Uncle Troy and Aunt Susie had a vegetable stand in front of their house on Michigan Avenue every summer. The kids and I spent a lot of evenings out there...sometimes for supper, sometimes after supper. I would take over watching the stand for a hour or so, giving Aunt Susie a break.
Aunt Susie declared the stand off limits to all kids and would quarrel at us when our kids came down to it...but she was the one who gave them bananas, apples, grapes, etc. Then turn around again and yell at them for leaving the yard!
I adored Aunt Susie and Uncle Troy. They were my second parents. Over the years, I think I spent nearly as much time with them as with my own parents. As a adult, with my own parents 200 miles away, it was to Aunt Susie I went with all my troubles. She was wonderful. She would listen while I grumbled and complained, sometimes crying...and never offer a word of advice. Just an understanding..."I'm sure you'll figure it out." Aunt Susie was a hard woman...hard to understand. She quarrelled all the time. To listen to her, you'd think she hated everything and everybody. When Tammy and Buddy were very little, they were scared of her and when we'd visit, be sure to stay out of her way. But over the years, they began to see the underlying kindness and goodness that she hid beneath her gruffness and ended up loving her as much as I did.
If one of them got hurt, which often happened when they played with all the other kids, Aunt Susie was the first to pick them up and gently take care of whatever scrape or cut they had...all the time grumbling and complaining about them running wild and not watching what they were doing.
Granny moved in with Aunt Susie and Uncle Troy...she was Uncle Troy's mother...in the summer of 1965, I think it was, when the building she and Aunt Dora lived in was sold. There, Granny had her own big bedroom off the kitchen, with its own entrance. But, when I went to visit her, I would always find her either sitting at Aunt Susie's kitchen table or a straight chair by the space heater in the living room. The two of them spent every day together...and I know they loved each other. Yet, they could go an entire day without ever speaking. Until someone else would come in to talk to them both.
My kids and I were very close to my younger cousins. Besides Avanelle and Phyllis, Aunt Susie and Uncle Troy's other kids were Gladys, Troy Juniour, Altie Faye, Doris Ann and Mary Catherine...called Kay. Kay was only three or four years older than Tammy and they were great friends. Altie and Doris aften babysat with my kids. On Saturday nights, when we went to the drive-in movies, we never went without Altie, Doris and Kay. In fact, I seldom went to Indiana without the three of them except on Holidays when they had to stay home.
In July of 1964, my brother Jimmy got married and we went to Indiana for the wedding...and Kay went with us. While at mom's that weekend, we all decided to go on to Kentucky for a week. Actually, we all ended up going on Jim's honeymoon! Kay and my little sister, Doralee, even rode to Kentucky with Jimmy and Loretta!
I worried all the time we were gone that Aunt Susie would be mad at me for taking Kay all the way to Kentucky. But, she didn't care. She said there was nobody she'd trust more with her girls than me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment