I was a favorite of my Aunt Janet, and Aunt Janet was one of mine as well.  Aunt Janet and Aunt Lois (photo) are my mother's younger sisters. Janet was born in 1933, ten years after my mother, which made her sixteen years old when I was born.   Aunt Lois is even younger.  She was only 14 when I was born.  The picture is of Janet and Lois holding my older brother.  I think Lois is only nine years old in the photo.   Both Janet and Lois were very pretty and I loved to see them when I was a little boy, but I didn't get to see them very often.  They were always busy at school or college and away from my grandmother's house when we would travel to the North Country in the summer to visit.  

My Mom was raised on a farm in Ellenburg Center, NY, near Malone, where the book Farmer Boy is set.  Farmer Boy, part of Laura Ingall Wilder's Little House series, is a wonderful portrayal of what life would be like for my grandfather decades after the book was written.

Dad was raised in Mooer's Forks, near the northern end of Lake Champlain.  My mother and her sisters went to college in Plattsburg, NY.  Her family and my Dad's family were all dairy farmers until after The War, when my father's family moved to Syracuse, NY. .

One of my earliest memories of Aunt Janet happened when I was seven years old.   Aunt Janet had me in her car.  She wasn't yet married, and at that time she had moved to Syracuse, NY and was working there.  I believe at one time she had lived in an apartment with my Dad's two sisters, my godmother Aunt Winnie (Winifred), and Aunt Jenny (Genevieve).  A single young lady in the big city.  She loved to go bowling and dancing.   

Aunt Janet had me in her car and was taking me to Baldwinsville, about two miles from Barbara Lane.  She may have been taking me to Barnes Dairy for an ice cream cone.  It was summertime. She had the radio on and was listening to the rock and roll station   As we got closer to Barnes Dairy, Elvis Presley came on the radio, singing "You Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog" - and I started singing right along with Elvis.   I looked over at Aunt Janet and her mouth was hanging open, probably because I was doing a pretty good job of it.  I passed my very first audition very nicely.   I felt very special because I was the only one of my brothers and sisters that she brought along with her, and because I felt absolutely uninhibited in busting out with Elvis with Aunt Janet next to me.  That was something I would never do in a car with my mother and father.   I would get shushed.  Being an Aunt is a very important job, and Aunt Janet was doing a magnificent job. 

My Mom would also sing along with the radio at home, and sometimes she would whistle the tune, but Mom liked to listen to country music, like the Tennessee Waltz,  or Rosemary Clooney singing This Old House, which I particularly liked, but I was unfamiliar with them and not able to sing along, and of course not wanting to upstage my Mom as she was singing along while working in the kitchen of our new house.  .  Mom & Dad liked Perry Como, Julius LaRosa, Eddy Arnold, that sort of popular music, and not Elvis or the Everly Brothers, the singing brothers who were my most favorite.  My Mom had a bit of a secret crush on Conway Twitty, who had a huge hit with "It's Only Make Believe" in 1958, but I only learned about Mom being a big fan when she actually went to a Conway Twitty concert in Syracuse years later and got all starry-eyed when she talked about it.

I often felt a little tension in the room when Aunt Janet came to visit, which was completely understandable  Aunt Janet was ten years younger than my mother - one of the babies of the family.  I know that as Mom was growing up she had to work very hard, being the second oldest of the children on the farm.  It's work, work work from dawn to dusk on a dairy farm.  My grandmother baked two pies and loaves of bread every day but Sunday, and kept a vegetable garden, and the washing and ironing, and minding the furnace, while Grandpa and the boys were milking the cows and cleaning the barn and taking the milk to the station and plowing and planting and harvesting, putting the corn in the silo and baling the hay and pitching it up in to the hay loft in the barn above the cows.    Backbreaking work and I know Mom was expected to pitch right in with all of it.     Meanwhile Mom's little sisters were able to play and have fun because they were too little to work.   I can imagine Mom most likely didn't get a new dress very often while the little ones had pretty dresses and ribbons.  My grandparent's farm did OK during the Depression, better than many, but still Mom bore the brunt of it, while the little ones were little girls as things were getting much better.

My Mom dearly loved all of her brothers and sisters,  but as Aunt Janet would tell us about all the fun she was having, going to dances and bowling and going golfing, I don't wonder if my mother had a little resentment at never having had any of these things.   In my Mom's diary, one which she kept from 1945 until the year I was born, she wrote an entry about going to the movies. One time. 

