Maiden Aunts

When I was a boy, we would occasionally make a family trip up to Greeley, Colorado, to visit a couple of my dad’s aunts, sweet old crones in their late 80s who had lived together their entire lives. They were two of something like 15 offspring. They had big litters back then, unpaid labor for the farm no doubt.
Mabel and Edna somehow managed to live their whole lives in the same house all the way to the very end. Neither one killed the other, which is saying something when you live eight decades in the same house.
They drove cool old cars, Edna a 1954 Chevrolet Belair two door, aqua-green and white. It was like riding around in a roomy suitcase. We ended up with that car and I took it on fishing trips to the South Platte when I was just learning to drive. It drove like a suitcase too.
Greeley at that time was still a farm town, a place where my grandfather had a pool hall in 1922, then a farm, where he once accidentally cut a hen pheasant in half while hand-scything hay. The hen was on a nest and the eggs joined a nest of chicken eggs in the coop where they later hatched. The hen pheasant was salvaged and went into the pot. Grandpa shot a single shot hammer 12 of some off-breed brand, but he obviously was equally deadly with the scythe.
I remember little else about Mabel and Edna other than they were kindly old gals and they lived together in relative harmony. And their names stuck with me. Mabel first, then Edna. Here’s hoping their spotted namesakes get along as well as those old ladies did and here’s hoping they last well into their dog-year eighties. The setter Mabel is actually aunt to the setter Edna and now there is a brace to follow into the western skies.

Author: Tom Reed

Four English setters tell me what to do. View all posts by Tom Reed