Aunt Helen and Her Brood
My Dad's sister was Aunt Helen, pictured in the first photo in the other Reimers post. She is the lady at the top left.She was married to a school janitor and I believe they had 4 or 5 kids. Tommy was the oldest and I can't remember all of the other names of my cousins.
They lived in a little ranch style home (all on one level) and were the poorest of our clan. I remember going to their home and the toilet would be backed up and it smelled like a sewer. It was the only place I didn't want to eat at. Even as a young child I could tell a dirty home and I must have had a dirty fork or plate at one time and it grossed me out. I remember someone opening the refrigerator and for all the people who lived in the home, there wasn't much food in the fridge, but there was a six-pack of beer.
Aunt Helen was a jolly woman. I remember going to her house once and she had on long, dangly, fancy earrings and a white shirt with blood stains on it.
Aunt Helen gave me the idea for a continuing cartoon I used to draw. She told me how there was a miniature dinosaur in her kid's school. His name was Lurch. I told her there were no living dinosaurs. But she insisted that Lurch was definitely a miniature dinosaur. I'm sure Lurch was a lizard that looked like a dinosaur. I'm still not sure if Aunt Helen truly believed he was a dinosaur or if she had a twinkle in her eye when she said that, but at the time I think she really believed it.
So I created an ongoing cartoon series (wish I had saved them but I would actually send them to people) about Lurch, The Miniature Dinosaur. I drew him as a kind of stegosaurus with the plates down his back and a thick tail. When I was on vacation, I sent my best friend a cartoon of Lurch enjoying the beach and floating in the ocean on an innertube.
You, your mother and I all liked to draw. I also had a continuing drawing spree about 4 girls wearing different clothes. No stories like with Lurch, but I drew them a lot.
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