Aunt Hilda

Aunt Clara & Uncle Bill (my father's sister)

My Mother with boyfriend, Murray

My dear Aunt Clara - such a kind and loving and giving person. My Father's oldest sister who lived at 66 Flora Street in St. Thomas and who took in my Mother and Father and I when we were destitute because of the Market Crash in 1929. Of course her daughter and my cousin Edna and I were like sisters. We got along famously. If we got a cold Aunt Clara would doctor us up with mustard plasters or onion plasters. She was an excellent cook and I well remember her famous casserole of Macaroni and Cheese.

She was an active church worker - though Uncle Bill never went to church at all. I remember Edna and I removing all the wallpaper from the front and back parlour. We had to soak it with hot water and then scape it off with paint scrapers. What a monumental chore!

Also, while our own family was staying there, my Father put in new hardwood floors. I suppose to help pay for our keep.

She was an active woman - quick moving and always busy. She was very close to her sister Hilda. One of the happiest times in my life was living with Aunt Clara and Uncle Bill. We were never made to feel like poor relatives. We really enjoyed her front verandah where we would sit and visit and watch all the funny people go by.

We often visited Grandma Faulkner in Port Dover. After Uncle Bill died, Aunt Clara had the house made into two apartments. I was a large house with a dining-room, kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a bath downstairs and 3 bedroom upstairs. When Aunt Clara became unable to live by herself she went to live with her daughter in London. She was not happy there and missed her home. Later on she was put into a lovely nursing home in St. Thomas - where she later died.

UNCLE BILL
Uncle Bill Miller was an Engineer on the Wabash Railroad in St. Thomas. He was an awful tease and a coarse sort of man. He would say, "Well, I had to marry Clara, she got me out on the end of the pier at Port Dover and told me that if I didn't marry her she'd push me into Lake Erie. Well, I can't swim a stroke - so I had no alternative but to marry her!"

Aunt Clara would bite every time and say, "Oh, Bill, you know that's not so!"

Bill was an aggravator. He would put sugar in his tea and then take his spoon and stir and stir and stir noisily - nearly driving everyone crazy. He loved his beer and drank a lot of it. His hobby was growing roses. He has some beautiful rose bushes in the back yard and spent hours tending to them.

They would go out an gather English walnuts every year. He would spend hours down in the basement hulling them and cracking them and painstakingly picking out the nutmeats. The Aunt Clara would bake data and nut bread -m-m-good!

Being an engineer and shovelling coal all day long he would be black when he came home. He had a shower installed in the basement which he would always use when he came home from work. Though he never went to church he was dead set against Catholics. At the time,
I had a Catholic boyfriend who was to call me on the phone every night about six o'clock. Bill would wait for the call and bust his ass to get to the phone first, then he would yell in a voice you could her down in the next block, "Phyl, here's that damned Dogan on the phone again!" What could I do? I was so embarrassed.