Aunt Phoebe's Journey

There are two different versions of the following story, one written by Florence for an AAUW assignment, and another apparently for publication, though there is no evidence that it was published.

The shorter version was the better one, in some respects, but the longer version contained some interesting additions. The version given here is a combination of the two.

Aunt Phoebe was Clemmie's next older sister, who married Frank Sherpy, probably about 1876. Of there seven children, Bertha, the oldest, was about seven years older than Ella (see the Watson Genealogy & Chart)  - MRW

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by Florence Richardson Street

Enclosed you will find the story of about Aunt Phoebe. Our assignment was to make a short story out of some family happening, so of course I have had to fill in a few gaps. In the main it happened like this. At the time Roy's behavior seemed cowardly to us as he cowered there in bed until morning instead of telling his folks at once. - FRS

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“Well, Phoebe is on her way to Nebraska!” Mother remarked with a happy sigh at the breakfast table one Friday morning in July. Next to visiting her oldest sister Clara herself, Aunt Phoebe's journey was the best substitute. “Poor Phoebe! She's had such a hard life. She was so full of fun as a girl. I do hope she has a good visit.”

It seemed queer to us children to think of Aunt Phoebe's going far away. She was one of the fixtures in our lives. If mother were ill, Aunt Phoebe would come in to spend the day and sort of take over. While she didn't exactly cheer us up, we were accustomed to her gloomy outlook on life, and even derived a little amusement from her doleful forebodings.

We always associated Aunt Phoebe’s visits with tales of woe. The cows had gotten into the corn because Uncle Frank hadn't mended the pasture fence, and one of their best milkers had died of colic. Bertha had that pain in her side again; Aunt Phoebe was sure it was appendicitis. She would probably have to have an operation. The black horse from their best work team had broken his leg and Frank had to shoot him. Somehow these calamities always occurred just as mother was Planning to buy herself a new coat or dress, and she seldom had the heart to buy them. Father sometimes chided her for going shabby.

It must have been a month earlier that Mother had announced at dinner that Phoebe was going to Nebraska to visit sister Clara. Her sensitive face was flushed with suppressed excitement. We children were thrilled! In those days mothers of large families, especially farm wives like Aunt Phoebe, did not stray far from their own firesides. Even a trip to town required careful planning and was undertaken with some hesitation. From southern Minnesota to Nebraska seemed a stupendous journey.

“How exciting! When is she going? Who's going to take care of the children?” we chorused.

“Who's going to pay for the trip?” Father inquired warily, glancing quizzically at mother from under his bushy brows as he deftly carved the big, juicy beef roast.

Perhaps Father had some grounds for suspicion, though goodness knows, Mother didn't have the price of a railroad ticket to Nebraska. Women were not supposed to need much cash when they had charge accounts which were settled between merchants every January by a system of swapping. Father generously gave Mother five dollars each week for her own use, no questions asked. Two dollars paid the weekly wage of our maid-of-all-work, usually a Norwegian “newcomer” girl, so there was not much left to throw around. However, Father's shirts and ties and, occasionally, a suit or overcoat he had expected to wear again had a way of disappearing and then, presto, reappearing on Aunt Phoebe's son Roy.

“Phoebe has been saving her butter and egg money and she has enough in the bank to pay for her ticket!” Mother retorted triumphantly.

“Humph!” Better save it to buy shoes for that raft of young ones instead of gallivanting across the country,” Father remarked dryly.

“Now, Dave, Phoebe's entitled to a vacation. She works her fingers to the bone, and, besides, she hasn't seen Clara for 10 years! Neither have I,” she added wistfully.

Mother always stood up for her sister Phoebe, but not for Uncle Frank. According to her, their habitual hard luck was due to Uncle Frank's poor management. He was not what was called a go-getter. When our family drove in the surrey on a Sunday afternoon out to their farm 3 miles south of town, Father was wont to remark:

“Must be Frank's north forty along here. Look at the mustard!”

Mother and Father did not agree on the reason for Uncle Frank's poor farming. Mother said he just wasn't cut out for a farmer; he should have been a mechanic. Look at the way he liked to tinker. Father was sure Uncle Frank was just too “doggoned lazy.”

