OBSERVATIONS AND RAMBLINGS FROM A CRANKY OLD GUY (December 2022) -By: Jeff Spaulding

When one gets older (not just crankier but it doesn’t hurt), one has tasks put upon them
that one would never think would ever happen.

For example, as the eldest living member of the family, it’s fairly normal to be in charge
of attending to a deceased relative’s final needs. To make sure their wishes are met, their
financial obligations are paid for. Their possessions are left for either the family, the
junk man, or the bill collector.

In this case, and I am saying this with the greatest of respect, we’re dealing with a
woman who had a very wild spirit, and then some. To use an analogy, if she were a
Triple Crown Winner, she would have been put out to stud to enjoy her senior years.
My wife’s aunt recently passed at 84, and aside from when she was married for about six
years in her early 70’s she was on her own. Check that, she was never on her own, she
liked men…lots of men…insert the phrase The Seventh Fleet to clarify how much she
liked men, but how much she really liked men we didn’t get an idea of until we started
emptying out the joint.

She was also an attractive woman, especially as a young woman. She had a habit of
filling every room in her home with sexy pictures of herself in her young days. On her
Facebook page, her profile picture was her at 21. Also on Facebook, she listed her date of
birth as six years younger than my wife! To put this in perspective, in her mind my wife’s
aunt was born six years after my wife was.

One other oddity of my aunt, she made us promise to never reveal exactly how old she
was, something about coming back to haunt us if we spilled the beans. We didn’t but the
funeral parlor did, so we consider ourselves pardoned from the governor.
Finally, and that’s why the short article this time, her house was an absolute dump.
There were financial papers, greeting cards, photographs, you name it, it was there. To
paraphrase Barbara Mandrel, she was hoarding when hoarding wasn’t cool.
That leads us to a couple of unusual “finds”. One (listed as gently as possible), since as I
said she really liked men, was what I will simply call…a man substitute. The less said the
better.

Then there is this calendar dating to 1986. Call this “Ghetto Chippendales. Assuming if it
were purchases new, she would be in her early 40’s Nice to see there was still hot coal in
the pit, so to speak

On top of all this, she gave the house to my wife. Her generous nature has provided a
way out for my family. Jokes aside, we will always be grateful.
Be hearing you