Wistful Wednesday : Old Neighbors

A very very long time ago we got some new neighbors…it must have been 1957 or 1958. 

The house they bought was moved onto a piece of property just one mile from where I grew up.  It was a pretty place…it still is.   The house was set on wooden pillars…I recall the step on the back of the house was quite a stretch for my legs…I was just six or seven.  My parents helped to do some work in the house.  Something about painting and cupboards.

The living room was quite large and it had a picture window looking out toward the road.

My parents played cards there, us kids ate cake and cookies, it was a fun place to visit.  It was on our Trick or Treat route and we delivered May Baskets there too!  One of the most beautiful girls in the whole world lived there…and she was real nice too.  She rode on my bus.  She would babysit for us sometimes and we loved having her as a sitter.  She was a Cheerleader…I know my Mom fixed one of her cheerleader outfits once…her name was Carol.

Carol’s Mom was named Edla and her dad was named Morgan but I think he had a nickname.  Morgan had been a logger, I think he tried his hand at a bit of farming and logging in the winter.  He was a big guy about 6 feet tall with the prettiest blue/gray eyes and a thick head of hair. Edla was a tiny little thing with jet black hair and eyes that smiled.

Edla became very sick…as time progressed her husband brought a bed into the living room so she could see out the big window. We visited her many times in that room. Edla was very ill with Liver Cancer and she just wasted away.  She died in June of 1963. 

That was about the same time that Carol graduated from High School.  She married a football jock and moved away..out West.  Sadly at the age of 31 she died from some kind of cancer.  On her tombstone it says “She lived, she loved and was loved.”  It is a perfect epitaph.  I recall when we heard that she died it seemed unfair because she was so young. 

Carol had a older brother named Lane who died in 1999 ( I am not sure I ever met him) and her father died in 2004 out West( He had remarried.)

I cannot recall going to Edla’s funeral in 1963.  I recall her death….but no funeral or burial.  Morgan and Carol both moved away shortly after Edla’s death.  I have been searching Find A Grave for her grave site with no success. Update: Edla 's grave has been found by a good friend and researcher!  Edla is buried in Maywood Cemetery just south of Oak Park Minnesota.  Her family is buried there.

When ever we pass this pretty little house in the country…I think about the fun times I had there as a child and the people that used to live there.  Happy and sad memories all mixed together.