My Mom went to business school for two years, then she became the secretary for the Principal of the High School in her home town of Ellenburg Center, and then she traveled to Tucson, Arizona in 1944 to marry my father, who was a Sergeant in the US Army Air Corps at Davis-Monthan Air Base.    Sergeants don't get paid a lot of money, and because Dad was married he lived off base and had to pay rent. where the town was besieged by a lot of young flying officers and soldiers.   Years later my Mom told me one time how she had to scrape the back of the kitchen stove to get grease with which to fry the eggs.  She was just stating the facts.  My mother never complained, although raising eight children drained the life out of her.

As a youngster I didn't know much of this yet, although we were told tales from early on by my father, whose family had a much rougher time of things during the Depression.  Dad always talked about having not much to eat but potatoes and salt pork.  When he returned from The War and was able to get a good factory job in Syracuse, and was able to buy our Old Home, it must have seemed like a miracle.   Dad and all his brothers and sisters except his oldest half brother Edward had moved to Syracuse, his older half brother Bill having been the first, who took in younger brother Gabe, who was a teenager. Bill was a sharp operator who got into buying apartment houses and doing concrete paving of sidewalks and driveways, and brothers Gil and Gabe worked in factories like my father. The Post-War Boom brought us all into the middle class.

Magoon Family Photo 1946
Front: David & Bernard Lavallee, Eleanor Magoon Lavallee; Lois, Janet and Gleyn Magoon. Standing: Roland & Claude, Rhada and Linda, Chauncey, Marjorie, Rita, Gail & Donald Magoon

For Aunt Janet, she was able to go from the farm to Junior College to the "big city", her own apartment and having her own car.  No wonder sshe was full of fun and laughter, even more than my other Aunts and Uncles whose spirits were on the rise after the long struggles of the Great Depression and the War.

So one summer day, a year or so after my first Elvis impersonation, Aunt Janet was going on a drive Up North to see my Grandma and Grandpa and her brothers, and she came by to get me to take along with her.  I was surprised and happy for an extra special visit, just me, to see Grandma & Grandpa and Uncle Gleyn, Uncle Claude & Aunt Rhada and their kids, my lovely cousins Roland and Linda and Jimmy and Stephen.   Uncle Gleyn still lived with my grandparents.  Claude, my Mom's older brother, had his own farm just down the road.     Uncle Don, Aunt Rita, and cousins Gail and Selva Jean lived just across the road from Grandpa's farm, but they were not as much fun to visit.   

Claude and Rhada's family were the happiest family I have ever had the pleasure to know.   Full of love and joy.  I never heard Uncle Claude or Aunt Rhada speak a word in anger or reprove to anyone, even when we screwed things up.  The hard work was met with joking and carrying on the whole time.  Claude never left the farm a day in his life, and he was the happiest man I've known.  My closest cousins, Linda and Jimmy, were a pair of magpies, sly as the devil, eyes a-twinkle.  

So merrily we rolled along on Route 11, a nearly four hour trip through the dairy farm country of Lake Ontario's eastern plains, anticipating the wonderful time we would have visiting our family.  My Grandfather, Chauncey Royal Magoon, whose name I carry for my middle name,  was from Scots ancestors, a homely man with big ears and thinning hair, and a big red nose and ruddy cheeks, who became the man of the house at only eleven years old when his father died.  He had sisters, but he was the man who, with his mother's help, milked the cows and brought the milk to the station and bargained with the buyers of his milk and potatoes.   I saw him only rarely because he was always at work, and I heard him speak almost never, and then only in a low mumble.  His sons, Uncles Don and Gleyn, were cut from the same stoic cloth, although Gleyn had a bit of a wry smile about him as he chewed and spit tobacco.  Claude was more like Aunt Janet and Lois, and like my Grandma.   More chatty and cheerful.  My Mom was more like her Dad.  .   

Grandma Magoon was born Marjorie Peck in 1900.    She was a school teacher in her younger married days as well as managing the farm .  Grandma was like a fairy tale grandmother, a Good Witch Glynda with gray hair now, always in an apron, always with nice soft sugar cookies in the cookie jar, always with a little smile and a "Well, land's sakes"  when we told her a story.    She was the unfaltering rock on which my grandfather could lean if need be.   

