Ain’t Hazel

The one and only

Hazel Grounds Dalton Wade (1894-1996) as a young woman, photo about 1910k

If there is a God and if there is a heaven above, Aint Hazel Wade is undoubtedly up there at this very moment, sitting at God’s feet, asking the Holy One about his family and making Him feel extremely important. That’s the way she was. She made everyone feel important. She loved people the way misers love gold coins.

If you had the good luck to meet her you would never in your life forget her. Introduced for the first time, she would smile at you as big as the sun, and laugh, and turn to you to give you her full attention. She would look you up and down like you were a treasure box with diamonds and rubies spilling out. She would be so obviously delighted to meet you that there would be no doubt about it, whatsoever. Smiling – beaming would be a more accurate description – she would at once say something that was flattering but also true, like “Laws-see, Honey, you are jist about the best-lookin’ boy I have seen for a VERY long time! Turn round there and let me have a better look at you.” She would inspect you and admire you like you were the rarest and most colorful butterfly ever, while making you go round and round till you were dizzy, all the time saying “My! My! Isn’t that boy a fine one!” or “Isn’t that a handsome red shirt he has on today!” There was no calculation in her remarks, no intentional flattery, she meant it! She thought you were a gold bar on two legs. You knew it and swelled up like a toad. After one minute of acquaintance with her you felt like you were the salt of the earth, pure and perfect in a polished silver saltshaker.

Aint Hazel. That’s what we called her when I was a kid. It sounded perfectly normal and natural to me, and to all my brothers and sisters, back then in the 1940’s and 50’s. Half a century later, when we Murdock kids got to talking and her name came up, we still said “Aint” Hazel, despite our education, experience and thin veneer of sophistication. Ain’t was the only name we ever knew her by. “Aint” of course, stood for “Aunt”, spoken with a southern Indiana drawl.

She wasn’t our aunt. She was Mom’s first cousin, ours once removed. Aint Hazel’s mother and our mom’s mother were sisters. So we were related by blood. It was beyond blood, actually, because, for all practical purposes, Aint Hazel was our mother’s substitute mother. Mom was a girl of seven years when her mother died of tuberculosis in 1920. Aint Hazel and her husband Uncle Harry were thereafter Mom’s protectors and guardian angels.

Hazel Grounds, who first saw the light in 1894, and her younger sister Mae (1898) were born and raised at their father’s farm a couple of miles south of the little farming community of Lyons, Indiana in Greene County.

Aint Hazel’s first husband died, during the great Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. Hazel married handsome Thurmon Dalton on March 18, 1918. In May, he reported for duty with the Army. Four months later, on October 8, he died of the flu at Fort Knox. His body was shipped back and buried at Dog Island cemetery south of Lyons.

