Monthly Archives: May 2004

Audrey Mae MacDonald reading her books at her daughter Deardra’s home

Audrey: I’m doing fine. I feel good. Everything is going just fine. My feet and legs seem very good. My legs are pretty strong. I go along my simple way. In life, (an analogy) I’m in water with just head out. That’s all I want—just to keep my head above water. In life, I’m walking along. I have everything I want. I have a common sense way of thinking about life. Life is not a sad way. It is not that I want this or I want that. I just go along. If I have sadness, I just keep walking along in life. I seldom felt blue. It (my life) was all right. It wasn’t super. I entertained myself a lot. I kept myself busy with my books. I’ve had so much pleasure in looking up things. I have a magnifying glass the size of the paper and I put this on the paper to read. Why does the name Soloman Levi keep coming into my head? I do not know if that was a book or a song or who he was but the name keeps coming into my head?

*Solomon Levi was a song

Audrey: I made sure you kids all called me Mother because Ma Perkins was on the radio and everyone called her “Ma”. She was a wonderful old lady that was good to everybody. Everybody loved her, and Ma was all right for Ma Perkins. I wasn’t going to be called Ma because I didn’t want to be (dowdy) like her. She was as dowdy as she could be. Also on the radio call ins, it was Ma did this and Ma did that, and the serials on TV all called mothers “Ma”. Mother was (and is) such a beautiful word.

Mary Jane Vaughn Spencer sketched by Audrey Mae Spencer

Audrey: I think I called her mom. Or, I think I would have called her mama. If I said mother, she would have looked at me as if I were crazy. I do not know if anyone was calling her mother. I know my own mother when she spoke of her mother and father always said mother said this or father said that.

Grandma’s father always wore high boots. They (the Vaughns) had land. They were rich in land, but not in money. They had nothing but land. Grandpa Vaughn chopped wood and planted corn. Grandma and Grandpa Vaughn had five daughters and two sons. The daughters were MaryJane, Martha, Susan, Rachel and Margaret.

Martha married Harry Kirby and they had two sons, Harry Jr. and Ray. Harry, Jr., the first son worked on the trolley as did his father, Harry Sr. I gave Vaughn the middle name of Ray after Martha’s second son who was a big strong man who was always making everyone laugh (with his jokes and quick wit) just like his father, Harry, Sr.

One of the other sisters had to go be a housekeeper for a poor man who lived alone. None of them starved to death, but they were only rich in land.

Audrey: I have a very comfortable room. I have a three shelves bookcase with a small bookcase on top and then all my dolls (stuffed animals) on top. I have a bird feeder outside my window. Spencer put the bird feeder by the window up close.

Audrey: Well, Grandpa wore overalls on the farm and all the farmers wore overalls (because of their cloth endurance during all that strenuous farm work). Now anyone with overalls on is stylish. Then it was only the farmers.

Audrey: After a while, Grandma got a wooden washing machine. Then Grandma got a tin washing machine right away (as soon as they were for sale). (She would) carry pails of water and fill it (washing machine) with hot water. She had to push and pull. Then she got an electric one where she didn’t have to push and pull.

MaryJane Vaughn Spencer

Audrey: We Yankees, we never ate anything bad. We had vegetables from the land. We had plain food from the ground.

Grandma had a can of milk that hung down the well. The can had a cover and a handle and hung down the well. The milk was nice and cold as it hung in the well. Grandma would reach down and pull it (milk container) up. She would reach it and put (pour) milk in her pitcher. Then, she would put the pitcher of cold milk on the table (as we sat down to the table). We had cold milk.

We would hang the ham on a hook in the cellar. As you go down the cellar, about two steps down, you could reach over to the top shelf for butter. Everybody put milk in the well in a can with a lid and handle, and put everything else in the cellar.

It wasn’t easy with the snow. We had the cows in the barn. They would run out and get right back in.

Mother would pay me a penny to take a swallow of milk. Mother would peel a raw potato and dip it in vinegar. The vinegar was in a saucer. I loved vinegar and raw potato. Nobody else liked it, but me. Mother had a hard time to get me to eat anything good. I was a skinny little thing. Every winter I was in bed. I had all those childhood diseases. I would lie in bed and look out the window and wait for the green grass and I’d know it was spring.

School was a mile from my house and when I went there, I had to walk. I think the name of the School was Middle Road School. I would walk through the field. Edith went to a different place in Washington. Ed went to school, but when he went to Anthony, he was happy to get out of that school and go to work.

(Looking out the window at Alpine Nursing Home) here is a nice yellow bird. Here’s two, they are so pretty. Grandma always shook the tablecloth out the window for the birds. Birds would come for the crumbs.

Audrey Mae MacDonald and her son Vaughn Ray MacDonald at Kent Regency, Warwick, RI

Audrey: I am sleeping all the time. I feel pretty good. I finished eating now. It is as sunny as it can be. I don’t care about going out. I like sitting here and looking out the window. I’m always falling asleep. Nothing unusual. Vaughn helped me put the puzzle together of a boy eating his sandwich and the dog sitting there waiting for a bite.

Audrey: We had a round table that Aunt Jeannie gave me. Yes, I enjoyed making a puzzle. You leave it there and everybody comes by and makes a piece. When Vaughn comes over he works with me on the puzzle.

Aunt Jeanie and Aunt Di

Audrey: She is buried in Knotty Oak Cemetery, Coventry. Her family lived in that area. Her first husband, or was it her son Franklin, was killed in a train accident. He was going to the World’s Fair in New York when the train got in an accident. There was a big (popular) song written about it (the incident of the train accident on the way to the world’s Fair). The train fell off the tracks.

Aunt Di married twice. ^*Her first husband fell off  a load of hay and it killed him.  Aunt Di lived in a big mansion until her husband died. Then she came to live with Aunt Jeanie.

*Julia Rogers, a local member of the community, only knows Aunt Di being married once – to Ed Wicks. When Ed Wicks died, the property went to his family of origin and Aunt Di came to live with her sister, Aunt Jeanie.