by Emma Riley Sutton

Created on: May 29, 2008   Last Updated: June 25, 2008

Josie Matilda, my Aunt Jo, was born in 1910. My grandmother, her sister, was born four years later. They were as close as close could be and polar opposites. This is probably why I loved her so much. I had a quiet but quick-tempered grandmother. I had a loud-mouth yet even keeled aunt. I loved to listen to her stories, which she told with wit and her own version of "creative liberties." I grew up with the best of both worlds.

Aunt Jo is blamed for my grandmother's quick-temper. She was the one who told my grandmother how it was she came into the world. As the story goes, a neighbor was about to have her own baby and the doctor drove by in a fancy car. Aunt Jo explained that the doctor brought the babies to their mothers in that fancy car. All babies, except her. Aunt Jo told her that everyone of her brothers and sisters had come to live there in a car a lot like the one that just drove by, but "an old buzzard puked you up by the hen house and Momma felt sorry for you and let you stay." That broke my grandmother's heart and, as the family story goes, she was never the same again.

I visited her every chance I could. No matter the time of day, she always told me it was time to feed the chickens and off we would go. She knew I didn't like chickens, the only domesticated animal I will never keep as a pet, and I especially didn't like her chickens. They were the very ones that attacked me. They chased me through the yard, overtook me, and tried to kill me. I still have the scars on my legs. I was only five, but remember like I am still having alcohol poured all over my arms and legs after the assault.

Feeding the chickens was Aunt Jo's way of being alone with me. Her house was always full of family, friends and neighbors. Of course her house was full - she had seven sons. She had seven grandsons before she got a granddaughter. I could count up all of her grandkids, great-grandkids, and great-great grandkids, but I don't have the time. It would take me days to figure it all it. It is suffice to say there are a bunch of them. I know each one by name and each have a special spot in my heart. They have to - they are my Aunt Jo's kids.

She lived in an old farm house with my uncle. He would have been my uncle even if they weren't married. My grandmother and Aunt Jo married brothers. "Only in the south," I have been told. That makes my mom and all of Aunt Jo's boys double cousins. They had lived in that house since they got married in 1925. My aunt was only fifteen when she

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