Memories of Home and Aunt Rhody

by Virginia Lancaster Shields from Floyd, Va.

Minnie Rakes, a girl from “down the mountain” had achieved the title “Aunt” by marrying Ike Martin. Ike’s wife, Amelia Barnard Martin, was my mother Rachel Barnard’s sister. Amelia had died, leaving Ike Martin a widower.  

Ike Martin had built a beautiful two-story brick house on Franklin Pike that survives today. Minnie was much younger than Ike, and when he died, Aunt Minnie became queen of the castle.

Mama always said the Barnard family were not happy that Aunt Minnie inherited that property. It was said Aunt Melia (Amelia) promised her portion of the estate to her Barnard kin, but Ike left it all to Minnie in his will when he died.

Johnny P Cocks, from Meadows of Dan community began courting Minnie. He was a successful insurance salesman and eventually owned the Ford Dealership in Floyd, Va. He and Minnie married after a long courtship.

 Johnny P Cocks was a funny man with a red face and light pink hair. In his later years, after Aunt Minnie died, he took to using liquid red shoe polish to keep his hair “pink”. He and Aunt Minnie were frequent visitors and would often come over to play Set Back with Mama and Aunt Lou or just sit on the porch and talk.

There was an older woman, Rhody, whose last name I never knew, that lived in a tiny house beside the Franklin Pike across the road from the big Victorian brick house.  Johnny P. made Rhody’s live rather miserable by constantly playing tricks on her.

One Halloween night, he and my sister, Mary, made a scarecrow man, overall stuffed with straw, shirt stuffed with straw and finally, one of Mr. Cock’s old felt hats. They sat it on the bench right outside Rhody’s door, knowing Rhody hated men.

Rhody’s eyesight was not good. The next morning, she found “the man” on her porch. She ran back into her house, snatched a boiling tea kettle of water off her small fire and scalded the Scarecrow.

Mr. Cocks laughed for days. Rhody was embarrassed and angry but never spoke of the matter. Mary told us about the prank. It’s said Rhody just mumbled to herself and ignored the whole episode.

Once she got so angry at Aunt Minnie and Mr. Cocks that she came to Mama’s and asked to live in Grandma Octavia Lancaster’s old log house.

 That was a two-story log house built in the 1820’s for Grandma Octavia West and her husband Robert Lancaster. Both had died, leaving the house to Mama and my father Tazwell Lancaster. We called it the “Old House”. That was its name, and still is.

 Rhody would live with us for a couple of months, or even a year sometimes. The downstairs was her workplace and living room. She cooked, baked bread in a Dutch Oven, and heated flatirons in the immense fireplace with which she ironed out clothes. The old swinging pot hooks still stand in the fireplace. Upstairs was her bedroom and a fireplace. It was a comfortable house.

When my sister Anne and I were in our teens, we took over the washing of clothes as Rhody was becoming frailer.

 Wash day was an event. The wash area was in and area under a huge Cucumber tree down by our spring. A creek ran nearby. A black “wash pot” kettle was suspended on an iron rod between two posts. The pot was filled from the spring and a fire lit under it and lye soap flakes were added. White clothes were boiled first, stirring them with a wooden paddle. Two galvanized tubs sat on a sturdy wooden bench turned black by time and mildew. One tub held a brass washboard: the other, rinse water. Albert, my brother, had bought an old wooden hand cranked wringer that sat by the rinse tub. We’d put each rinsed garment through the rollers. A basket was placed under the wringer to catch them to be carried up to the hill from the spring to the Old House yard to the clotheslines where they were hung. The weight of the wet clothes required that sturdy poles be placed under the wires to keep the clothes from touching the ground as they dried. Rhody would take them down and into the house to be ironed. Once one of the cows got out and pulled a pair of Annie’s underpants off the line and one carried them around, trying to eat them.

Rhody would come to the house and tell us the ironing was done and we girls would go fetch it back to the house. She loved to sing hymns and would ask me to play piano and she would sing her favorite, “Home of the Soul”.

“Oh, they sing of a land on a faraway strand.

The beautiful home of the soul,

Where no storms ever blow in the far away land

That beautiful home of the soul”,

I’d sing other songs for her, and she would rest on the couch with her eyes closed. I don’t know where the other siblings were.  I just remember Rhody and me. In my mind’s eye, I see her baking light bread, ironing, picking up wood for her fireplace in the Old House, or hoeing her small garden.

She knew her Bible and deplored the wearing of pants by women. She and I found the passage in Deuteronomy which abjured women not to dress as men. The sight of Annie, Helen and I running down the hill in scanty bathing suits to the swimming hole in the Little River would have her mumbling, “don’t let Irving Smith see you like that”!

Irving Smith was an old bachelor who seldom spoke, an “Ethan Frome” of a man. Irving was the son of Fountain Smith, the neighborhood sage, well-read man with a long white beard. Once we went to Fountain’s house and he gave us a little glass of “hard’ apple cider, I remember him saying, “Now this has a “head” on it, children, don’t’ drink much”. We got a little giddy going home. Irving lived to be an old man in Fountain’s house. An equally old sister took care of him.

Rhody’s death was tragic. As she aged, Rhody’s sight began to fail.  She would have to cross Franklin Pike to get to the big house. Aunt Minnie worried about her getting hit by a car.

 Minnie began to lock Rhody in her little one room house when she a Johnny P. left to go into Floyd or be away for any amount of time. Once Minnie went to Roanoke on a shopping trip and locked Rhody in her house. Rhody was sick and frail but wanted out of her house.  Aunt Minnie and Johnny returned home about dark, and Minnie went to see about Rhody. She found her on the floor, victim of a stroke. She had taken a stick of wood and had tried to get out by breaking a window.

Rhody never recovered and died soon afterwards. I don’t know where she is buried. I knew only that she had come “from down the mountain” to be the hand maiden to our Aunt Melia, who “wore many Victorian petticoats under black silk dresses with a corset and things”. Aunt Amelia was a big woman who needed Rhody to dress her.

When Mama thought I was being headstrong she would say “You’re just like Melia Martin,” “She would jump on a horse and ride just like a man”! I have a picture of Amelia and Uncle Ike sitting in a double buggy dressed for Church. They are in front of the Victorian house with the gingerbread porches. Two horses stand in the traces ready to roll. I had an artist friend pain that house for me.

Poor Rhody. She lived alone in her little house that Aunt Melia willed her until she died, with and occasional stint in Grandma Octavia’s Old House where we children would play merrily, thankful for Rhody’s salt rising bread and ginger cookies!