Stories from the garden - October 2020
Do this as if it was ‘sacred’—It is! Aunt Bertha had moved from the Trem é to the East New Orleans neighborhood we called ‘The Goose’ along with my mother, step-father and four siblings in the Spring of 1964. Shortly after her husband, Gus (Uncle ‘Tand’), her sister, Dora (the one called ‘Shosh’), and Shosh’s husband, (George) passed away before 1960, Aunt Bertha came to live with my mom’s young family in the yellow house in the Tremé. Aunt Bertha, one of my maternal great-grandfather’s (Peter) sisters was seventy-six years old in the Fall of 1968 when she was still a ‘strong walker,’ but at this point, she demanded one of her great-nephews as an ‘assistant’ on those, now less-frequent walks to ‘take care of her business’—pay utility bills, eye doctor, ear clinic visits, and so on. The fact was, she still could outpace me and most of my siblings as well as my Uncle Bennie’s, so we all were less than eager to accompany Aunt Bertha on her grueling ‘appointments o...