Aunt Gladys

Aunt Gladys in front of her house

I've been waiting for this post. Today, I'm going to tell you about a character. My Aunt Gladys. Just saying her name makes me giggle. Aunt Gladys was actually my great aunt, and she was a hoot! (Even though I don't think she ever knew it.) She was one of my maternal grandmother's sisters, and she lived across the street from my grandparents in a little green house. She never had any children of her own, but treated her nieces and nephews as children and their children as her grandchildren. Her full name was Gladys Bell Thurmond Cloys. She HATED her middle name (Bell) and would never let us even say it. She would have a fit if she knew I told everybody. .....Oops...

One of my very first memories of this lady was from when I was very young, probably around 3 years old. Aunt Gladys liked to garden. She would put on a pair of knit pants that had to be hot as blazes, a long sleeved, button up shirt and a cotton bonnet to go work in the garden. I always thought she was going to burn up in that get up. Anyway, my family pretty much always let me "help" with whatever they were doing so, Aunt Gladys let me "help" in the garden, too. This particular day, we were planting peas. I was young, so this memory isn't fully detailed, but I remember the ground had been tilled, and the rows had been made. Aunt Gladys handed me some seeds, and I promptly laid them in the row. I threw them all in. She laughed. I was told to place them, one at a time, a certain distance apart. I threw them all in one little pile in the row. She got so tickled. I thought I was doing great because all of my peas were gone and she still had alot to plant, but apparently she thought otherwise. When I got older, she used to remind me of that day often. She always got tickled when she retold the story.

Another time when I was about 5, for some reason Aunt Gladys was telling me about boys. I remember her looking at me and pointing that little crooked finger at me and saying, "Kadie, never kiss a boy on the mouth. Only on the cheek. Not even when you're married. Always on the cheek." She even tapped her cheek for emphasis in case I wasn't paying attention. I remember thinking, "She is nuts! I know how this works. When you get married you get to kiss on the lips!" haha.

Aunt Gladys cooked all the time. Her food wasn't exactly a culinary masterpiece, but that never stopped her. She loved making pineapple upside down cakes. I think she made one for every family get together. When I stayed with Aunt Gladys, we made doughnuts. Now, don't get too excited. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who liked these things. She would get a can of biscuits, roll each one out flat and punch a hole in the middle. Then, we would put them in the Fry Daddy for a few minutes. After taking them out, we would pat the grease and cover them with powdered sugar. I always wanted to make them. I'm not sure the rest of my family felt the same because they never seem quite as excited when I announced that we had made them. The thing that stick out in my mind most about her cooking though is the time she burned a chicken while trying to roast it in the oven. I don't know if she put it in there and forgot about it or just cooked it too long, but it STUNK! That whole house stunk for years! YEARS! Every time we would visit after the chicken incident, Mom would say, "I can still smell that chicken."

Aunt Gladys and me posing with the cake she made for my birthday.

In all seriousness, this woman loved us like her own. She really thought she was helping raise us and teach us what we needed to know for life. Aunt Gladys worked hard. As I mentioned, she liked to garden. She had quite a large garden when I was young and always ate what she grew. That's alot of work. I guess what amazed me about this was Aunt Gladys didn't get around very easily. When she was young, she fell and broke her ankle. It was never set right, and when she walked, she walked on her ankle with her foot turned in. It always looked painful to me, but she had walked that way most of her life so her body had compensated as much as possible. It never stopped her. Walking on her ankle like that made that leg shorter than the other and she would walk with a hobble. (At least she did by the time I knew her.) She would sit in her chair after a long day and rub her ankle where a callous had developed from walking on it and say, "Oh, my poor little foot." Other than that, she didn't talk much about it to me, but always referred to it as her poor little foot.

We saw Aunt Gladys all the time since she lived less than a half mile from us. We used to take her to the grocery store every week so she could shop. She never drove, and needed some help shopping, so she went with us. In the store, Mom would go off one direction to get the things on our list, and Aunt Gladys would go the other to gather what she needed. I can still hear her say she wanted to get "a little bit of cream," which was what she called ice cream. She was a tiny woman, and could have eaten as much ice cream as she wanted without it being a problem, but she always down played it and said, "a little." Eventually, Aunt Gladys got to the point getting her own groceries required too much walking and we would take her list with us to the store and drop the groceries off for her later. I was in charge of that a lot of the time so I knew exactly what brands she liked. When we delivered her groceries, she would always try to pay us. She didn't have a lot of money, and we certainly weren't helping her to be paid for it, but she would always try to hand us a dollar. We would always refuse and try to turn away from her, but she would grab our shirt and stuff that dollar down there so we couldn't just hand it straight back.

