Don't worry, Deary...........

fuzzybuddy

fuzzybuddy

SF VIP
Location
The Sticks, Northeast PA.
I'm 70 now, but when I was a little kid, my mom would drag me and my cousins up to see our two Great-Aunts. One aunt married a guy in the 1920s, but he died right away, so the aunts have been living together ever since. To me, they looked at least 150 years old. The lived in an old fashion house with a barn out back. And they didn't take to the modern way of life easily. They put tape over the electric outlets to keep the electricity from leaking out. I can remember they had one of those big crank water pumps in the kitchen. They didn't have hot water.

One Xmas, I brought along a toy firetruck when we went to see the aunts. The aunts thought it was a terrible waste of money to get me a store bought toy. Talk about spoiling your kids! One of the things about the dead husband was he bought shares in the Columbia Phonograph Corp, which was somehow the parent company of CBS TV. I can remember these big black limos parked outside their home. The aunts had to sign papers or something. The aunts lived off the proceeds of that stock. We didn't know if they were really rich. The aunts were so cheap, nobody knew. That's why we got dragged up to see the great aunts every so often.

My cousin Rose was getting married and she wanted a huge expensive wedding. She decided to ask the aunts to foot the bill. This was definitely going to be a hard sell, considering the aunts only spent a cent by being confronted with the front of a gun. But when Rose sobbed about not being able to afford a hall for her wedding, the great aunts said, " Don't worry, Deary, you leave that to us. We'll clean out the barn and we'll even put new hay down on the floor."
Yup, the 1890s met 1955, and the 1890s won.
 

LOL!

I had two aunts as well, one had married, the other worked in a convent. The first aunt divorced, and they ended up living together the rest of their lives.

They had a little money and were frugal, but not to the degree of YOUR great-aunts. :D
 
What I remember best about being dragged around to visit elderly relatives in Virginia was that every one of them had a candy dish on their coffee table that was filled with a mass of nasty hard candy that had been stuck together since Woodrow Wilson was in office. It always had a layer of fuzzy dust on it, too. They would brandish the dish at me and say, "You can have one piece of candy, dear." Like I could have pried loose one piece..... Like I wanted to pry loose one piece...

Every table surface was covered with china figurines that must.not.be.touched.by.a.child.on.pains.of.death. Every couch and chair was either covered with plastic slipcovers on which you left a layer of skin from the back of your legs when you got up or incredibly scratchy upholstery that had you itching for two hours afterward.
 
jujube said:
What I remember best about being dragged around to visit elderly relatives in Virginia was that every one of them had a candy dish on their coffee table that was filled with a mass of nasty hard candy that had been stuck together since Woodrow Wilson was in office. It always had a layer of fuzzy dust on it, too. They would brandish the dish at me and say, "You can have one piece of candy, dear." Like I could have pried loose one piece..... Like I wanted to pry loose one piece...

Every table surface was covered with china figurines that must.not.be.touched.by.a.child.on.pains.of.death. Every couch and chair was either covered with plastic slipcovers on which you left a layer of skin from the back of your legs when you got up or incredibly scratchy upholstery that had you itching for two hours afterward.
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OMG - you had my relatives!

And the mothball smell - did you have the mothball smell? And far too much perfume being worn? And lipstick left on your face when they kissed you?
 
SifuPhil said:
OMG - you had my relatives!

And the mothball smell - did you have the mothball smell? And far too much perfume being worn? And lipstick left on your face when they kissed you?
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I knew we were separated at birth, Phil. Mothballs...yes. Perfume? Maybe, but mostly the smell of powder. And old dentures.

Aunt Effie had one eye that wandered off frequently. Mom always told me, "DON'T STARE AT AUNT EFFIE'S EYE!!!" Of course, what ELSE could I do?

One of the aunties had a bathroom with a pink fuzzy toilet seat cover. Not a LID cover, noooooo, it was a SEAT cover. Even as a kid, I was pretty sure I didn't want to be using that toilet. Like, maybe I'd catch "old lady butt" from it.
 
I love these stories. My favorite aunt is a very wealthy woman. She's very frugal & always was. She had a job well into her eighties because she could not stand being bored. She is 99 & still cleans her own house. My cousin ( her son) is a self made multimillionaire. He lives in a old double wide mobile home, runs around in jeans & a baseball cap and drives a tractor. If you met him you would never know he had any money.
 
My Mother had 5 Sisters and 5 brothers. When I was Growing up all the sisters and 2 of the brothers all lived in the same neighborhood as we did. I was surrounded by family and it was great. My sister,brother and I had 22 cousins in walking distance from our house. Some where Kooky and some were Cool. All my Aunts except one were very bossy.Most of them are gone now but out of the 3 Aunts remaining one was the nice one and the other one was the Bossiest of the Sisters . For the last few years they have been living together in an assisted living facility.One is 98 Yrs old and one turned 100 yrs old this week. I can not tell you how many times the facility has called my cousins that my Aunts were fighting with each other and wouldn't even sit together. The funny thing is the nice one has been the one starting all the fights . I laugh and say " You go Aunt Rita,you finally have spunk !":D
 
About my great-aunts. They died while I was in the Navy, so I don't know what kind of bucks they had. I know nobody in my family was hiring butlers or upstairs maids. I heard that CBS was owned by Paley, my aunt, and several more people. Of course, my great-aunt might have owned a whole share of stock. I do remember getting all scrubbed down, and dressed up to go to meet my great-aunts, ya know in case they wanted to leave a million or two to a cute relative. They lived close to us ( central Massachusetts), and pedaling around on my bike, I saw these big black cars with NY plates in their drive way. My mom told me the aunt had to sign papers????
 
fuzzybuddy said:
About my great-aunts. They died while I was in the Navy, so I don't know what kind of bucks they had. I know nobody in my family was hiring butlers or upstairs maids. I heard that CBS was owned by Paley, my aunt, and several more people. Of course, my great-aunt might have owned a whole share of stock. I do remember getting all scrubbed down, and dressed up to go to meet my great-aunts, ya know in case they wanted to leave a million or two to a cute relative. They lived close to us ( central Massachusetts), and pedaling around on my bike, I saw these big black cars with NY plates in their drive way. My mom told me the aunt had to sign papers????
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Sounds like they may have been running a branch of The Family.
 

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