Aunt Mame (Mattie Smith) was third generation from the old country-Germany.
It was the "Great Depression". Her husband, Tom ,was part American Indian. (Not that that has anything to do with anything.) But jobs were hard to come by. He did a little farming and
hunted and fished. Money was tight. Aunt Mame had to go to work. She learned how to hang
wall-paper in her teen years when she realized that the only time her parents fought was when
they were hanging wall paper. So the word went out that she would do wall-paper-hanging.
They lived in the Gothic American farmhouse that her Grandfather,Ira Marks or John Kliehower had built on
Starville Road before 1850 apx. (The house was remodeled in 1870.) (Marion Jones
a decendent of the of Ira Marks, John Kliehower, Mattie K. Smith lives there today.)
The day was long. Mame had hung wall paper all day. The boards, that were used to stretch across between the wooden ladders, were heavy. (So heavy that I coulded even lift them as a teenager.) She was dog tired. Home at last. She picked up the milkers, one in each hand, and headed for the barns,
Tom followed with 2 empty pails.
When done she had just walked into the house when Tom said, "What's for supper?"
Mame sat down at the kitchen table, her head bowed against her weary arms and started to cry. Tom said," If you're going to cry, your not going to work tomorrow."
Aunt Mame told me, "I never cried again."
She new if she didn't work, they wouldn't eat.
Before Tom and Aunt Mame and their daughter Marion moved out to the farm they lived in a duplex on St.Clair Blvd. in down-town Marine City, next to her sister, Bessie Bell and her husband Chester Bell and their family, Lois, Janet, and John.
To the east of the duplex was a "boocher" shop.
The boocher knew that Aunt Mame had hard apple cider, from the tree out back,
in the basement, in a wooden barrel. In those days not many people would lock there doors.
The boocher, Punk Rose , would come in, down the stairs, help himself to the apple cider,
and leave a ring of bologne on the lid of the barrel. Aunt Mame said, "It was good bologne,
and I was happy to get it.
