Cousin Scarlet

Just talked to Cousin Scarlet today. She will be appearing in her own Blog space any day soon.

My poor Cousin Scarlet had the toughest time with Aunt Fern. Fern had the rigid idea that names should be either family names OR come directly from the Bible. Since Scarlet wasn't either, she was often singled out when things went awry. When the four of us were together, things OFTEN went awry in Aunt Fern's world. Who knew you couldn't keep worms as pets? And we saw nothing wrong in peeing out in the woods if we couldn't get back to the farmhouse in time. If the boys could do it, so could we. Logical, but apparently, not 'ladylike'. And somehow, Scarlet was considered to be the 'ringleader'.

Ahem. Truth be told, we all took turns leading each other astray. I found out where Uncle Bob hid his stash of illicit 'likker'. Poor Uncle Bob was Aunt Fern's Bachelor brother who had never had the nerve to leave the farm, let alone the small town he had grown up in, except for a short stint in the army, where he developed a taste for moonshine and girlie magazines.

We four little holy terrors used to sneak peaks at his naughty 'zines and compare our developing bosoms in despair while he was away out working the farm. Later, we would stalk his movements when he would take the long evening walks to visit his private stash of 'Knock You on Your Ass 'Shine'. To this day, we have no idea where he got that stuff, but Everclear has nothing on it.

The clearest memory is the night we decided that Aunt Fern's pet pig needed an earring to match the tag it wore proudly. We had been into Uncle Bob's likker stash, and armed with a darning needle, the four of us tried to coral the damned beast into submission.

We were caught, filthy, bedraggled, hiccuping and thoroughly battered. Aunt Fern had her suspicions about the state of our sobriety, but since she had no demon alcohol on hand, couldn't actually prove anything. However, Scarlet, being the one caught with the damning evidence of the darning needle, was sentenced to cross-stitch a sampler for Aunt Fern that summer, since she was so eager to poke holes into something. The rest of us were made to clean out the pig pen, a job we preferred to that of sitting politely under the eagle eye of The Aunt.

(Uncle Bob never did figure out why his moonshine consumption went up in the summer. I always thought he may have figured he was simply sipping more to soothe his flagging nerves having his nieces around!)