Woke up this morning with Aunt Lena on my mind. Aunt Lena has been gone for many years, but she still resonates in my mind on a regular basis. Aunt Lena was my Grandfather Haas's sister. She was, and I must put this delicately, a "spinster lady who rented rooms to other spinster ladies who were school teachers."
Back when the Haas family migrated through Ellis Island and settled in and around Abbyville, Kansas things were very different. The patriarch of the family, Johann Jakob Haas, had already buried his first wife, Elizabeth Beck who bore him 7 children. This was known as the "first family. He then married the woman who took care of the first family, Dorathea Schade and started another family. This family consisted of 9 children, but one died an infant. When plans were made to migrate, the two oldest girls, from the first family, boarded a steam ship and then a train to travel to Nickerson, Kansas to stay with their Beck relation who lived on the outskirts of Nickerson. As a tiny girl, I remember going to the Beck house once. That is all I remember. I went to school with a boy named Ronnie Beck, who I am sure was a shirt tail relative. I never dated in Nickerson because I was a distant cousin to everyone there one way or another and I just never wanted to do the incest thing!
But, I digress. As a teenager I went to live with my grandmothers in Plevna, Kansas, and became well acquainted with my Aunt Lena.
That was when I learned why she had never married. Seems back in the dating years. that Great Grandma Hatfield (nee Gagnibien), was at the time married to a man named Franklin Miller. They had 3 children, Lou Miller and 2 girls, Mable and Josie. Next farm over was the Haas family with lots of marriageable kids. Mabel married Goll Haas. Josie married Christoph Haas. Uncle Goll was checking out Lena Haas when Great Grandma put her foot down and said her whole family was not going to turn into Haas family and so Uncle Lou and Aunt Lena said their goodbyes and he married a complete stranger. Aunt Lena embrassed spinsterhood and moved into Plevna and starting renting rooms to school teachers. Back in those days school teachers were predominately women and more often than not, single.
Aunt Lena always seemed tall. She stood ramrod straight at all times and talked with her teeth clenched together. Her teeth were always clenched. I used to think she might have lock jaw, but I think that is just how she talked. Expect there was a lot of "Keep that mouth shut!" with a total of 16 kids running around and her being towards the end of the line they all bossed her!
Aunt Lena always wore a dress. Always. Well, I can't say what she wore during harvest and before I knew her, but I am betting it was a dress. But trust me, when she wanted to go wade in the creek, or chase a calf across the field, she knew how to modify her dress. She would slam on the brakes in that old jalopy she drove and jump out of the car. "Come on, kids!" She would spread her legs and reach back between her knees and catch the hem of the skirt in the back, pull it forward and up and tuck it in her waistband. Instant culottes! And she taught us the fine art! She would put one foot on the bottom barbed wire and pull the wire above it up so us kids could crawl through with out ramming a barb in our back, usually. Then off we would gallop across the field in quest of what ever Aunt Lena had seen. Sometimes we ended up wading in a creek. Sometimes we picked Sand Hill Plums. Sometimes we just walked across the field and kicked clods.
Aunt Lena kept a horse tank in her front yard. In the summer it was always full of water and when we went to her house we could jump in and cool off. The only item of clothing we removed was our shoes. When we got out we just "dried out." Kansas gets very hot in the summer and those little dips were always just what us kids needed.
I remember the last time I seen Aunt Lena. It must have been about 1992. She was born in 1893. She died in 1994. She would have been about 99 years old. It was at the Auditorium in Plevna where I had gone to high school The school was gone, but they used the auditorium for reunions and such. I had a cousin of sorts, Earl Boyd who was at the time 88 and legally blind. Had been for years. He and Aunt Lena were talking and it went like this.
"Oh, Lena, I would love to see the old homestead, but I don't have a car."
"Oh, Earl, I have a car, but I can't drive."
"Well, you have a car! I can drive us there. It is just a couple miles and it is all dirt roads."
"But, Earl, you can't see! How can you drive?"
"You can see, Lena! You can tell me where to go."
"Do you think it would work Earl?"
"Sure! Let's plan on doing that someday soon."
I don't think they ever made the trip, but it made me happy to know they wanted to. I thought several times, after I returned to Colorado, that I should make the effort and make that happen for them, but I never did. It was the procrastination thing that always trips me up.
And now, I am the older generation. Now, I am thinking I would like to make a trip back to the old home place and I keep putting it off. Maybe some day. For now, I will set here and remember. I miss my mother. I miss my husband. My brother, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents and on and on and on. I can see them all, just like they were. Is that a sign of old age? Senility? Or just wishful thinking?
