Hart Family Reunion

The Hart family reunion is always held on the first Saturday of July. This year's reunion was extra special because my Aunt Marie was able to attend. She gave us quite a scare in the early spring with a bout of pneumonia and we thought we would lose her. But she is a tough woman who has survived many obstacles in her long, rich life. After being in a near-coma, she bounced back and is "feeling pretty good". Good enough to make us all happy that she is still with us and able to commune with us over good food and good talk. She is my mother's youngest sister and the only surviving sibling of that Schaffer/Hart clan.

(On the left is Aunt Marie holding Everett in the mid-1930's. On the right is the house as it appears today. It doesn't actually tilt...that would be the photographer's fault.)

We always have the reunion at my brother Everett's house which happens to be the Schaffer/Hart homestead and was also my home until I was eight. It was built in 1887 by my great-grandfather Peter Schaffer; and has always been owned and lived in by our family. And it always will be. That is a pact that will never be broken.

Aunt Marie telling me to take a pretty picture. And here it is.

My brother Everett is standing to my left with his wife, Gloria. They were married when I was three. My cousin, Earlene Hart Townsend, is on the left with her husband Jim.

With my youngest niece, Melissa, who is Everett's youngest. She is a sweetheart and so are her two sisters and three brothers.

The barn where I spent many hours playing as a child with my cousins and sometimes by myself. It was actually built before the house, so it may be closer to two hundred years old. The American chestnut posts and beams show no signs of age. Chestnut is impervious to insects and rot.

Jaye and Matthew in front of the small stream that runs between the house and driveway. It was a much more adventurous ride down the sidewalk when I was a child...no handrails!  The stream flows into a creek across the road which almost always flash floods when there is heavy rain. The house has never flooded because it sits on a high bank.

Lauren and Melissa's two boys, Harm and Jake, explore the stairs to the basement. I played on those stairs all the time, and in the basement, when Mom would let me. My sisters swear that there are ghosts in there. My late sister Jane told that when she was a teenager, Mom sent her to the cellar to get something and on the way back up, she felt a hand grab her shirt. She turned around on the stone steps to look and she claimed to have seen a ghost wearing an old-fashioned uniform. Lots of screaming ensued! I was never scared to go in there...I loved playing in the dark coolness and smelling Mom's pickled corn and green beans in the big stone crocks weighted down with heavy plates. Those crocks are still in the barn.



This year's turnout was a little light. I'm hoping that next year the whole family will be able to attend. They were missed.

Farm Girl in the Thirties

 

I went to visit my Aunt Marie and my brother Everett (whom we've always called Buddy) this past weekend. This picture is my aunt holding my brother in front of our family home about 1935. There's a little snow next to the sidewalk and Buddy is wearing a knit cap, so it must have been late winter or early spring. Aunt Marie seems to be wearing either her dad's or one of her brothers' hat and overalls. She probably had been working outside. She looks quite dapper in that fedora.

My mom and her sisters and brothers had to work very hard on the farm. They raised crops to sell in town and had cattle and hogs and chickens to take care of in the winter. Aunt Marie was the youngest of eight and I think she got off lightly compared to the rest. My grandfather was a tough taskmaster and they weren't allowed to shirk their duty. They had to work in the fields and barns before and after school, beginning before dawn and until sunset.

Mom only went to school until ninth grade. She stayed after school one day to watch a ballgame and when she got home, Grandpa whipped her and made her quit and stay at home to work full time. Those were the days.

As I said in a previous post, my brother still owns the farm. It has never been out of our family's possession since it was built in 1887. It has gone through a few changes. Buddy added indoor plumbing and a bathroom when he bought it from my mother and dad in 1961. He also added new windows and siding as he could afford it, and he enclosed the back porch for a laundry room. Some of the outbuildings such as the corn crib, the chicken coop, the smokehouse and the old outhouse are all gone now, but basically the house still looks the same as it did in this picture.

Aunt Marie is the only one of her siblings still living and she is ninety years and counting. My mother passed away in 1987 and Aunt Marie has been a surrogate mother to me since then. I always tease her and say I'm her favorite niece and she teases me back and says she's my favorite aunt. She's right.