My dear Aunt Frances (95 Y/O) GETS it.

[DemoTex]

I spent the afternoon in Aunt Frances's parlor in Auburn, Alabama, talking with her and Aunt Minnie (92 Y/O). Frances was a dean at Auburn University for years, and Minnie - who lives about three blocks from Frances - was a very successful landscape architect in Cleveland until she and her late husband retired to Auburn (where they, my dad, and seven other brothers and sisters grew up).

The conversation segued to Bill Clinton's appearance on FOX with Chris Wallace. Aunt Frances asked me if I had seen the latest brouhaha about the amount of "leg" Clinton showed on camera.

Some of Aunt Frances's astute observations:

1. On Clinton's FOX appearance: "It's horse-hockey! It is the producer's fault. He called the camera placement and shots. They panned back to try to embarrass President Clinton. They wanted to catch him scratching his privates (sotto voce). That's the FOX mentality. What the hell was Bill doing in the enemy camp anyway?" (THIS from a 95 year old!)

2. On Bu$h: "I hate the little bastard. That silly smirk of his drives me crazy."

3. On Iraq: "It's totally insane. What are we doing there? Did those bastards not learn a damn thing from Viet Nam? What we need is a draft. We need to draft the sons and daughters of some of those high-falutin' Republicans." (Aunt Frances served at a WAC officer in the Pacific Theater during WW-2).

4. Aunt Minnie (WW-2 WAVE), a staunch Presbyterian (PC-USA, like me) church-lady chimes in: "Bu$h is no Christian. He's going straight to hell for claiming to know Christ and waging the wars that he loves."

5. Both said that they will hobble to the polls and vote on November 6: DEMOCRATIC!

Damn, I love my dad's cool sisters!

[FogerRox]

1. takin back our country one district at a time... One Aunt @ a time

[blm]

3. Heh - I like that slogan.

.

[MadMaddie]

2. You have two cool Aunts......

I gotta feeling their age block will be out to vote....this November....

[stevedeshazer]

4. Treasure every moment, life is short

As we were all reminded today.

I hope your aunts live to be 195.

[patrice]

5. What a couple of Characters!

I hope I'm half as alive as they seem to be; aware, full of spit and vinegar - that's what I want to be!

God Bless them!

[GoneOffShore]

6. The aunts are "Chillin"!

When my mom died I found all these cancelled checks made out to the DNC. Little checks, but nonetheless.

The "Greatest Generation" generally don't like the shrub or the people who put him where he is.

They can see through the smoke screen.

[DemoTex]

8. Seven of the ten T____ kids served in WW-2.

There are two older sisters (99 and 96 who did not serve). An older brother (who would be about 102 now, had he lived) was drafted into WW-2 in his forties. The baby sister (now about 75) was too young to serve. Dad and Frances were officers, the others - enlisted.

The family crew returned from the war unscathed, except for my dad. Dad was captured by the Germans in Tunisia in the days leading up to the battle of the Kasserine Pass. He and a number of others escaped during a forced-march when a pair of Spitfires strafed their enfilade. He was wounded in Italy, recovered in a field hospital, and returned to duty to ultimately be in the first group to enter the Dachau Prison outside of Munich.

[Frances]

7. War Eagle!

Aunt Frances sounds great. I went to Auburn in the early 60s. What school was Aunt Frances Dean of?

[DemoTex]

10. War Damn Eagle!

I was there in the '60s too. Aunt Frances was the Dean of Finance for the School of Agriculture. My dad got the first PhD (entomology) granted by Auburn University in 1955 (that was the year of the name change - Auburn had been, officially, the Alabama Polytechnic Institute until that time). What was your major at AU and when were you there?

I was in applied biology. Got real sick (mono and herpes zoster) and had to lay-out two quarters .. that got my ass drafted in 1968. I finished at Georgia Tech apres Viet Nam.

BTW: I was the bass-man for the Auburn Knights for two years.

BTBTW: You would not recognize Auburn now. There are NO familiar landmarks. It is so built up that it is disorienting. People are buying $300,000+++ homes for game-weekend "getaways". They use them only on the weekends of home games during football season. Is that crazy or what?

[Frances]

12. Great to hear from you.

I received a B.S. in Education and then an M.A. in English. During the summer of 1963 I earned $1.10/hour making slides of root tips for an entomologist in the Ag Dept. Unfortunately, I've forgotten the professor's name.

I have very good memories of Auburn, including a few dances I attended where the Auburn Knights provided the music.

One horrible confession--I am no longer a football fan. I am glad when Auburn wins, but I don't watch any games.

[misanthrope]

15. What's so horrible about that?...

...I've always been a big Auburn football fan but I'll readily admit that what goes on there now in regards to the gridiron is a perversion. Maybe it's the mist of nostalgia clouding my vision, but I seem to remember a time when football was more in perspective there.

Everything that my parents taught me about Auburn has changed. It seems to be a pretty disappointing place now.

[DemoTex]

18. I am not a college football (Pro-Lite) fan either. I could care less.

Yesterday, I would have agreed with you misanthrope. I had come to think of Auburn as just another cookie-cutter land-grant state university. Today I spent all day in a class (a concrete staining product class) with a couple of Auburn fine arts graduates on the staff and a young Auburn graduate in operations management as a fellow trainee. These "kids" were extremely impressive. I love every one of them. They are so competent, so motivated, and .. well .. so damn young! They love my ribald tales of Auburn in the mid-sixties: road trips with the Auburn Knights, The Casino, The War Eagle Supper Club, Archie's (later Peep's), Cake Race, the Matchbox Gym (where I played a SRO gig with Bobby Vinton!), necking in the Bigelow parking lot in my grandmother's car, and, finally, my grandmother (who lived in Auburn) asking what my good friend, a local radio-announcer, meant when he said one morning "The high last night was Mac T____!"

It is different now. Many students live in Opelika. They drive exotic cars (when my dad was an undergraduate at Auburn before the war, the only student with a car was Sanborn Chase .. and he had a Stutz-Bearcat). There is a horrendous traffic problem. But the kids seem more focused than when I was there. We spent too muck time checking our "six" for the bogeyman from the draft board.


Auburn Knights, 2006

[dflprincess]

9. What wonderful aunties -

but tell them to "hobble" to polls on November 7 - unless they're really determined to the first in line.

[Maraya1969]

11. Bravo Aunt Francis and Aunt Minnie!

:toast:


I'll always remember my grandmother who died at 92 saying re: sex before marriage................

"The worms are gonna eat it when you're dead so you may as well use it now"


We are not supposed to just get old, we are supposed to get lighter and wiser.

[Dem2theMax]

17. LMAO!

I would have loved your Grandmother!

My 88 year old "former" repuke Mom now watches The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Countdown on a daily basis.
Never thought I'd see the day. LOL.

[BamaLefty]

13. Auburn huh?

Not exactly my favorite place in the world (Roll Damn Tide!) but it's great to know that you've got a level headed aunt here in Alabama. Go Minnie & Francis! :cheer:

[K8-EEE]

14. I Love Them Too!

Thanks for sharing this!

[OneBlueSky]

16. I pray that I live to 92 . . . (hell, even 72!) . . . and stay as sharp .

as these lovely ladies . . . the thing about older people is their life experience gives them a certain perspective on things -- often a very perceptive one . . .

I'm gettin' up there, and the older I get, the more I realize how much I DON'T know . . . still a long way to go before obtaining any serious wisdom . . . but I'm workin' on it . . .

[Booster]

19. Old age don't mean you're stupid. Go, Aunties, Go.