My Family & Me: Summer vacations
Vacations came up recently at my brother Steve’s home, with his daughter Sheila looking forward to a Caribbean cruise in April.
Surprisingly, summer vacations weren’t unknown to us growing up in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. However, our destinations were never the beach, or Disney Land, and no one ever dreamed of such a thing as an ocean cruise.
Instead, we were parceled out to various aunts and uncles, two at a time, and the very best vacations of all were with my Aunt Minnie and Uncle John, who had no children of their own.
Arrangements were made for our vacation with the whole family showing up at Aunt Minnie’s farm for a sumptuous farewell dinner that seemed to Ginny and me to last forever.
After hasty farewells on our part, our parents finally departed, and we were bundled into Uncle John’s car for our traditional shopping trip to the general store at Wentley’s Corner.
First, we had to pick out the cereal we liked, and there was no ban on sugary brands. Our inevitable choice was Ranger’s Joe’s, similar to today’s Sugar Puffs.
Then we browsed while Aunt Minnie consulted us on what we wanted her to cook for us during the week. Last, but certainly not least, we stopped at the barrel of black, licorice babies, Uncle John’s favorite candy. (For Christmas, they always bought us a bushel of apples and a five-pound bag of these.)
“Merle,” he told the owner, “seems to me we need at least a pound of those babies this week.”
Although we had only each other to play with, the farm was so different from our Clarion home that our first few days went quickly.
There were the two work horses, Tom and Jerry, to be visited, fed chunks of apple and petted, the twice daily milkings, the numerous barn cats, and most exciting of all, the chickens!
A good percentage of Aunt Minnie’s and Uncle John’s income derived from their poultry business. At least 100 multi-colored fowl wandered the premises, mostly hens, but an occasional rooster strutted haughtily among the flock, preening his feathers. Mean roosters at that!
Venturing from either porch left you open to attack, but we loved the challenge of making it to the hay wagon that was
loaded with corn and shelling it out to the chickens.
Ginny remembers having to draw a picture each year, when classes resumed in the fall, of the most exciting thing that had happened to her during the summer.
“I always drew one of me being chased by a deranged rooster,” she recalls. “By sixth grade, my renditions of roosters were getting pretty good.”
As for me, I don’t remember ever having to draw anything similar. But I do know what that drawing would have depicted, if I had been called upon to do so the summer I was eight years old.
It was growing toward the end of our visit, and homesickness was making its hesitant presence known. None of the usual amusements seemed to hold any appeal that day, and I was looking for something to do.
One of the big differences between our home and Aunt Minnie’s was that hers had no electricity. This meant she did her weekly laundry on the back porch with a gas-powered wringer washer. A long rubber hose led down the porch’s steps, ending in a muffler where the exhaust fumes were expelled.
Because Aunt Minnie was an avid reader, there were always lots of magazines of every genre you could imagine at her house. (She must have helped hundreds of college kids with their educations.)
Selecting three or four of these, I found my way to the bottom step and sat down next to the exhaust muffler. The slight sweetness of the dispelled fumes, the rhythmic, gentle putt-putt of the washer’s engine, soon soothed my homesickness, and I drowsed contentedly, not even bothering to open a magazine.
“Kathy, Kathy!” Suddenly Aunt Minnie, who never said a cross word to us, was shaking me, slapping my face, demanding I get up and leading me inside where she splashed cups of cold water on my bewildered head!
The same Aunt Minnie, who played Baby Snooks with us and made us skillets of rear-rye whenever we clamored for it! What was wrong?
She tried to explain it to us, and when Uncle John came in for supper, related the tale to him. All evening, she kept feeling my forehead, and asking me how I felt
Ginny and I were the first ones upstairs that night, but when Aunt Minnie came upstairs, she stopped in our bedroom for one final check. The worry was catching and Ginny and I caught it.
“How do you feel, now?” Ginny asked, and I told her.
“There’s a big lump in my throat, and I can’t swallow it.”
“It’s your heart,” Ginny informed me. “You have to swallow it to get it back in your chest where it belongs.” She lay her hand on my chest and assured me it was still beating.
Always argumentative, I challenged her despite my fear. “How can your heart get in your throat?”
“I don’t know,” Ginny admitted, “but it can. How many times have you heard grown-ups say, ‘My heart was in my throat?’” That was true.
We lay there in the dark, Ginny’s hand on my chest, and her frequent encouragement to me to try and swallow the lump. Finally, I fell asleep, but Ginny continued her vigil all night long, too frightened to sleep.
In the morning, the lump in my throat was gone, and our parents showed up and we returned home.
Ginny was always the better artist of us two, although despite her improved rooster renditions, she was never featured in any of our yearly art exhibits at school.
Perhaps she could have drawn a satisfactory picture of my ordeal, but I’m glad I was never required to do so.
One drawing could never have shown everything; I would have had to draw a book!
Kathy Young Wonderling is a former Spirit reporter who wrote a weekly column, My Family & Me, starting in the early 2000s. An octogenarian, Kathy is a widow, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister and aunt. With such a large family, she has too many memories not to share.