GOD BLESS OUR AUNTS

Progenitors in print --this time two aunts, Gussie and Lucy, transported from Maryland to York, and the Pennsylvania Dutch ways of life. Father's helplessness forced the two to become the first working girls of the town, until Lucy eloped with a wealthy widower and Cussie, dreaming in a world of books, married Dan Uts and changed him from a plumber to a sanitary engineer. Lucy's husband's death and will cutting her off from remarriage created a remarkable situation as-for years -- she travelled with the hotel-running Commodore, and not until her son was of age and wished to enter the ministry did she marry him, Cussie's two sons, plus her husband's nephew and his French wife, provided her with excitement, and the author, child of that marriage, found her youth dominated by these two erratic aunts. Irish-French- and Pennsylvania Dutch make quite a combination, and there's little distinction but a measure of ingratiating appeal in the tale.