Aunt Eva and Uncle Wes

Memories of Uncle Wes and Aunt Eva Stewart Day

Ah, where does one begin?  No two people could ever come close to reenacting their lives. From the day we moved on the farm in Rock Township, they became a part of our daily lives. They caused our lives to sometimes have much angst, much laughter, and love that couldn't be contained. And yes, sometimes Bob became angry, but soon it all was forgotten.

Wesley Robert Day was a small man; always moving, black hair, fast driving. Eva Mae was the opposite. She was on the plump side, mostly moved at snail's pace with lots and lots of hair black of color when I knew her, turning gray. They did a lot of yelling at each other, but you could always sense the love between them.

We were told when they were young Aunt Eva was known to hop on the back of Uncle Wes’ motorcycle and go for rides, leaving Mildred alone. Neither knew much about raising children. Gma Stewart Fox once told me that when Aunt Eva was expecting Mildred, she asked her mother, "Where is this baby going to come out?" Answer--"The same place it went in!"

Their house was small, but they were content. Bob remembers when Aunt Eva entertained the Stewart family, she never helped clean up the dishes afterward. She went to her piano to play and sing.

Their oldest son Marvin was killed on Anzio Beach, France, in November 1944. He was a medic, wore white with a cross on the back, right where he was shot. Aunt Eva was never quite the same. Gma told me that she had always been "different" but this was more than she could handle. When we moved to the farm, she was in or near Council Bluffs, Iowa, in some type of rehab for nerves. Uncle Wes drove down to see her often, but we don't recall how long she was there.

Uncle Wes had a corn sheller and did custom work. This was before combines came into existence. One time he got his right wrist injured and it never "set" properly. His hand was at a right angle, but it never stopped him from using it.

They kept their clocks on standard time year-round and customarily were late arrivals at most everything, even church.

There wasn't anything Uncle Wes couldn't fix if it broke down. Bob learned a lot from him. Before Lori was in school, she became their "shadow." She went everywhere with him and Bob, even the blacksmith shop. She picked up all those little "pieces" on the floor, and when they brought her home, her face and clothes were all "black." And she learned to swear because Uncle Wes did lots of it.

When Bob shelled corn, he hired a sheller from a few miles away and the neighbors came to help. Uncle Wes always had a turning knob on his tractor steering wheel. He came down with his DC Case tractor and wanted to help so he started pushing cobs to make a pile. His steering knob got caught in between his shirt buttons. He lost control and drove right up the cob pile where the tractor finally stopped. He never looked or talked to anyone and took off for home which was a mile away.

Uncle Wes was always just around. One day it was a true blessing. Bob was picking corn on a Saturday morning and there was a light frost. Uncle Wes was hauling home loads. After he returned, he stopped a distance away and started picking up corn lying on the ground. Bob in the meantime got off the tractor and walked to the back of the machine to the rear auger. The machine was still running, which is a "no-no”, but he thought it was going to be a simple check. He had a very slight tear on his blue jean jacket’s left shoulder. That tear got caught in the machine. He was able to hold on to the auger to stop it and started yelling for Uncle Wes to come and turn off the tractor. Fortunately, he finally heard him.

I happened to not be working at REC that morning and was busy in the kitchen when they both came waltzing in. Bob's jacket, sweatshirt, shirt were intact, but not the T-shirt. It had no tear, just twisted around. X-rays showed no tear, just muscle damage; the arm was put in a sling. He finished harvest that year, picking corn using one arm. I think the year was 1957. Years later it is determined that perhaps that accident was the beginning of his bone deterioration.

During the summer months, if Bob was working in the field on their land (80-acre farm), Aunt Eva sent Uncle Wes out to the field with some Kool-Aid and cookies. Bob forced them down. He never cared too much for anything sweet. She added extra sugar to the drink. Perhaps that was to cover up the taste of the water. They had a shallow well next to the house. He put a downspout on his rain eve spout and let it drain into the well, which was the water for their household use. It never seemed to have affected them since they lived well into the Golden Years.

Uncle Wes didn't farm too many years after we moved there. He made an offer to Bob to farm the land with share rent. They always had a big garden and much of it went to waste. He loved to mow and when he got on his rider, he went in high gear. Aunt Eva loved her peonies. After they died, we transplanted some of those huge red peonies to the Good Hope Cemetery and Quimby Grandview Cemetery. Some will still bloom this spring.

One day as Gma Fox was sitting in "her" willow branch old rocker on our porch, she told me a pie story. She bought a cream pie in the grocery store and baked it. So she told her daughter, Eva, when you buy a "store" pie, don't bake it. Eva bought a rhubarb pie and served it to Wes unbaked. She asked, "How's the pie, Wes?" His reply, "Not as good as yours Ma."

One time because it was "the style" I let the very bottom of my hair in the back get longer than the rest. Finally, after several months, Aunt Eva told me, "I hate your hair the way it is now. Cut that bottom stuff off." And I did! She had so much hair that when she got a perm, they couldn't roll it all at one time.

Since their noon hour was not our noon hour, Uncle Wes would pick up his mail and then come into our kitchen with the Sioux City paper. While I fixed dinner for our noon hour, he read articles to me. Yes, we did get our own paper too. He never pronounced communist right or democracy. He hated the Democrats. But he loved his paper. Their mailbox was on their west corner, so that's why he would drive north onto our place. As they got older, Bob went to the Post Office and asked that their mailbox be moved in front of their place. Which they did. It was considered a "hardship" move.

Uncle Wes usually had to help Aunt Eva get dinner on the table those years. They always left the sugar, salt, pepper, butter, jelly on the center of the table and covered it with a dishtowel. They saved leftovers but never seemed to use them. If they went away for a while, the first thing Bob did was clean out the refrigerator.

