MY AMAZING AUNT - A TRUE PIONEER

In my mind, my Aunt Lee was a miracle worker, an inventor, a pioneer, and an amazing aunt, among other things. She wasn’t perfect, but we loved her very much, and she loved us. She was smart. She was a very hard worker, and very independent. She was an average-sized woman, but she had muscles like a man. She had a hard life. She grew up in the early 1900s working in the fields in Mississippi. She was born on 1/1/1919.

She was actually my great aunt, my grandmother’s sister. Their mother was a Cherokee Indian. They still practiced some of the old ways of our ancestors; Especially natural healing, although some of that had been diluted over the years. One of my sisters fell over on a wood-burning heater when she was just learning to walk. She burned her head badly before anyone could get her off the heater. I remember Aunt Lee and my grandmother putting some kind of concoction on it. They said it would “Take the fire out of it.” It healed, but she still has a spot on her head with no hair to this day.

A few years later, I burned the back of my hand on the same kind of heater. My aunt went out and found an earthworm, and fried it in a skillet with some other stuff. Then she mixed it with some molasses, and God only knows what else. She made a poultice with it, and put it on my hand to “Take the fire out of it.” It healed up, but it left an ugly scar. I could still see it after I became an adult, but it had moved several inches up my arm. Today, I can’t see it at all.

She taught us how to live off the land, mainly by gardening, and canning to preserve food for later. She had a peach orchard in her backyard beside her garden. In the summer we helped her and our grandmother work in the garden and then harvest it. We had fresh vegetables all summer and we canned some of them in jars for the winter. We canned peaches and made peach cobbler pie. 

She was the first person to ever take us fishing. There was a small bridge over a large creek below Dead Man's Curve on Highway 72. We fished for a while and caught several "big ones." When we got back to her house, she put the fish in a big iron pot and poured scalding hot water on them. If I remember correctly, she had her stepson scrape all the scales off with a knife and clean the fish. Then she cooked them. When they were done, she magically removed all the bones “so we wouldn’t get choked, and die.” I didn’t know how she did it at the time, but I was glad to know I could eat it without dying.

She was a miracle worker alright. She always had cornbread. She would make it in a big skillet and it would be thick, too. What was left, she would save for the next day. By then, it would be hard and tough, but she had a little trick. She would carefully pour milk or water over the bread slowly enough to let it soak in. Then she would warm it up in the oven and make it just as good as it was the day it was cooked.

She could work a miracle with milk as well. She could take a gallon of milk, and magically turn it into two gallons right before your eyes. It wasn’t really magic, of course. She would buy a new gallon of milk, then pour half of the full gallon into an empty milk jug, then fill both of them up with water. Boom! She instantly made two gallons of milk from one. When I talked to my kids about that years later, I joked that she invented 1% milk or more like .5%. Haha. In reality, I guess it was 50% milk, but I just remember thinking it tasted like it was mostly water.

I really do think she invented bacon bits. She would intentionally cook her bacon too long, and when it cooled down, it would be very brittle. "Brickle, as she called it." Then she would break it up into small pieces and put them on her eggs. She made ours like that sometimes when we would eat with her and it tasted pretty good.

She was a pretty remarkable woman, and she always challenged us to be all we could possibly be in every area of our lives. When I started learning my multiplication tables, I had to write them all out. When I told her what I was having to do, she asked me how high I was having to go. I told her “ones through twelves. That’s as high as they go.” She told me I needed to go to my twenties. I thought that was too much. Writing all those lines up through the twelves was too much for me, but I did what she told me to, and you know what? I don’t remember what 13×5, 6, or 7 is.

She was tall and skinny and built like a man. She spent most of her life working like a man. She built things and repaired things. She had an outhouse for years, but she finally built a bathroom inside when we were older. She had all kinds of things in her house that I always thought was pretty neat. There was painter’s putty, paint, gaskets for cars, corkboard to make gaskets, and all kinds of other stuff.