Two years later Hazel married Harry Wade, coal-miner and former Artillery Sergeant of a World War I trench mortar unit in France and Belgium. He never talked about his service except he once mentioned being at Belleau Wood, Chateau Thierry, and the Argonne Forest. Uncle Harry was a big guy, bluff, friendly and always coached in a good-humored way by Aint Hazel. He was an awfully nice man, and a real one at that. Near 6 feet tall, partially bald, with blue eyes, and strongly built, he was a bluff but warm guy. When he stopped at our house to visit, once a week or so, he always gave me a nickel or sometimes even a dime, saying always in his big strong voice, “That’s for you”. Generally, he listened while Aint Hazel talked, but occasionally he poked fun at her when he thought she was exaggerating a point, or in error. “Now Hazel!” he would chide. A talker she was, for sure. Inevitably, towards the end of every visit, Harry would become tired and ready to go home. He would begin reminding Hazel that it was late, and they must go. She always acknowledged his remark, usually without turning her head, agreeing out of the side of her mouth but then going on talking. Eventually, after several perfunctory acknowledged reminders, Uncle Harry would get up from his chair, say goodbye to everyone, shake hands with Dad, and step out the front door. After climbing into his auto he would start its engine. There, in the dark, sitting in his idling vehicle, he would smoke a cigarette as he waited, but slowly grow more and more exasperated. In the meantime, Ain’t Hazel, still sitting in the house, always had to tell one last story: “Dorothy, I almost forgot to tell you about the Buzans! Did you know that that Esther fell last week and broke her hip? Did you hear how it happened? Well, she was ... etc. etc. She felt this was vital information, and had to be communicated. By about now, Harry’s patience would burst its limit, and he would honk his horn. A single “Beep!” This toot generally caused Hazel to turn her head briefly, but then she returned to her story, but only momentarily distracted. Two minutes later, Harry would beep again. “Beeeeeeeeeep!” Aint Hazel would then generally say something like “That man! Why we just got here and he’s already in a hurry to go home! I’ll swan!” (That term never made a lot of sense to me. I now believe it meant “I’ll swoon”, or, in other words, faint.) After the second beep Aint Hazel would reluctantly stand up, gather up her purse and jacket, and begin backing slowly toward the front door, talking more rapidly now because she knew she had a lot to say and little time. If, as often happened, some particularly interesting new thought obtruded, she would stop in her retreat toward the door and nearly shout “OH MY GOODNESS, I ALMOST FORGOT TO TELL YOU ......!” (I guess it never occurred to Uncle Harry to simply drive off and leave her.) Instead he used his only weapon, the horn: Beeeeeeeeeeeeep! Beeeeeeeeeeeep! He now put his exclamation point on his message by revving the motor. This was usually just too much, even for Aint Hazel, who would inevitably say, in an exasperated tone, “Well, I guess Harry is ready to go! That man! I wish his mother had taught him patience!” Sometimes Aint Hazel made it all the way to the front porch, with us following to say goodbye, but then she would push her way past us back inside to emphasize a final point she felt she hadn’t adequately made before. If Harry saw her disappear back into the house, he held the horn down in a steady droning honking that even Aint Hazel couldn’t ignore. Afraid that the neighbors would complain, I suppose, she relented and gave up, went out and climbed into the car, calling over her shoulder, “Well, Dorothy, I’ll just have to call you on the telephone and tell you the rest of the story!” This little drama, with small variations, occurred at every visit, often once a week, as the years passed.

One of Aint Hazel’s talents was playing the Piano. She always had one in her house, from the earliest days of my memory. She didn’t call it a Piano, but, instead a Pie-Anna. And could she make the Pie-Anna warble. Her favorite tunes were the ones that were popular well before the First World War! Rag-time especially. As she played she wriggled and danced and kept time with her nodding head as she banged vigorously on the keys. This woman was joy itself! It was wild fun to hear her play and watch her dance on the piano bench. She learned to play Scott Joplin in the very days when Joplin was writing down his tunes in Indianapolis. At the end of every tune, Aint Hazel would throw back her head and laugh, infecting the audience, so we laughed too, and begged her for another. One of us kids’ favorite tunes was one she played every time she gathered us around the piano. We always sang it together, with our off-key children’s voices blending with her older shrill quavering voice -- I wonder how old the song is:

“Who ever stole my old black dog

Had better bring him back,

To drive the big pigs over the fence

And the little ones through the cracks.”

I grew up imagining those pigs getting through the fence!

What a remarkable woman she was! I often think about her and the long life she lived. When she was born, automobiles were unknown. Grover Cleveland was President of the United States. Everyone who lived in the countryside was poor and lived near the edge – only they took it for granted, thought they were prosperous enough, and didn’t know how poor they were. Life was dangerous, far more than today, there being no antibiotics, few vaccines, and medical and dental care was primitive. She was going on ten years old when the Wright brothers first proved that an airplane could be made to fly through the air under its own power. She remembered when Teddy Roosevelt became president and when women couldn’t vote. When she was very small, only rich people had telephones, and no one, except in the large cities, had electricity to bring lights to their houses at night. They lived with coal oil lamps and candles. When people talked about horsepower, they meant the animal with four legs that pulled their plows and wagons.

Hazel Grounds Dalton Wade died on January 31, 1996, in her 102nd year. I imagine she had one last story to tell before she went — something vital, something that couldn’t wait. And I imagine whatever was on the other side of Heaven’s gate had to wait a good long while before she came through it.