As Aunt Janet and I drove along we came to the top of one of the many long low hills left behind by the glaciers 10,000 years ago,  and there was a roadside stand selling freshly picked strawberries.  Aunt Janet pulled over and said she wanted to bring some nice strawberries to Grandma's with us, so she picked up several quarts and we continued on our way.    It was only another hour or so to Grandma's, and finally we arrived at the big farm house with the porch all around the front and the side.  It was Grandma's house at last, and in we went.   Grandpa and Uncle Gleyn were out was in the fields, so it was just me and Aunt Janet and Grandma all to ourselves in her kitchen  Aunt Janet brought in the strawberries, and Grandma was surprised, but then she opened up her fridge and brought out a huge bowl of strawberries that she had just picked

These were wild strawberries, little things that took Grandma all day to pick and hull. Wild strawberries have a flavor and aroma that surpasses anything that even the best farm strawberries can match.  I know because I picked them myself for years at home in the summertime.  It would take me two afternoons at least to pick as many as Grandma had and we had all the berries Aunt Janet brought as well, so there was only one thing to do.   Grandma had made fresh shortcake biscuits for Grandpa and Uncle Gleyn to have for supper.  Grandpa had a sweet tooth and he loved pies and strawberry shortcake, just like me.  So Grandma and Aunt Janet proceeded to feed me the best strawberry shortcake I've ever had, and Grandma had cold fresh cream from her cows to put on it.   I know I had at least two big bowls, and I might have had a third.  My stomach was bursting.  Grandma and Aunt Janet and strawberry shortcake.  I was a very happy little boy.

Aunt Janet was going to visit some other people. perhaps old college friends, or my aunt Lois in Plattsburg, so after our afternoon eating strawberry shortcake, she dropped me off at Uncle Claude's farm a mile or so down the road to have supper and spend time with my cousins.  I would sleep overnight and then the following afternoon we would head back home.    

The next morning I woke up and Uncle Claude and my cousins were already up and out working in the barn and in the fields    Summer is a very busy time on the farm.  Mowing and baling the hay and storing it in the barn is a frantic activity.  The hay has to be baled and put up dry, and with the frequent summer showers back East, as they say., "Make hay while the sun shines".      Aunt Rhada was busy in the kitchen, and she smiled at me and said she was putting a picnic together for us. 

But with all my cousins busy and Aunt Rhada working hard in the kitchen, I guess I got a little bored.   I went outside and for some reason I just got a notion to go see Grandma again, so I just started walking down the road back to Grandma's house.   I'm embarrassed now to think about it, leaving Aunt Rhada and all the trouble she went to, but at the time the thought didn't cross my mind that I was being rude.  I was just walking down the road on a nice summer morning and an hour or so later found myself back at Grandma's house.   

When I walked in the house, Grandma was in the parlor and she was on the telephone, and she was saying "Yes, he's here now, he's fine".  Grandma said I could stay with her until Aunt Janet returned.  So I spent a quiet time at Grandma's until later in the afternoon when Aunt Janet arrived, and we headed back home.  My little trip with Aunt Janet had come to an end. 

Our family and other occasions to visit Up North in the summer, until we had so many kids that it was not convenient to put all of us up.   Once I would drive my motorcycle back up for my cousin Stephen's wedding when I was at college in Syracuse.   We came back from the wedding reception very tipsy and my cousins simply put on their boots and milked the cows in the suits they had worn to the wedding.  Twice a day, no matter what, the cows have to be milked.  That might be one reason why my Grandfather never touched a drop of alcohol 

Thirty years after my trip with Aunt Janet, I was back in Baldwinsville for my 30-year HS reunion and for my youngest sister Joanne's wedding, and I brought my wife Laura and my new little son Peter, 6 months old, on the trip.   I took a photo of Aunt Janet, my Mom, and Aunt Lois with my oldest niece Kelly Buschle at the reception.    We went Up North to see my Mom's family. Grandpa had passed years ago, Uncle Claude had passed away at a young age as well, but I saw my favorite cousins Jimmy (photo) and Linda in Malone, NY  where they ran a flower shop , and I visited Grandma (photo) and Aunt Rhada.    My other cousins had married and had families, but Rhada's son, my oldest cousin Roland and her youngest son, cousin Miles, were still working the farm.

The way of life that my mother's and father's families had known for centuries was slowly coming to an end.as more and more small farmers simply could not support a family.  My Uncle Claude once told me that life was much easier back in the 1940s.  By the 1960s he was having to buy up farms and increase his herd size, and hire hands to generate enough income.  The happy life that they had was turning into struggle. As a boy all I wanted to be was a farmer, but by the time my Grandfather passed away in 1963 I could see that this was impossible.   And rapid change came to the cities as well.    All of the factories that gave my Dad and my uncles, his family, a good living, and gave my Dad the ability to raise eight chilfren, are long gone. 

I am left with happy memories of days gone by, days of summer and Aunts and Uncles and cousins, and strawberry shortcake.  

As of this writing, my Aunt Janet and Aunt Lois are my only living family of that generation, and I wish them many more years of life and health. 
God bless our family.