In perhaps the 60s Uncle Wes and Aunt Eva decided to visit his two sisters in Florida. They were taking the train from Cherokee. Of course, we had to drive them there. Eva was late coming out of the house. We three were waiting patiently outside. I was holding the back door open, and just as she was partway in, Wes pushed her. When she got her breath, she said. "G… D... it Wes. You are always pushing me and I don't like it." While they were gone, we spent a little bit of time cleaning their house. But not so much that you would notice it.

About once a year they visited their daughter Mildred in Marysville, Missouri. When they were coming home one night, and much too late, Wes was stopped by a patrolman who told him there were complaints that he wasn't dimming his lights. Wes answered, "I don't plan on starting it either. G.. D...it, my foot's tired." He never got a ticket.

After the Quimby grocery store closed, Wes and Eva did their shopping in Cherokee. One year it was decided that the North corner out of Cherokee needed to be redone. Now there was a Highway 3 by-pass. For whatever reason, they usually went home going north out of Cherokee and taking a long way home. One day his car and another collided. A friend of ours had a son on the school bus that went by the accident. He told his mom that there was a little man shaking his fist at a highway patrolman. Guess who? Well, it wasn't long after, that became a 4-way stop.

I always took lunch out mid-afternoon if Uncle Wes was hanging around. My sister took out ginger cookies one afternoon while he and Bob were in the machine shed. When she offered the cookies to Uncle Wes, he shoved her hand indicating he didn't want one. He told her, "That G.. D... ginger makes me sick. I can taste it for days." She had to leave, she was laughing so hard.

One year when my brother was helping with the combining of the harvest the combine broke down. As my brother walked down the sidewalk, here came Uncle Wes. He said get out of my way. I got to go to town to get a G.. D... "ram jamer." My brother too had a good laugh.

They both had their illnesses. Bob went to a doctor one day with Uncle Wes, and they had to stop at the drug store. It was McWilliams Drug Store and their pharmacists were in a loft that had a little mechanism that traveled from there to the counter. As far as Uncle Wes was concerned it was taking too long. He yelled up and said, "If you don't get that 'medcin' down here pretty soon, there ain't anyone down here gonna need it." His medicine came down shortly thereafter.

Aunt Eva was very ill after gall bladder surgery. I sat with her several times and one day I noticed her urine in the bag was almost black. How she ever pulled through is a miracle. But she survived to go back home, where she wanted to be.

She would wait for Lori and Dan to come and see her so she could play the piano and sing for them. If they hadn't visited for a while, she would call and say she’d been waiting for them. Her piano bench was so full of music the lid wouldn't close. She bounced on that seat to her heart’s content. The kids stood beside her and never once made any comments to us about these visits. They kept going as long she was able to play.

Since their children were never around at Christmas time, a few days before the 25th we would invite them over to eat with us. If Uncle Wes didn't want something, he'd shove the passing bowl away with his crippled hand. If Aunt Eva had something on her plate that she either didn't like or didn't want to eat, she threw it on Wes' plate.

Through the years we had three German Shepherd dogs. Each had a different personality. The first, Smokey, was a great protector of the kids if they were outside and someone came to the house. The second, Lightning, was a true watchdog. Uncle Wes didn't like her and kicked her one day. Lightning never liked him for sure after that.

Uncle Wes never liked me helping outside. We had an inside elevator in our corncrib and when one of the bins was nearly full, Bob went upstairs to guide the spout while I was supposed to slowly unload. Wes, always in a hurry, pushed me aside and started unloading. He filled the elevator hopper and soon Bob is yelling. The elevator was plugged, which it did a lot. You had to handle it with kid gloves. Wes took off so he didn't have to catch Bob's wrath.

Wes had a small crib and his elevator was outside. One afternoon I'm sitting in the car with lunch for him. He was upstairs walking across the small boards adjusting something. I wasn't looking at him all the time, probably reading because I always had something with me to read if I had to wait. Next thing I know he's starting to get in my vehicle. He said, "I just fell out of the upstairs. Bumped my G.. D... elbow and bumped my head." But he ate his lunch and then returned to the crib. He always ran his elevator ‘full speed ahead.’

When son Frosty and wife June from Salina came up to visit them, they always stayed at our house. We enjoyed having them and really got to know them. Bob often said Frosty was like a brother to him. But Frosty had no ‘farming blood’ in him. He often said to Bob, "What's ja doing cuz?" June and I became really close friends. Frosty met June while he was in the U.S. Air force in Salina, Kansas. He didn’t have to go into the service since his brother was killed, but he wanted to. But he wasn't sent overseas.

Uncle Wes died in Missouri in September while visiting Mildred. They had gone out to eat and he had a huge meal with gravy. Apparently, he died of a heart attack. Aunt Eva came back to the farm for a short while, but she was so lonesome. She told us then how much they had loved each other. She went to live with Mildred and died early the next year, just a few months after Wes. They both were well into their 90's. If one would have asked them about their life together, both would have said, "It was a good life."

We had the experience of living near them for 30 or so years. Neither we nor Lori and Dan would trade any of those days for anything. It was always interesting. Each day brought a new challenge. Those were moments to remember.

When the Day’s daughter was living and in her last few months, she gave me her Mom's wedding ring from 1912. I had it checked by a jeweler and he said the prongs on the little diamonds on each side of the center were getting thin. He said to wear it, but not for everyday use. It goes with me every time I leave the house. What a precious gift I received.

Eva and West had three children: Mildred, Marvin, and Forrest (Frosty)