Memaw's Memories of Dear Aunt A

Our family had gotten so big there wasn’t enough room in the little kitchen to feed all of us, so Mama moved the kitchen to the other big room across the hall, or dogtrot.  To make enough light in the room. she cut a hole in the wall to make a window.  The pipe from the cooking stove was put through the roof.  One Sunday in summer the roof caught on fire.  I was scared to death.  They soon got it put out, but the house could have burned to the ground.  They passed the buckets of water up a ladder.  There was no garden hose.

These were bad times, but everyone was having bad times.  But I used to love for Aunt A and Aunt S to come to see us.  On a holiday Aunt A would bring celery and sage to go in the dressing and cranberries.  She probably brought a fat hen, too.  And she could bake the best cakes.  She made one she called a “log cabin.”  She’d bake the cake in corn stick pans and then stack the logs and pour a fudge icing over it.  It would be great.  She also made a peanut butter cake.  She’d beat egg whites and make a stiff meringue and put peanut butter in it, then she’d ice the cake with it.  I thought it was great.  I loved to go to her house.  She usually had light bread from the store, and it was so good with butter spread on it.  We never had that at our house.

I remember one time I was at Aunt A's house, and she decided to make apple pies-- fried apple pies.  She cooked the apples and made the crust, and I could hardly wait for one to be fried.  She rolled the dough out.  Put on the apples.  Folded the dough over the apples.  Crimped the dough and put the pie in the hot skillet of grease.  The crust on the pie broke open and apples oozed out.  It smelled so good.  She picked up the skillet, took it outside and dumped the skillet of apple pies out.  She also threw out the apples and the crust that she was working with.  There went the apple pies.  But that is how she did things.

          

I though Aunt A was rich.  She had the most beautiful chamber pot I’d ever seen.  It was white china with roses on it.  I don’t think I ever got to use it though, but I admired it sitting under the side of the house.  We usually had a lard bucket.  I saw this pretty chamber pot one time when I went with Inez to stay a few days with Aunt A.  I was out behind the house crying by myself, because I was homesick and wanted to go home.

Aunt A let me go over to the C’s (some of her friends) house to play and when I started home, an old man who was visiting there told me to give Mrs. E his best regards.  I asked him to repeat a couple of times because I had no idea what he was talking about.  Needless to say she didn’t get the message.  I didn’t know what to give her.