Family Secrets - Aunt Daisy

Family Secrets - Aunt Daisy

Aunt Daisy lived alone.  She was born the same year that President Truman was and out lived him by ten years.  Daisy never married and was the only non retarded daughter in a house hold of 6 boys.  She was 21 years older than my grandfather and was responsible for much of his parenting. 

Daisy outlived all her family even my grandfather so therefore she was the recipient of all the collectables that the family acquired through the years.  Daisy never married because the family, so my grandfather told me once, never thought anyone was quite good enough for her.  She never worked at a paid job in her life so had no social security and no visible means of support.  My grandfather helped a little in paying for a one room apartment close to where we lived and for a time being she lived with the oldest brother, Frank, a not so nice guy so it was said, who had a wooden leg due to a rail road accident.  She took care of the youngest boy at the beginning of his life and took care of the oldest boy at the end of his life.  Daisy never had a life of her own.  Some how she managed to survive through some sort of old age pension and a rail road pension that some how her brother or father, who had also worked for the rail road once, had managed to arrange.  Her limited income and survival technique was never really explained to me but that is not the family secret.

When Daisy died she left nothing to anyone, basically because she had nothing.  There were some knickknacks around the apartment that were sort of interesting and held some memories for me due to the fact that I had seen them all my life. 

It was left to my grandmother to get rid of anything that was left including Daisy who was buried in the family plot.  My grandmother asked me what I wanted and I said I liked the picture of the Gilded Age lady in the oval frame with the bubble glass.  I use to think it was a picture of Daisy when she was a young lady and when I asked as much she would laugh in what can only be described as a little embarrassing giggle with her hand placed over her mouth and mumble “no.”

Wife Marty wanted the frame with the bubble glass and was not interested in the picture, I was interested in the picture but not the bubbled glass frame.  

I extracted the picture and dutifully gave Marty the frame. (Which she has hanging in her house today, picture being replaced by a McAnally original of some sort.)  After the extract I noticed that on the reverse side there was in inscription in what I recognized as Daisy’s hand writing – “Charlie as Woman.”  I was a little puzzled.

I asked my grandmother about it and she said that was a picture of Cousin Charlie who was a female impersonator some time prior to the 1920’s.  He was an actor but specialized in playing a woman on stage.  “We never really talked about him much, I sort of figured he was just a little strange,” my grandmother said.