{"id":11469,"date":"2010-12-20T19:50:29","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T01:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/?p=891"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:10","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:10","slug":"aunt-leilas-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/aunt-leilas-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Aunt Leila..For The Record"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s real common this time of year for people to act like frosty the snowman and go thumpity, thump, thumping down memory lane ad nauseum. So, here I go too.<\/p>\n

\"Aunt

Aunt Leila. That's mom behind her.<\/p><\/div>\n

I liked all of my aunts but my very favorite was\u00a0 dad\u2019s older sister, Leila. She was married in 1924 and widowed in 1944. By the time I was born, her only son was already grown and gone so she really fawned over my brothers and me. She would often take me to Brookings\u00a0shopping\u00a0which was followed by a hamburger at Nick\u2019s and then a movie at the College Theater. It was always fun spending time with Leila at her house where she allowed me to watch as she worked her magic around the kitchen baking cakes and pies or making a special meal just for the two of us. Over a stick of Beemen’s Pepsin Gum..which she always had in her purse..we’d talk about all kinds of things including our Scandinavian heritage and what Dad was like when he was my age. Leila was one of the first in town to have a TV set. It\u2019s where I first saw \u201cI Love Lucy\u201d, \u201cYou Bet Your Life\u201d with Groucho Marx and professional wrestling. She would laugh until the tears rolled\u00a0watching those bouts believing for all the world they were legit and finding it hysterical each time\u00a0Gorgeous George or the rasslin\u2019 \u00a0midgets entered the ring.<\/p>\n

Leila also had a beautiful cabinet phonograph in her living room. It was filled with 78 rpm\u00a0 records that I would play over and over until they became seared into my mind. Here are some\u00a0favorites:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yogi Yorgesseson, who sang novelty songs in a Norwegian brogue that didn\u2019t sound all that much different from my uncles. I still laugh out loud when I hear \u201cI yust go nuts at Christmas\u201d or \u201cWho hid the halibut on the poop (pewwp)deck?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"leila<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cLittle Toot\u201d was not about a child with gas..but\u00a0a tiny tugboat who kept getting into trouble as he putt, putt putted around the ship yard. The recurring theme was \u201cWon\u2019t you ever grow up Little Toot?\u201d Then one day when an emergency arose, Toot saved the day and became the pride and joy of his tug boat parents.<\/p>\n

\"leila<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cFlick the Fire Engine\u201d (see Little Toot\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"leila<\/p>\n

\u201cBugs Bunny and the Tortoise\u201d The popular Warner Brothers characters in a remake of the famous Tortoise and the Hare fable. This is the only one of Leila\u2019s records that I still have but can\u2019t listen to\u00a0 because I don\u2019t have a phonograph that plays 78\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\"leila<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe Lone Ranger\u201d explained how the famous masked man came to be and how he and Tonto rounded up and captured the feared Butch Cavendish gang.<\/p>\n

\"leila<\/p>\n

\u201cSong of the South\u201d with Uncle Remus narrating stories like Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. It scared the snot out of me as a kid for some reason..and wouldn\u2019t be very politically correct today.<\/p>\n

\"leila<\/p>\n

\u00a0When I grew up and started a family of my own, Aunt Leila simply extended her love for children to the next generation; entertaining and spoiling my two daughters even more than me if that\u2019s possible. \u00a0When my marriage broke up, Aunt Leila offered to come to Sioux Falls and live with the girls and me. She stayed for a year and really helped us through a rough patch.\u00a0\u00a0I wish that you all could have an Aunt Leila in your lives whose love is\u00a0unconditional and who keeps a supply of special records tucked away\u00a0just for you.<\/p>\n

\"Christmas

Christmas time at Aunt Leila's. Me on left, brother Tommy center and friend Dixon on right. Far right is the cabinet phonograph which we'd lay in front of for hours listening to those records.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s real common this time of year for people to act like frosty the snowman and go thumpity, thump, thumping down memory lane ad nauseum. So, here I go too. I liked all of my aunts but my very favorite was\u00a0 dad\u2019s older sister, Leila. She was married in 1924 and widowed in 1944. By…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11830,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11469\/revisions\/11830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}