Aunt Jess

There are some relatives that are just plain special. Whether it is the way they relate to you, or the special gifts they give you, or the unique activities you do when you visit them—you are not likely to forget them.  My Aunt Jess, sister to the grandmother who died before I was born, was like that.  She lived in Southern Ohio, a rather mysterious area in between Amish country to the north, and the Ohio River and former slave territory of Kentucky to the south.

Jess Bandy Frey

The land was hilly, farm country where multi-colored foliage dotted the landscape in the autumn.  Aunt Jess’s tiny weathered farm house seemed like a camping cabin to me after the relative luxuries of the city.  But the “country experiences” more than outweighed the missing comforts.  

When we arrived after a long drive, usually about dinner time, Aunt Jess would greet Dad and us little cousins with hugs and exclamations of delight.  She lived alone, but would often have other cousins there to greet us when we came for a visit.  Then she

Arthur Bandy, Mel Adrian, Jess Frey, Ruth Bandy

sat us all down to a country dinner she had fixed herself.  As it grew dark outside, we would sit in the livingroom, watching her rock back and forth, and the grown-ups would talk.  The lights were low, and even though the house had no central air or heat, she always turned on a fan or lit a fire to make us comfortable.  Aunt Jess’s house was a place of peace and welcome.

The bathroom was a path leading away from the front porch to a tiny wooden shed with a half-moon cut out on the door.  It was a one-seater latrine – very scary, smelly, and weird to a city child. I would take a flashlight with me at night, but still feared that snakes or bears would get me between there and the house.

Linda, Little Harold, Harold Frey, Lorraine

When it was bedtime, all the cousins who were visiting – usually my little sister and I and my cousin Cindi—would be tucked into a large bed in the attic under stacks of homemade quilts.  There was no heat of any kind up there, but once we got over the initial shock of cold, we were warm all night.

In the morning Aunt Jess, a smallish-framed but rounded lady of 60-something, would fix us eggs for breakfast in a cast-iron skillet over an old wood-burning cook stove.  The eggs came fresh from the hen house, and often the cousins would have the exciting privilege of gathering them from under the hens.  Now that  was more fun than Disneyland to a city girl!

We learned to pump water before our meals, either from the large black water pump in the front yard, or from the smaller water pump in the kitchen sink.  Here I learned the concept of “priming the pump” by pouring a cup of water down the well before pumping, therefore causing the water in the well to rise faster.  Everything here at this country place was a learning experience.

Being city-naïve, we often misunderstood “country things.”  One notable time was our “egg hatching adventure.”

On one trip, my sister or I got curiously attached to the eggs we had gathered from the coop.  We figured that, if baby chicks came from eggs, and here were eggs, that we could keep them and have baby chicks.  I could tell our father was chuckling at us behind his hand, and I have no idea why he didn’t take this “teachable moment” to inform us of the “facts of life” – that since there was no rooster present, we had eggs but would never have baby chicks. 

Anyway, the little drama played out.  We found a shoe box, wrapped the eggs warmly in a towel, and tucked them near the cook stove.  After we went to bed, Dad took them and put them in the refrigerator! The next morning we were aghast at his unfeeling attitude, and “rescued” our future baby chicks – cradling them in the cozy, little box all during the three-hour drive back to our home town. 

I never knew what happened to those eggs – but we got neither baby chicks nor enlightenment!