Aunt Bab was single all her life but had a particularly good friend named Edna Landzettel. Edna lived with her mother.
Aunt Bab lived in the Hotel Gibson, a motel that only took long term residents. Aunt Tuggy (Pauline) remembers a single room and bath with a bed, a dresser with all the neices and nephews pictures around the mirror, the sink was on the wall outside the bathroom. All meals were taken in the dining room. Tuggy remembers Barbara (Bitsy) patting a chocolate treat all over the white table cloth on one occasion to the horror of their mother. Barbara (Bitsy) remembers ordering a peanut butter sandwich and recieving a "peanut" butter sandwhich with no jelly.
Aunt Bab had her own car. This struck Tuggy as an unusual thing that a woman would have her own car. She remembers Babs taking herself and Sonny (Albert) on day trips to the zoo, the Jewel Box--a Botanical Garden, and the St. Louis Cathedral.
Aunt Bab was an educator. She taught fourth grade at the school Aunt Tuggy attended in kindergarden, Hamilton Elementary in St. Louis. She also taught at Washington University in the evenings. Aunt Tuggy remembers an incident: when she had just seen the new movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and drawn a picture of Snow White, the teacher suggested she take it to her Aunt Babs to see. After wandering the school without success, Tuggy returned to her classroom. The teacher asked her if she had shownher Aunt the picture, and Tuggy replied that, yes, she had.
At that time, a school teacher could not be married and still teach. All the teachers in Tuggy's school were unmarried. Mama (Pauline Ann Smith) once pointed out a bald-headed man who was standing at the piano in the Gibson Hotel parlor. She said that he wanted to marry Bab but she didn't want to have anything to do with him. When the family moved to Texas they didn't have the rule about not being married and Tuggy had some teachers who were Mrs. |
Madison Roswell Smith
Nancy Ann Leech
Birth