My Great Aunt Annie

 

Hi Barra (and all),  I loved the story! What a gold "mind" you have at your disposal. Your Gramma (I may have told you before) reminds me of my Great Aunt Annie. I wish I had more of her story. But she, too, was the traveling relative. We would have her at our house for a couple of months and then ship her off to another relative. She was a spinster in the truest sense of the word -  probably 90 lbs. soaking wet, white thinning hair, sharp, coal black eyes that always seemed to be watching me, and as deaf as a post - when she wanted to be!

Back in the fifties they had what was called "The Old Folks Home." It was a dark, musty building, with an odd smell where folks put their aged relatives. Aunt Annie was placed in one a couple of times, but inevitably my father would get the call that Aunt Annie had bolted. He got in the car and hit the streets of East St. Louis until he found her. She was a cantankerous spitfire that scared the beejeebees out of me.

She was the youngest of the Niemanns born in the late 1800s family and she was born early. She was so small they placed her in a shoe box and used the bottom dresser drawer for her cradle. My father told me that she was once the "belle of the ball." Yeah, right! She had (according to family lore) many "suitors" but the love of her life drank whiskey. She gave him the ultimatum and he chose to wed himself to the bottle. She never married.

I never quite believed my father until after Aunt Annie died. I found a shoebox filled with postcards from every holiday. Each was signed by a different man's name professing his undying love for the fair Annie.

In some ways I admire my Great Aunt Annie..she had chutzpah! Today, I have Aunt Annie's First Communion Picture surrounded by those postcards hanging in my living room. Her sharp, coal black eyes still seem to be watching me - challenging me.

Thank Barra for bringing my story to light. Marilyn