She had an antique, foot pedal-operated sewing machine that she used to make quilts and clothes. They looked professional, too. She made many of our clothes. She had a collection of patterns for everything, I guess. She had crocheting needles, hooks, yarn, and a neat sewing basket with all kinds of needles, thimbles, threaders, and every color thread you could think of. She had an awesome button collection with every color, shape, and size you could imagine.

She used to make toys for us from the empty thread spools. She had a checkerboard that she had made from a piece of paneling. She uses old soda bottle caps for the checkers. She gave it to us when we were older but I don’t remember what ever happened to it.

She had an entire wall filled with pictures and not many matching frames. Some were metal, some were plastic and some were wood. They were all different sizes, too. She was a pioneer in that area. At a time when that wasn’t popular, she dared to do it.

She had the first T.V. I ever remember seeing. It was a big floor model in a brightly stained wooden cabinet. There was room on the top for her big, black telephone with the clear rotary dial and the long spiral wire that connected the receiver. She was on a party line, which meant she shared the line with a few other people. I remember picking up the receiver one time and hearing two older ladies talking. It scared me to death. I just knew they would tell my aunt that I was messing with her phone when I had been specifically told not to. I don’t know why I thought they would even know who it was, but I was scared anyway.

There was also room on her TV for an ashtray, a stack of papers, a telephone directory, and a lamp, if I remember correctly. At one point, she had a small, green, ceramic planter made to look like a log. She had a small green plant in it with small leaves. It ran up and over the top of the curtains that covered her large, picture window. We didn’t have a TV at home so we thought it was amazing to watch, on the rare occasion when she would have it on during our visits. I remember seeing shows like Bonanza, Gun Smoke, and Hee Haw.

One day the picture tube went out on the TV, so it wouldn’t show a picture. The audio still worked though, so she listened to it like a radio for a while. She didn’t have a lot of money, so she couldn’t just run out and buy a new set, but she got a used one that showed a picture, but had no sound. It was smaller than her floor set, so she put it on top of the big one, and turned both of them on. Then once again, she could see what she was hearing. Creative and innovative.

She was married a few times. All of her husbands had died except one. I thought he was dead for a few years because he wasn’t with her, and we had never seen him. I heard her talking about him having an accident that broke his neck. For some reason, I thought a person died if they had a broken neck, but evidently, he didn’t. I found out when I was older that he was very much alive.

She had several men to come courting, but we didn’t know that was what they were doing at the time. Finally, when we were older, she met Uncle Tony and married him. We grew to love him as much as we loved her.

I only remember being angry with her a few times. Once, I did something I shouldn’t have done. I don’t remember what it was, but she was going to whip me, so I ran from her. Big mistake. She chased me, and she was pretty fast, too.

I ran around behind our house. Then I saw a shed that my uncle had built so I ran around behind it but the woods were thick back there, so I was forced to turn back to the path I had been on behind the house. When I came out from behind the shed, there she was! She had cut me off. I remember screaming because I was shocked to see her there, and she almost got me. Now she was even closer than before. She was right on my heels.

I was running to find my grandmother. When I finally made it to her, I ran behind her, but that didn’t help much. Aunt Lee reached over my grandmother’s shoulder and slapped me. She hit me right in the mouth and made my lip bleed. My grandmother didn’t like that at all, so they had an argument which actually happened probably once every couple of months anyway, for some reason or another. Sometimes they would get so mad at each other that they would go weeks without even speaking to each other, even though we lived right next door.

She wasn’t really a bad person. She was just human, like the rest of us, but she certainly loved her family, and she had a good heart.

When my sisters, and I were taken away from our grandmother, and put into foster care, she did everything she could do to help her get us back. She helped her buy a mobile home, and she gave us some property to put it on. She helped our grandmother raise us, educate us, and take care of us. I have a lot of good memories of her.

Like a lot of others, I have many bad memories from my childhood, but I have plenty of good memories, too, and those are the ones I try to focus on the most. That’s what we should all do; Focus on the good things rather than the bad.

In Philippians 4:8, the Apostle Paul tells us this; “Whatever is true, honest, right, and pure, whatever is friendly, respectful, virtuous, and worthy of praise, think about these things.” If we all would follow these instructions every day, we would be much happier people. Let’s try it; Shall we?

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