After the death of George Washington Mackey, his second wife, Aunt Elmy (who doubled as mother-in-law and sister-in-law to my paternal grandmother) continued to live on the farm at Clyde and raise produce.
Aunt Elmy was white headed and tied her long hair in a bun on the back of her head. To my young way of thinking, she was a stern, humorless woman, in contrast to Grandpa Mackey. She didn’t seem to have a lot of patience with kids and she was stingy. Once my cousin, Noma and I walked to her place because she had offered to pay us for picking the dewberries. After picking berries for a while, we brought our baskets to Aunt Elmy. She complained about the meager amount we had picked and reluctantly gave each of us a penny for our efforts. It was almost as if we had cheated her.
I know she probably had many virtues, but I don’t really recall much kindness, yet for some reason, Noma and I were always anxious to go and visit her. Maybe it was because we liked to play under the grape arbor, found ourselves fascinated by the Maytag or looked forward to finding creative games we could play with the snuff bottles.
Sometime in the forties, Richard, her youngest son, and his wife Ella Mae moved to California. Aunt Elmy went with them, but kept the house. Grandpa and Grandma Bales moved in. In the fifties that part of the Mackey clan returned to Texas, but the lure of the Golden West was strong, and they soon returned to California. Aunt Elmy lived until 1972, when she died in Antioch, California. I never saw her again after they moved west. However, Ann and I did have an opportunity to visit Lady Beth in Antioch in the early nineties.
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