7. The Old Home

As for Mama’s feeling about her return to the old home to live, the changes which had occurred did not seem to bother her very much; or, if they did, she had resolved to make the best of it; and this was the right part for her to play, for she had been keen on coming. Indeed, if Mama had not so strongly urged it, I doubt whether Papa would have consented.

Mama already knew that Uncle Paul and Aunt Molly Beezley, with their eleven children, had moved away. Aunt Molly was Mama’s favorite sister. The Beezleys had gone to a farm in southern Michigan. I deeply felt the loss of them.

That Salem-Wilmot country was not the same with Uncle Paul and Aunt Molly and the Beezley kids out of it.

Whenever we had visited up there, Watson (Watts), about my age, still living and afflicted with rheumatism as I am, and Tom, a year older, and Sam, a couple of years older, would go swimming in the small near-by lake, and fish for blue-gills with homemade tackle. The Beezleys were poor but they always had enough to eat, and were about as happy a family as I ever knew; never a cross word.

I know that Mama missed the Beezleys when we moved to the old home. The Beezleys all called her Aunt Jen.

Let me interject here that when Mama died, after long widowhood, in Monroeville, we took her frail little body to the old cemetery adjacent to Salem Church. We carried the casket into the church, so our surviving relatives might have a last view of their old friend. Aunt Molly was gone, but Uncle Paul, in his early nineties, was there. The good old man was nearly blind, very absent-minded and bewildered. I sat by him, and when the time came for him to take his last look at Mama I accompanied him. He rubbed a shaky hand along the top of the casket, but couldn’t quite understand what it was all about. He remembered me and called me by name, but he couldn’t figure out who was dead. Presently he inquired, “Why didn’t you bring Aunt Jen with you this time?” All who were left of the Cassel tribe listened intently. I thought I had better explain; I raised my voice. Here was Aunt Jen, I said. Uncle Paul understood then, and wept. Now he was the only one left.

But I must get back to Mama when we lived at the old home. Uncle Henry and Aunt Amanda Coyle, who had lived in Etna, only a few miles away (a village later renamed Hecla) had moved to Columbia City.

Uncle Perry and Aunt Maggie Cassel still lived on their farm, only a mile from the Frank Hunt home. Aunt Maggie was Mrs. Hunt’s sister. I had always enjoyed our visits with Uncle Perry and Aunt Maggie. They were childless but had adopted a little girl of my age when she was about seven. She was a gay and lovable child and was their pride and joy as long as they lived. But, now that we had moved into the neighborhood, we saw very little of them. When we were guests they had made quite a fuss over us. As permanent residents, they simply took us for granted.

Somebody was telling me, not long ago, about an old friend of his by the name of Jones or something like that, whose small manufacturing business in Bucyrus or Muscatine or somewhere, making shirt buttons or those threaded wooden pegs that fit into glass insulators on telegraph poles, or something of the sort, was required to go to New York annually to consult with his distributors, the Beaver Brothers, Inc., perhaps. I am finding it more and more difficult to remember names.