My aunt would be 105 years old on March 4. She was a tough cookie, born the oldest of the four Berry children and the only girl. She grew up in Marion and was a 1935 graduate of MHS. She married right out of high school and was widowed in 1941, just three days after Pearl Harbor. Her husband was killed in an oil field accident. Family and friends rallied around her and their small son. Life goes on. Her job went on. Her responsibilities went on. She married again.
In 1953 my aunt and uncle were in a serious roll-over car accident on the first curve on M-66 north, at the county line. My aunt was thrown from the rolling car, many feet into the freshly turned field. She had landed such that she lay in a furrow. The newly broken sod likely saved her life when the car rolled over her. She was seriously injured and badly abraided and bruised over much of her body, but was spared crushing injuries. This happened when I was very small and her bruises remain a sight I have never forgotten. A year later, after getting back on her feet, she fell victim to polio.
Her fight with polio made my aunt’s car accident adventure seem like child’s play. She fought back from being at death’s door and a life in an iron lung. It was a long, determined battle in which, being the woman she was, she prevailed. After months of hard work, my aunt returned to her business without the aid of crutches or cane.
Both my aunt and uncle adored their three grandchildren and retired to the sunny south to be near and watch them grow. They grew up, married and gave grandma six great-grands. My aunt celebrated her March 4 birthday, 85 times before her death in 2002. I think of my aunt often and always on her birthday. I miss her and always will. She was a big influence on me in many ways and I was blessed to be raised by my mom and my aunt, two amazing people and the right ones for me.
Among my enduring aunt memories, and they are countless, are those involving her house. It was a completely different place than my house or my grandmothers’ or of anyone else I knew for that matter. I knew it inside and out, like my own.
My aunt had a flare for decorating and knew what she liked. There were no antiques for her.
She trended toward new and modern and liked Danish Modern style. She replaced her 1950’s maple furniture with it before 1960. And with the furniture came the appropriate stuff, like bright glass vases and huge ash trays for the kidney shaped coffee table. And lamps. My aunt’s house became an adventure into large lamp land.
In the center of her wide front windows, between a pair of stylish upholstered, tufted, wrap around chairs with blonde legs, stood an ample and generally showy table lamp of some style, on a Danish step table. It was easy to see by and was easily seen.
One of those huge living room lamps was a large, colorful, chalkware rooster. His tail had many magnificent chalkware plumes and his red head was high, beek open, eternally ready to utter a morning greeting. His shade was large and flared like an almost flat, green funnel. The rooster lamp filled the window and made quite a statement, although no one was quite sure what this one was. The rooster was the butt of many a family joke. Many an Easter found a boiled egg impailed on his beek. This was generally not seen as humorous by my aunt.
My aunt liked big lamps, and the rooster was not the only one she found attractive. She had lamps that reminded us of giant ceramic bottles, their shades like flamboyant stoppers. They were wildly modern in their times. The hanging light over the kitchen table made us think UFO. There is no other way to describe it; it’s twin, a table model sat on a bedroom dresser. She even had a similiar floor lamp and shade with a planter in its middle. I have never seen other lamps like these and would take one in a flash. They likely “beamed up”
She also enjoyed hanging and pole lamps. The big attention getters in her family room windows were these ceiling oriented lights. One pole lamp boasted three, different colored ceramic jugs, bottomless, polkadotted with large holes. They hung by chains from a brass circle against the ceiling, supported by the brass pole. It supplied good light when seated beneath it and cast polkadots of light everywhere else. Its companion was a large, white, hole dotted jug lamp, swaged above my uncle’s favorite chair. Very mod, very my aunt.
The jug pole lamp has become a family heirloom, loved by a couple of generations. It has become a traveler too. After leaving Marion for Florida where it spent many content years still doing a fine job. When my aunt died, it moved to Kentucky and a great spot by a fireplace, with little kids to light-up. This month it returns to its Marion beginnings with my cousin, who is returning to hers. Cannot wait to see them both.