“Dave, the children will hear you!”

Of course, lank, brown-eyed, easy-going Uncle Frank sometimes did not get his corn cultivated or his wheat harvested just when those jobs should have been done, on account of his attending so many auctions. He had a passion for auctions. They were sort of social gatherings, and Uncle Frank was nothing if not sociable. He would come home from an auction with a broken-down corn planter, a sewing-machine which would not run, or a rocker with one rocker missing.

“You said your sewing-machine wouldn't work anymore,” he defended himself against Aunt Phoebe's upbraiding.

“Well, neither does this one, as far as I can see!” she would retort sharply.

“I can fix it,” Uncle Frank would assure her.

“If you're so good at fixing things, why don't you fix the one I've got instead of spending good money for another piece of junk? Mine is a heap sight better than this.”

It was fun out at the Sherpy farm. There were such fascinating things to play with. The treadles of the old sewing-machine would go up and down, up and down, when we pumped them, so we pretended it was an organ. We played Sunday school and sang all our Sunday school hymns lustily to the accompaniment of the sewing-machine. The baby carriage, minus a wheel and a handle, was just the thing for a doll-buggy when a piece of rope was tied to the front end and some child held up the rear corner. We used to play house with the churn that had a broken dasher. Uncle Frank was going to fix that as soon as he got around to it. He always had time to banter with us children, and truth to tell, we liked him better than diligent Aunt Phoebe.

Aunt Phoebe’s impending trip was the chief topic of conversation at our home for the next few weeks. We boasted of it to our friends. We all took a keen interest in Aunt Phoebe's wardrobe. It was Mother who discovered among her things a piece of gray wool just right for a new dress for Aunt Phoebe. Mother, herself, cut out and fitted the dress one time when Aunt Phoebe could drive in to spend the day. Her blue eyes glowed in happy anticipation of her approaching journey. When the worry lines were smoothed out of her forehead, she looked almost pretty in spite of her short, dumpy figure.

Father slipped mother a five-dollar bill one day, and gruffly told her to see that Phoebe got a decent hat. “I'm tired of looking at that old black bonnet with the bedraggled ostrich feather when I sit behind her in church.”

Father sister Emma, who taught in a Minneapolis high school and was considered very stylish by the family, arrived for a visit just then. She impulsively decided that Aunt Phoebe might as well have her navy blue coat; she was planning to buy a new one next spring anyway, and here were some black kid gloves she didn't need. Even Uncle Frank staid away from an auction and donated three dollars for some new shoes.

We were very proud when Aunt Phoebe donned her new wardrobe for our benefit a couple of days before she was to start for Nebraska. We felt she would do the family credit. Mother had prevailed upon her to get a cheerful-looking hat trimmed with one lovely pink silk rose. Aunt Emma had showed her how to do her hair in the new teacup style. With the soft natural waves of her brown hair loosened around her face, Aunt Phoebe looked years younger.

“I haven't had a whole new outfit since my wedding-day twenty years ago,” she told us as she smoothed the folds of the dove gray wool dress lovingly, glancing at her reflection in Mother's long mirror with evident satisfaction. We pretended not to know that Mother had intended that material for herself when she bought it. “Won't Clara be surprised to see me so well dressed!”

That was on Wednesday. Aunt Phoebe was leaving early Friday morning. She planned to wash and iron and bake bread on Thursday, then pack the leather valise Father had loaned her; he had bought it when he went to the Chicago World's Fair (Colombian Exposition, 1893) and had brought it home full of gifts for the family. We wouldn't see Aunt Phoebe again before she left. Mother and she indulged in a tearful farewell with many messages from Mother to her sister Clara in Nebraska. And Phoebe was not to worry about her family, mother told her. Bertha and family were so capable, they'd get along fine. The responsibility would be good for them and they would appreciate their mother all the more when she returned.

We were still at the breakfast table that Friday morning when Uncle Frank's team and light wagon drove up to our hitching post. Of all things out clambered Aunt Phoebe!

