In mid-1966, there were about 3 months between the end of the North Dakota job and my Dad’s next assignment near LaCrosse Wisconsin. We traveled east and visited all of the relatives until I am pretty sure they were ready for us to head back west. The most lasting of all of the memories on that trip was the time we spent at Aunt Ellie’s. Ellie (Helen Kosco) was one of my maternal great aunt’s having been born in 1903. She was a lifelong spinster who was particularly hard of hearing, did not have many teeth at the time we visited and lived in Baba’s (my maternal great grandmother) house at 894 James St. where as far as I know where she had lived for a significant time. As I understand it, my Uncle Bart built both the 887 and the 894 James St. houses. Ellie’s house was a testament to the ’20s, ’30’s and ’40s. She had an old Philco radio that at the time was almost as tall as I was. It had a couple of shortwave bands plus AM radio. All of the beds had feather ticks on them that you could get lost in, the furniture was all Baba’s furniture from when the house was built, electrical lighting was sparse and the basement was sort of a nightmare on James Street that I certainly was not going to go and explore. Then there was Ellie.
It was never clear to me why Ellie was hard of hearing. My Mom would always say that she stuck an egg beater end in her ear and broke her eardrum so don’t stick stuff in your ear. I don’t think that was altogether true. In retrospect, I think that she and the rest of the family management had some sort of tacit agreement to tell all the kids that. So without thinking about it they elevated Ellie in all of our minds as a disabled success, while giving us the reason that she was just a tad bit eccentric. She wore glasses that were always bent and did not fit well on her face because she would fall asleep at her chair, her head would mash up against the recliner side and they would bend. Ellie had “the gouch”. She would talk about it all the time because her foot was always swollen, it hurt most of the time and doctor’s were idiots etc etc. She had an old recliner with a 30’s floral print that was pretty worn and an ottoman with a pillow covered with a white pillow case with embroidered flowers on the edges that she would put her foot on. I guess gout is genetic or Slovak eating and drinking habits are so ingrained it might as well be. I wish I had been as interested in Family History back then as I am now. I remember her talking about people from the past non-stop with Mom Hagar; and she had an opinion on each and every one of them. So in the end, I never really knew Aunt Ellie but the time I spent in her home and listening to her left me with an intriguing curiosity and way more questions than answers.
During the summer of ’66, we camped at relatives, camped at campgrounds, camped at the ocean, camped in the Pocono’s. We were gypsies in the truest sense of the word for those three months. Dad loved it… I loved it…. Mom … not so much. At some point, as school approached, we packed up the trunk of the car (per Dad’s drawing of where all the suitcases went) and headed off to LaCrosse, Wisconsin where we rented a small but comfortable 2 bedroom house with attic and basement at 1637 Travis Street a couple of doors down from Tim Sciborski’s house and a half block from Carl Newcomb’s place – the three musketeers ride again!!