Flashback Friday #16

Aunt Shelly's house

My faithful readers (both of them) know of Aunt Shelly. She is one of my Mom's younger sisters and the inspiration of a great many Jeff Foxworthy jokes. I think Jeff may have been there a few times while I was there playing with the cousins.

Aunt Shelly & Uncle Phil had 14 kids (again I say, no multiple births). They lived in a four bedroom house about three miles from us. The house also had a living room, kitchen & small dining room. The dining room was mostly taken up with a picnic table that served as the dinner table. The living room had a wood burning stove, a TV, an armchair for each parent, and three to four couches.

How do you feed 14 kids breakfast? Those who did odd jobs for the neighbors, or had money of their own, had their own box of cereal, purchased with their own cold cash. Nobody else was allowed to eat this cereal without the permission of the owner. Everyone else got corn flakes or whatever was on sale. When the milk was gone, the latecomers would put water on their cereal.

Since there were so many kids, they were able to get the reduced price for the school lunches, and nobody had to pack a lunch. After school, "sugar bread" was a favorite snack. This consisted of a buttered piece of bread with sugar sprinkled onto it.

At dinner, it was chaos. "Please pass the..." wasn't spoken. You just reached for what you wanted. Like the Serengeti, it was survival of the fittest. When the tribe was finished eating dinner (that was the only meal they all ate together), the dishes would be removed, and Aunt Shelly would stand on the picnic table bench and sweep off the table with a broom. The various dogs would gobble up the crumbs & scraps.

Unlike our house, they had running water, mostly. They had running water to the kitchen, but not to the bathroom. Water was heated on the stove to bathe, with several kids using the same water. The toilet was flushed once a day by pouring a large kettle of water into the bowl.

I thought the toys I played with used imagination. Their toys were imaginary. Sticks became guns or swords. small pieces of two-by fours became cars in the sand pile. Old tires became race cars and there were always races going on by seeing who could roll their tire so many laps around the house. A corn cob with feathers stuck in the end became racing pigeons, and who ever could throw theirs the farthest won. (Uncle Phil raised racing homing pigeons, and won several trophies with them). Discarded pantyhose were knotted up to play "cat, cat, get the cat" with the dogs.

A bike was a prized possession. It meant mobility, and mobility meant either a way to make extra money doing odd jobs, or peace & quite away from your siblings. Sometimes bikes were put together with pieces from several different bicycles. Sometimes brothers would combine the pieces they had to make a shared bike. One time two brothers who shared a bike quarreled. "Give me back my seat & handlebars." one of them shouted. How do you ride a bike with no seat or handlebars? You improvise. The other brother cut off a broom handle to use as handlebars, and used a brace & bit to bore a hole into (not through) a piece of two-by four. This became the seat. It looked crazy, but it gave him the mobility he craved.

At bedtime, the three girls shared a room, with the 11 boys vying for places on the beds in the other two bedrooms. Whoever didn't get a place on the bed slept on one of the couches. There were sometimes three to four to a bed, depending on the size of the young-un. Clothing was communal. If it fit you , you wore it.

These were some of my closest cousins. This may explain some of the idiosyncrasies I have. Then again, maybe not. Shake your family tree. Do any nuts fall out?