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Aunt Gladys

Good-bye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou

(Chorus)
Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and file' gumbo
'Cause tonight I’m gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-o
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou 


I learned this song as a young child......probably in 
Medicine Lodge, Kansas.
My Aunt Gladys evidently had the record and liked to listen to it.
I've had a jolt this week.
I have never seen the lyrics or searched them out.
You know, sometimes you can hear a song over and over
again and never really know what you're mumbling
when you sing along with it.  Sadly, this is one of those songs I mis-heard. 

I ALWAYS thought it said:
MICHELE-UH-MEEE-OH 
 Well.  It doesn't.  
Who is this cher-amio girl anyway?
Why did my grown-up family members sing it with MY 
name in it?
Because they loved me or because they thought
it was 
Michele-uh-meeee-oh.

Well, I'm a big girl now and I can accept it.
But I do need to ask, 
is there ANYBODY else out there that thought that 
song had my name in it?

If blogger picture was working, I would use some pictures.
But, I guess I'm just stuck with words, so stay with me.

I didn't have very many Aunts, but the ones I had and lived around,
I dearly loved.
They were all my favorites.
That's another blog post though....
I want to tell you about my Aunt Gladys.
She was my dad's sister, so she was my Granny's daughter.
She was my Uncle Bill's wife.
She was Steve, Susan, Scott and Sharolyn's mom.
I remember them living in Medicine Lodge, Kansas.
One house they lived in was right behind the city pool.
The other house was by a wooden bridge that went over a train-track.
On the other side of the tracks there was a ware-house.
A ware-house full of coffins.
Aunt Gladys always had a dog........I remember Tuffy died getting caught on her leash on a fence.  They had a dog named Duke.  He slobbered
on me under the table.  What was I doing under the table?
We cleaned chickens one night at their house.
I remember Aunt Gladys showing me the eggs that were inside the chickens.
They had a tree outside that house that ran sap.
DON'T touch that tree.
Aunt Gladys said if you played with fire you'll wet the bed.
Well Sharolyn must have played  with fire right before we came to stay with them.  Are you glad so far that I don't have pictures?
I have some plates in my cabinet that were just like hers.
They're green.
Her and Uncle Bill always had an Oldsmobile.  A big one.
If she took you to Dairy Queen, you knew better than to lick the
curl off of her cone.
She was the first person I nickled and dimed to death.  Sorry Aunt Gladys.
The house on Oak Street was a strange house.  It was a stucco
bungalow with a basement.  Scott had a black light in his room.  
He was cool.  So was Steve.  But mainly Steve was weird.  He didn't even care if you said so to his face.  
In the basement there was the MONSTER.  It was a cabinet with drawers and all kinds of room to put things in.  Everything you needed was in the monster.
Or you didn't need it.
Aunt Gladys loved to play games.  Especially Scrabble.  
You know, when you walk down the street, you can't really tell who is a *word* person and who is not.
That's just something to think about.  
It was at her house that I discovered steak sauce.
My Aunt Gladys wore scarves, used lots of hair-spray and drank coffee out of melmac coffee cups.  She fried lots of potatoes and always had a roast.
In fact, she cooked a roast one time for Thanksgiving.
It's a wonder after that anybody wanted her to spend any holidays with her.
She didn't like white winter coats.  She said if you fell in the snow, you'd be too hard to find.  So buy a red coat.  It's just something to think about.
One holiday EVERYBODY went to their house on Oak Street.
We must have all forgiven her for the roast incident....
The moms and dads went home.
My sister and I got to stay, I wish we hadn't.
Everybody got throw-up sick.  One at a time.
Sharolyn puked in my red tennis-shoe.  We were all over the front room in different stages of the sickness moaning.  
Aunt Gladys wasn't thrilled at the sound of a screen door slamming.
She didn't like us to grind ice when she was taking a nap, either.
Aunt Gladys kept a clean house and she didn't think it was nice for Sharolyn to lick the salt off of my corn-nuts but not eat them.  I don't know if I told her Sharolyn cheated at Monopoly, too.
Uncle Bill was a tool-pusher.  I'm still in the dark about that.  Maybe a long time ago, you didn't get put in jail for stuff like that.
Uncle Bill and Aunt Gladys moved to Seward, right down the street from my parents.  I would go visit her and play Scrabble when we were *in town*.
She didn't even care when I won.  She has got to be the BEST sport I have ever ever ever played Scrabble with.  
I'm thinking thinking thinking........that they are the ones I have my first recollection when it comes to rabbits.
She sewed and she also collected owls.  Then, she got rid of all the owls.
One time I dug violets out of their flower beds.  They didn't mind, I was thinning them out for them. She said I'd be sorry because they would take over where I put them.  OH, if they only would.  I actually have some that are still living and they make me smile.  They're not just violets to me.
Well, Aunt Gladys went and got old.  
Her family put her in a rest-home last month. 
I look in the mirror sometimes and can SEE Aunt Gladys in my face.
I really wish I could see her.
She was the greatest.
 

Comments

ancient one said…
You didn't need pictures. I loved this post about Aunt Gladys.
Sara said…
I loved Aunt Gladys too! I remember watching game shows with her. I didn't know that she had gone into a rest home...that's sad...
scott said…
wow ,,that is very heart felt about my mother.Funny how we remember some of the smallest things from our child hood and they turn into words like these..you made you cousin cry this morning, had no idea you remembered all this stuff i toohave lots fondmemories about your parents and the summers i spent with you and kristi..Love You Scott..
Mo said…
Love you too, Scott.
Anonymous said…
My memory of Aunt Gladys was that she bought us red nightgowns w/matching robes and she told us not to fart in them.

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