Every kid in the family loved going to Aunt Nell’s house. Who would not want to spend the summer with a huge inground pool, Corvette in the garage, central air conditioning in a red brick house in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Cincinnati? Aunt Nell was a sweet, but stern, older lady who never missed Sunday church. Her house will go down in our family’s history as being the best places to spend the hot days of summer.
When I think about my childhood, Aunt Nell’s is at the top of the list. She was the glue that held our family together and her house was the meeting place for all major holidays. She had money and spent a good part on the many cousins and myself. We all felt blessed to have her in our lives.
The welcoming sight of
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The garage was under the house and was home to our uncle Johnny’s 1964 Corvette. In the spacious back yard was the in-ground swimming pool where we celebrated birthdays and spent many sizzling summer days learning to swim.
In the dining room was a bearskin rug that every kid in the family had their picture made on. Uncle Johnny was a hunter and even went to far off countries and hunted animals to have stuffed and hung on the wall or posed in a corner. Uncle Johnny was from Bulgaria with of charm.
They ran a catering business, and Aunt Nell worked for the Board of Education at the local high school as a food server and demonstrated food at local grocery stores on weekends. Aunt Nell was an amazing person. She taught ceramics in her basement part time and would have projects for me to help her with. Food was always plentiful at their house. My cousins and myself were from less fortunate families where abuse was a part of every day life and hunger was no stranger. Aunt Nell’s house is heaven compared to the sufferings my cousins and I bared and when summer came, we knew Aunt Nell would be waiting on us to shower us with food and plenty of good memories to carry into
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Aunt Nell would always make sure we went swimming at every visit. She had bathing suits from the 1950’s if we needed one. Even the beach towels seemed the size of sheets. Looking out the Kitchen window, the pool covered a good bit of yard, but the grounds were huge and had an old oak tree on the right that could fill a pool with leaves in an afternoon. It appeared that the tree touched the sky and even the heavens; it was so tall. That nine 3 to 9-foot-deep pool had been a part of every swimming lesson to every kid in the family. I will never forget her “Rule to swim in the pool”; we had to wait 30 minutes after eating before we could go swimming. That 30 minutes was the hardest for me because I wanted to swim first, but she never let that happen, and I was very high