Just Take Me Out Back and Shoot Me

Her face suited her name. Aunt Bert. Jowly, pale, and to me, always looking old. But boy was she funny. The kind of dusty dry, Norwegian humor that was smuggled in a burlap sack aboard some cold, 19th century ship and replanted in the black soil of southern Minnesota. She lived to be 97 and worked most of her life for Hormel's Meat Packing in Austin, Minnesota, where the original SPAM was created, grown, concocted. She never married staying forever solo. I'm sure Bert had plenty of secrets. But a particularly tasty one was that she got hooked on cigarettes while working some mind numbing factory job during WWII and never really quit. None of the family new this. Although she was always at family gatherings fully engaged, she mostly kept to herself. Lived on her own. We only realized she was a smoker after she quit. But this happened in her 90's and it wasn't actually a decision on her part but rather that one day she simply forgot she smoked. The nursing home staff confirmed that she was a daily smoker. "Not too heavy" they said, "but not necessarily light". Bert was loosing her marbles but she never lost her humor. One day, as they were assessing the dexterity of her mind with my mother sitting by her side, they asked her who the current US President was. "Eisenhower?" Everyone in the room agreed that it was, in fact, Bill Clinton. Aunt Bert quietly leaned over to my mother and with a smile on her face whispered, "Just take me out back and shoot me." After she passed away, I drove her late 70's burgundy two tone Ford Granada around Minneapolis for a couple of months before flying back to Australia. It felt good cruising the summer streets, especially the ones that thread between and connect those urban lakes. I would often roll the windows down and play Massive Attack's "Teardrop" and feel memory in the humid wind. My folks sold it for $500. Great car. Thanks Bert.