry. Needless to say, the animals spent lots of time around Willis, waiting for their share of the “family tradition.”

After a weekend of fun, it was time for us to head back to Florida. My type-A personality father was always ready to leave at 5 a.m.: For though he loves the family, he loathes the drive. To him, there is nothing — man or beast or heavenly creature — that can keep him in the RV any longer than he has to be. So I knew, after two hours of listening to the incessant thumping sound, that when Dad pulled the RV over, he meant business.

We parked Willis and all 11 of us combed the motorhome looking for the culprit. Suddenly, from outside the motorhome, I heard the opening of a storage bay and a scream. Not one of pain or terror, but the tortured scream of a man who just found the only thing that would prolong his journey home: My father had found Pickles, who had stowed away in Willis’s belly. Poor Pickles, the culprit of the thumping noise, had given no thought to the journey he would take before he fell asleep in the storage bay. My ever compassionate father had offered to make Pickles a wilderness cat, but my aunt would hear none of it. After many phone calls and a couple hours of waiting, my aunt showed up to reclaim her shaken kitty (who, I swear, smelled faintly of spaghetti sauce). This experience, dear reader, led to the scripting of the 10 commandments of RVing, beginning with this:

Rule No. lO Always check your storage bays BEFORE driving away.