My Sweet Aunts
~ by Jeff Tryon
Both of my parents were born in large families, so when I was growing up, I had scads of aunts and uncles on both sides.
While my uncles were interesting in various colorful ways, it is my aunts who have lingered in my heart all these years.
On my mother’ s side, there’ s Aunt Flossie, Aunt Eula( Pat), Aunt Delores, Aunt Clara, and Aunt Josephine. On dad’ s side there’ s Pearl, Stella, Rose, and Mabel. I also have two Aunt Gertrudes and an Aunt Lucille by marriage.
Because my parents came near the end of those large families, some of my older cousins were roughly the same age as some of my aunts. I was pretty old before I learned that“ Aunt Ruth” was really my cousin, just like Aunt Joann, and Aunt Molly.
These women formed a large support group / communications network / work team that amounted to a huge extended family. When the women got together for mass food canning, or sewing, or laundry work days, we would run around having fun with all of our cousins like a big, happy family of primates.
Of all mom’ s sisters, Aunt Clara was the one who stuck and stayed in Brown County. There was a fishing pond behind the house where we would swim with tire innertubes, and catch little sunfish.
Aunt Clara was the single hardest-working person I ever knew. I mean, she really knew what work was. If she was awake, she was working. She was from a very hard-working group. They all came up poor in the grip of the Great Depression.
They made big gardens and canned vegetables. As younger women, they worked in the canning factory at Trafalgar. They shepherded the flock of ornery kids, cleaned house, sewed, and did massive loads of laundry.
54 Our Brown County Jan./ Feb. 2023