Intermezzo: Auntie Jean

      I need to back up in time a little to tell about my mom's younger sister, Jean.  As I related before, my mom was instrumental (pun intended) in helping me develop my musical skill.  But I should also say a few words about Auntie Jean.

      She and her husband, Uncle Dave, were public school music teachers: she played bass and he tuba.  (Guess they both loved that bass clef sound!) They went to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, where they met.  They then moved to West Point, where Uncle Dave played in the West Point Band.  Since Jean played bass, I never thought twice about NOT playing bass due to my gender.  I even remember that we kept her bass trunk, a huge, black, scary coffin-like wooden crate (used for shipping) in our basement when I was quite young.  It was filled with old clothes,  books, and maybe even a mouse nest or two.  I ended up using one just like it when I played in the Kansas City Philharmonic.  But again I digress.  Back to Jean and Dave.

      One summer, when I was about seven or eight, I went to visit Jean and Dave for a couple weeks. I fell in love with their collie, Duff.  He would sleep in my room with me, sometimes on the bed if the grown-ups weren't looking.  I also remember going to visit Rip's Retreat, a storybook-like town set in the time of Washington Irving, the author of Rip Van Winkle.  The people dressed in colonial-style clothes, made their own soap, ran a blacksmith's shop, and blew glass.  I was especially intrigued with the candle makers.  They would pour molten wax into molds with wicks  inlaid.  The smell was intoxicating.  When the candles were dry, you could buy two of any color of the rainbow, joined together by one wick, to be cut later.

     When Dave had fulfilled his army duty at West Point, they moved to Frankfort, NY, a suburb of Utica. There they both taught music, and when I visited in the summer, I got to meet and play with some of their students.  We would have marathon Monopoly games, made all the more fun because Auntie Jean kept a big bowl of candy on the table for us to munch.  I loved the  glasses in which she served us drinks:  gem toned, aluminum cups that would "sweat" when they held cold beverages.  We used little cloth cozies to hold them so our hands wouldn't get wet.  If we didn't finish the game by bedtime, we would take up where we left off the next morning, although I don't think the candy was  quite so free-flowing then.

     By this time, Jean and Dave had the cutest little boy, about two or three, named Will.  He was fascinated with private planes, like Piper Cubs and Cessnas.   In his sweet, chirpy voice he would announce at the airport:  "Dat's a Bonanza.  Wook, a Pipa Cub!" He could identify just about any plane!  They still had Duff and later, they had a second son, John who loved football.  It was a real treat for me to visit them in the summers, and I tried to maintain the friendships I made there throughout the following school year.

      Flash forward eight or nine years.  I waited tables at a now defunct Howard Johnson's restaurant the summer after my senior year in high school.  I worked the evening shift, and when we were done, after midnight, we would make ourselves ice cream cones for the ride home.  My favorite flavor:  mocha chip.  I found out decades later that Auntie Jean's favorite flavor was ALSO Howard Johnson's  mocha chip.  She and I are both left-handed.  And we both love dogs.  When she and her family moved to LeRoy, NY, near Buffalo, she started breeding her own Cardigan Corgie dogs at her home called Trailwyn Kennels.  Though she is no longer a breeder, she is, to this day active at dog shows, doing canine-related artwork, cartoons, and jewelry.  I like to draw cartoons as well, and it really started me thinking about the mystery of genetics, and the roll of the chromosomal dice.  At any rate, we have a lot in common.  She was, and will always be, my heroine!