“Her train must be late. I do hope she won't miss her connection in Saint Paul,” worried Mother.

But Aunt Phoebe was weeping. She was the most dejected, woe-begone looking mortal imaginable. At first she was incoherent because of her sobbing. We thought somebody must have died, but it wasn't Uncle Frank, for he was sitting in the wagon, holding the reins and staring straight ahead. He seemed to have lost his customary jauntiness.

“We thought you had started for Nebraska,” Mother observed in a puzzled tone.

“I'm not going to Nebraska, now or ever!" Aunt Phoebe announced between sobs. “The money, the money is gone, gone!” Her voice rose to a wail.

“You said it was in the bank,” Father reminded her.

“It was. Until yesterday afternoon. Frank drove in to get it because the bank wouldn't be open this morning before train time. I was finishing the ironing and the bread wasn't out of the oven yet, so I couldn't go with him.”

“The bank hasn't failed, has it?” Father asked Aunt Phoebe impatiently. It was past time for him to go to his furniture store, but he couldn't leave in the midst of this family crisis. Aunt Phoebe was so agitated that we despaired of ever making head or tail to her story.

“Oh, Frank got the money alright. He was just putting it into his wallet outside the bank and a stranger spoke to him. He seemed to be a pedlar. He was going out our way, he said, and would appreciate a lift. Of course Frank let him ride. Frank drove right past the Koester place where they were having an auction.”

Here Aunt Phoebe gave Father a withering look. She sensed what he was thinking, I guess. “He says he wishes now he had stopped. He might as well have bought that black horse of theirs to match up Cap.” She went on, “It was pretty late to do any peddling that night, so Frank told the man he might stay the night if he wouldn't mind sleeping with Roy.”

“Of course we were all talking about my trip, and I was busy packing. My new clothes looked so pretty!” Aunt Phoebe again burst into violent weeping. She dabbed at her reddened eyes with a moist handkerchief.

“Well, Roy heard a sound in the night. The pedlar wasn't in bed with him. Roy could barely see him. He was standing in front of the old walnut chest, rummaging in the top drawer where Frank had put the money. He told Roy to keep his mouth shut or he'd shoot and then he skipped out. Roy came and woke Frank and they chased the peddler but it was no use. He just disappeared.

“It took me years to save enough butter and egg money for that ticket,” Aunt Phoebe continued. “Something was always happening so that I had to use it for some other purpose. I'll never have the heart to try it again. I just wasn't meant to go.” Aunt Phoebe sank into a sitting room sofa and gave herself up to utter despair. Mother dropped down beside her and wept in silent sympathy.

This was too much for Father. It really had seemed too good to be true that he was not going to be involved in Aunt Phoebe’s project. He usually was. There were Fannie’s high school tuition and textbooks last year, and little Ralph's funeral the year before that. Uncle Frank's insurance would have lapsed long since if Father hadn't assumed responsibility for the premiums. Our building the big new house last year had made going a bit tough; But, if this meant so much to Clemmie, maybe he could manage.

“You kids! How about giving up Chautauqua camp this August and letting Aunt Phoebe have the money for her trip? Fishing's pretty punk down there at Waterville anyway,” Father posed the question to the five of us.

I gulped. I had just finished sewing six rows of brown braid around the skirt of my first bathing-suit. And then I thought of Father lugging home new fishing-tackle, green minnow-bucket and all, in January. He loved to fish and this week at Waterville was his only chance in their busy year. However, we all nodded assent.

Father fumbled with his checkbook. Somehow he couldn't see very well. He blew his nose loudly. Then he scribbled something on a small blue pad and strode into the sitting room.

“Here, Phoebe, take this and buy your ticket to Nebraska, and, for God's sake, start tomorrow before lightning strikes the barn or that ugly bull gores Frank!”

Do you know, it was the queerest thing! Mother was the one who was grateful - not Aunt Phoebe. Mother threw her arms around Father's neck and kissed him right there before us all. Aunt Phoebe just sat there staring at the little blue slip, and then she said:

“It will take some figuring to get to Nebraska and back on that, Dave.”

The Sherpy clan: Frank is clearly a social person

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