Wonderful Parents

Many of the friends I made when I had my business heard me speak fondly of my husband’s Aunt Helen and Uncle Doyle. MH’s parents both passed away at an unspeakably early age so Aunt Helen and Uncle Doyle did everything in their power to assume the role of parents to him. Their only daughter is more like a sister to MH than a cousin. Aunt Helen and Uncle Doyle celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary 2 years ago, the only 70th I've ever attended. Most people are lucky to make it to their 50th. Just over a year ago, Aunt Helen passed away. It was awfully sad for us, but we hated to see her suffer, and she was really having a time with the common ailments that afflict people in the 90+ age range. Uncle Doyle is still hanging on and today was a sweet day for MH although he fears it might be his last Father’s Day with Uncle Doyle. He spent a good portion of the day taking Uncle Doyle to the little community where he was born and raised.

This is a photo of them the last time we were able to take them out to dinner. Their favorite restaurant was Boyette's at Reelfoot Lake, TN. Boyette's really is hard to beat, although you can't worry about your cholesterol if you dine there. In honor of Uncle Doyle’s and Aunt Helen’s wonderful sense of humor, I will share one of the funniest stories about them that I know. The following happened nearly 25 years ago, shortly after MH and I got married.


Uncle Doyle was a farmer and worked until his diabetes blinded him. He loved raising livestock. He especially loved to raise hogs and the hogs are the subject of this story, although I have to divert just a second to tell you about the goats. Aunt Helen made him get rid of the goats when she saw them eating her petunias and then running across her picnic tables. She chased them with a broom that day. Well back to my hog story - it was in the dead of winter and Uncle Doyle was planning to take a load of hogs to the sale barn in Huntingdon, TN. He loaded the hogs the evening before and rose at 4am to start the 2+ hour drive. If you’ve never loaded hogs, you can’t appreciate how hard it is. Hogs aren’t like cows (which I have some experience with). They are just the devil to load. Being a thrifty man, Uncle Doyle’s farm truck didn’t have a heater. Elderly people don’t get to that age without learning some ingenuity along the way, so Aunt Helen heated some bricks on their wood burning stove and wrapped them up to put in the floorboard of the truck to help keep their feet warm. They arrived at the sale barn and backed up to the loading dock. It came as a terrible shock when Uncle Doyle and Aunt Helen were told that there were no hogs in the back of the pickup. Very worried, they started back home. Aunt Helen said they looked along the side of the road all the way home wondering what had happened to the hogs. When they got back home, the hogs were safe and sound. Evidently, Uncle Doyle had failed to close the tailgate of the truck and the hogs decided they weren’t quite ready for eternity, so they just slipped back out and went to their pigpen. We all had a big laugh over it.