Oh Snap!

My grandma on mom's side, had a sister named Myrtle.  She lived by her self in a two story house, living in the bottom half and renting the upstairs as one unit.  We would go down to Aunt Myrt's allot, to visit and help paint or wallpaper the apartment before a new tenant moved in.  Now A. Myrt had her own kids, but my mom and her sisters usually ended up doing the hard work.  I remember the paste they used on the wallpaper was warm, gooey, and thick, sometimes lumpy and I loved to play in it, which mom didn't want us doing.  They would put boards on the rungs of 2 ladders to get the paper on the walls.  We always had a blast working together with mom and her sisters, Fern and Viola.  Grandma didn't climb stairs well so she enjoyed visiting with her sister, A. Myrt.  When we had to help with the apartment, that meant we usually stayed overnight since it was over an hour drive to get there.  Aunt Myrt was almost blind, I was told, but that woman played poker and seemed to see quite well during the game!!  They played for pennies and she was serious about winning and seriously not good at losing.  She did not let any kids play either.  So that left my sister and I to entertain ourselves.  We were ordered not to touch any of her plants, big or small.  One way she kept us from bothering her plants, she told us they were snapping plants.  They could take off a finger if you got too close.  The house even smelled like soil there were so many, and I wondered,.
 if she could not see, how did she water all of them.  Her bedroom was off limits as well, because of all her medication.  She did not want us messing around with her pills, not that we ever would or had even considered such a thing.  Her bedroom smelled of a strong real strong Ben-Gay cream.  The kitchen was very small, not big enough for more than 3 people.  It had a gas stove that you could smell the gas when we cooked, even the food had a sort of gassy taste at times.  If we did not bring anything to play with, all A. Myrt had in toys was one tin or metal horse with a tin Indian riding it.  You could wind it up and the horse would make little hops around in a circle.  She had a front porch and a cigar tree as we called it, and we played every game you could think to play with the cigar like pods.  If we really got bored there was a push lawn mower in the garage.  We called it a garage, but it was a big back room down the hall off the kitchen.  If we took it outside we could only push it if we planned on doing the entire yard.  So we usually pushed it around that back room.  The highlight of each visit was listening for the sound of the ice cream man on his bike.  He would ring his bell and we would run in to announce his arrival and beg for pennies from the poker pile of mom or dad to pay for the treat.  Once in awhile A. Myrt would through us some change just to get us out of their hair, they were playing serious no peek baseball poker.  Of course there was plenty of times we were told NO!  If dad got bored playing poker, we could walk one block to the party store, Yippee!!  Dad brought some of his winnings, so I got the red candy lipstick wrapped in gold foil, yum!  Diane sometimes would get a six pack of little wax pop bottles that had a swallow of colored liquid inside.  At night Di and I had to sleep on the floor by the finger eating plants.  We, or at least I didn't get much sleep, Di made me sleep closest to the biggest plant whose leaves were bigger than my hand.  I was scared it might snack on me if I feel asleep.  There is much more to tell about visiting A. Myrt's but my space is running out so for now this will be all, but look for a follow-up later.  One thing I can cross off my list of career choices is a horticulturist, I don't want to work with plants, who knows which ones really do bite??