Auntie Jo

Auntie Jo

In warm weather, when my brothers and I played in the street in front of our house, I would sometimes see Auntie Jo sitting out on the second floor porch, her hair freshly washed, as she parted it in the middle and combed out the long strands before she pinned it up into the bun she always wore.  Her hair was so very long, mostly gray, but some of it shiny white.

We lived in the downstairs apartment, and Uncle Tony and Auntie Jo lived upstairs. They owned our building, and the one next door. They had lived on the far side of that other building until I was about six or seven, when our upstairs neightbor, Mr. Kilgallen, had moved out. Then, Uncle Tony and Auntie Jo moved into the apartment above us. They were brother and sister, not husband and wife, and they were our landlords; or, at least Tony was.

Uncle Tony was loud and balding, pushy, demanding, sometimes generous, and often bragging. There was something about him that made me nervous. But Auntie Jo was like coming home to someone quiet, loving, toe the mark or she’d have a word with you, but, in the end, she could make everything all right. Her voice was soothing, her manner gentle, and, when we were sick, she made a delicious mint tea for us children that could cure any tummy ache.

We weren’t related to Uncle Tony and Auntie Jo.

My parents met Tony because he’d been a regular customer at the donut shop where they both worked before they got married. It was 1950 then, and they were looking to rent an apartment for after the wedding, but apartments were hard to come by in the tight housing market after the end of the Second World War. After the wedding, they had to live with Dad’s parents for a while, but Uncle Tony at last came through with an apartment for them.

A few months before I was born, my parents moved there, into a lovely first-floor, two-bedroom apartment in a house with a front porch, a back porch, a front garden, and a big back yard with a towering oak. Our house was on a dead end street with a gas station on one corner, a car dealer on the other, some kind of business, maybe a warehouse, across from us, and a gun club down the street.

This was the house in which I lived for my first eleven years, through some very good times, and some very bad times. Auntie Jo was a part of the good times.

Some of my happiest memories of her involve coffee.

Auntie Jo would often invite us, the whole family, to come for coffee. There was a ritual to her preparations. She had her own coffee grinder which consisted of a wooden box with a metal grinding mechanism in the upper area, a handle for turning the grinder on top, and a drawer in the lower section which caught the ground coffee. Auntie Joe would pour in dark, shiny coffee beans, turn the handle again and again, and open the drawer when the coffee was perfectly ground, then spooning it into the basket of her percolator. The smell was enticing.

There was something of egg shell and a dash of salt thrown into the percolater, and the coffee was set on a burner of the stove. I’d sit at the kitchen table, waiting, waiting, waiting for that coffee to perk, and at last, it would begin – a loud, insistent rhythm as the coffee splashed up into the clear glass top of the lid – much better than the Maxwell House commercials. When it had perked enough, Auntie Jo would take the pot off the heat and set it to rest for a few minutes before it could be poured.

We kids all had cookies with the grown-ups, and the Italian cookies we were offered were quite nice. I liked best the ones with cherries and the S-shaped ones. My brothers would have glasses of milk too. Because I was the oldest child, I was allowed to have coffee with the grown-ups. Auntie Jo would fill my cup half way with coffee, the rest of the way with milk. I would put my two teaspoons of sugar into my cup myself. Then I’d stir carefully, licking my spoon before resting it on my saucer. The grown-ups would talk, and I would sit and listen, sipping my coffee and eating my cookies, never interrupting, but certainly offering a comment if asked.

When at last I had finished my cup of coffee, there would often be a sprinkling of coffee grounds in the bottom of my cup. I don’t know why, but that made the whole experience even more special.

We moved away shortly after my eleventh birthday, and I remember my family visiting her one time; but only once.

Times changed.

I can’t imagine Auntie Jo with a K-cup.

I can’t imagine her coffee without a trifling bit of grounds.

Over the years, I’ve tried various ways of making coffee – good coffee, bad coffee, delicious coffee, but there is no way so satisfying to my soul as with a percolator.

It’s not as long as Auntie Jo’s, but my hair’s gone gray now too.

Maybe it’s time to get myself an old-fashioned wooden coffee grinder, not just for the look of it, but one that really works to make perfect coffee, just like Auntie Jo made.

Sweet Auntie Jo.

                                              Kate Lydon Varley