Gram (my dad's mom) and Aunt Gladys had a special bond. They were good friends and truly loved each other. It's funny to me because they were SO different. Gram was born and raised in Pennsylvania and lived alot of her adult life in California. She traveled often and was used to bigger cities. Aunt Gladys barely made it to the border of Kentucky, if she did that. They would talk and laugh and have so much fun visiting with each other. One time when my aunt was visiting from California, she and Gram took Aunt Gladys out for a day. Later, they told us as they were driving they passed 2 cars on the road and Aunt Gladys said, "Woo wee! Look at all this traffic!" She was serious! They laugh so hard. Years and years later if you bring up Aunt Gladys's name, they will tell you that story and laugh.

Aunt Gladys loved her cats. She would go out on the porch and call them with the highest pitch voice you've ever heard. It was almost hard to listen to. My daughter does the same thing. Maybe that means she learned it from me and I do it too...Ugh. Anyway, she kept her cats outside, but every once in a while we would catch her letting them in to stay for a bit. She always acted like they had just snuck inside when she had opened the door. I think she liked to talk to them so she let them in for a while.

She would kill me for saying this, but Aunt Gladys could burp like a man! That tiny woman would burp so loud it'd make you embarrassed for her, but she just went on like nothing had ever happened. I would always think, "Good grief that's gross!!"

As a teen, I begged my parents for a phone in my room. Kids nowadays don't know what that's like, but the struggle was real! I finally convinced them, and I was so proud of that first phone. What I failed to consider was our bedrooms were upstairs and the other house phones were downstairs. When Aunt Gladys called early on Saturday mornings or on weekdays during the summer, I was the only one who had a phone ringing directly in their ear! I always hated answering that phone half asleep, but Aunt Gladys was funny to talk to. She would always sit in the same chair beside a little table where she kept her important notes and papers. Often, she would set the phone down beside her in the chair to look for something to tell you about and you could hear her still her talking to you as she was sitting on the phone! I'd say, "Aunt Gladys!!!" really loud, hoping she would remember the phone was under her tush, but she couldn't hear me because she was talking away. Then, she would pick it up and keep on talking like nothing ever happened. I'd just laugh and go on. Then, when she was done with the conversation, she would start to hang up the phone before saying, "Bye," because it was always very faint immediately followed by a "click."

Aunt Gladys on her phone

At some point, Aunt Gladys must have sewed because she had fabric shoved in every spare nook and cranny in that little green house. When she was in the nursing home, she used to tell us, "You better go get that fabric before the mice cut it up!" I always thought it was funny that she was so worried about that fabric. What was even more funny was imagining little mice sitting in the house with tiny scissors, cutting that fabric to pieces!

Toward the end of her life, Aunt Gladys's foot/ankle got infected from wearing a sore on it while walking. She became unable to walk and take care of herself and decided to go to the nursing home. She made that choice. When we would visit, she would talk about how she was the only one of her family left. (All her siblings and family members around her age had passed away at this point.) She would say, "I was sure the Lord would take me last night, but He didn't." I thought, how sad to think that way, but then again, I could see her point. She lived a long life and saw so many people go on before her. She wasn't full of life as she had once been. She was sad and seemed weary. I'd tell her God still had her with us for a reason, but I'm not sure it helped her much. I hated to see her in such shape, but I suppose that is a part of getting older.

We each have our own journey and length of time. Only God knows what he has in store. I'm so glad to have known Aunt Gladys and wish my kids could have met her. They would have loved each other. After she died, passing her house was always bittersweet. That house held so many memories of Aunt Gladys. She truly was a hoot! She always made us laugh. Her home became run down over time without anyone living there and eventually had to be torn down, so the little green house isn't there anymore, but I can still see it if I close my eyes. And still smell that burnt chicken...