BY BARBARA BURDETT SLAUGHTERBECK

There were many different aspects of my Dad. He was not a very complex person, but he had his likes and dislikes, and he voiced his opinions on both sides. He liked the color "baby blue". I always bought him a shirt of some kind for his birthday or Father’s Day or Christmas. If it was baby blue he would always give out a long drawn out, "UUUU, look at this, Tiny, my favorite color." Or he’d say, "See, Tiny, she knows what my favorite color is."

He would go to town after something, a part for something or paint or putty or whatever he happened to be out of at the time, and chances are he’d come home with something for Mom or something for us girls. His presents were never frivolous. They were usually something we wouldn’t buy for ourselves because they cost too much. For instance, one Saturday morning he came in with three beautiful inlaid oak chopping blocks. One for each of us. Another time it was stainless steel spatulas, and another it was the best paring knives I’ve ever seen. He was always doing things like that. I still have the 3 stacked stainless steel mixing bowls he brought home to Mom one day. He just knew that she could use them, and to her they were invaluable. They are to me too.

He was an avid Cleveland Indians fan, and during baseball season he stopped doing whatever he was doing and listened to the ballgame on the radio. He would sit in the dining room on the studio couch with the radio sitting on the end table right beside his ear. We didn’t dare go in there and talk while he was listening or he’d tell us to, "Shut up or go to the kitchen," so he could hear. Then at every break in the playing he’d holler the stats out to us castouts in the kitchen. If someone hit a home run, you could hear him a quarter mile down the road. I loved it. Before his arthritis got so bad we would travel to Cleveland to see the games in person. But as the years went by, his condition worsened, and he had to settle for the lesser thrill that the radio supplied. After the advent of television he was back on cloud 9 again. He could sit in his easy chair and watch the games. He’s talk Mom into watching with him, she didn’t mind, and the two of them "went to the ball game". He cussed the umpires for making the wrong calls and the managers for letting someone in too long or taking them out too soon. When his side was winning he was in 7th heaven. When they were not, you would be treated to a cussing marathon. Then he’d laugh and laugh and say, "Well, it’s a good thing it was only a game." Mom would just grin. You would be watching the same plays that he was, but when someone did something right, he’s say, "Did you see that?" If you went to the kitchen, and something good happened, he’d holler out, "You shouldn’t have left, you just missed a good one." A ball game with Dad was an experience.

Then there was his fishing. God, he liked to fish. Just about as much as baseball. He had more fishing gear than the sports store. Whatever you needed he had. Whatever happened to be biting, he had the right lures for. With his big boat he trawled Lake Erie for walleye. He took out fishing parties every weekend during the summer. We spent two weeks in a cabin on the lake every July, and he took fishing parties out every day. If they were all men I stayed on the shore with Mom and Pat. If it were mixed company, I went along to drive the boat, and he got to fish for a change. I learned to navigate that lake, knew how to keep the fishing lines straight, how to get the lines unsnagged if we got into rocky bottom and learned how to swear. I enjoyed those times, but then when I started dating I didn’t want to go fishing anymore. So guess what; he took my boyfriends fishing. So that meant if I wanted to see the boys, I had to go fishing too. One thing about my Dad, he was no dummy and definitely nobody’s fool.

I’m glad Dad isn’t around to read Aunt Dorothy’s remark about him "tinkering" around in his garage making tables and stuff for their house. He was definitely not tinkering. He knew his business very well. He had been doing carpentry work practically all his life. Except when he was doing mechanical work. He made the kitchen cabinets in their house. He made Mom a beautiful vanity dresser for the bedroom and many other things. He loved black walnut wood. Somehow he acquired some beautiful walnut boards, and that’s what he made most of the furniture from. He had one fault concerning the pieces he made. He insisted on finishing the pieces with Spar varnish. Everything shines like a new penny. Sure don’t have to worry about water spots. My husband and I bought an old farmhouse in the country about 4 miles from Dad’s. We began to remodel it. Dad came over and helped whenever he was needed. There was an enclosed stairway that went up from the dining room to the bedrooms upstairs. We wanted it opened up and a new stairway built. Dad answered the call and built the most beautiful stairway you could ever imagine. The side of the stairs became a vee shaped wall that he turned into bookcases. He did all this with no pattern, no drawings, no nothing. "Just tell me what you want," he said.

Dad had about ¾’s of an acre of ground at their place. It was vee shaped. The big farmhouse was at the small end, and his garden was at the other end. That end was bound by a creek. We fished in the creek for bullheads in the spring. He put out a huge garden. And that man could garden. He had the best truck garden in this area. He harvested more off of ¾’s acre than some of the farmers got off of 2. He always had the biggest and the best sweet corn and tomatoes. People would stop by and ask if he was going to have anything to sell. He told them, "Yes, unless Mom and the girls can it all." One year he grew some muskmelons. They were the smallest melons I ever saw in my life, about the size of softballs. He called me one day and said the melons were ready, and I should come over to get some. I didn’t say anything, but I thought no way, those melons are too small yet. I went over, and there he sat in the kitchen with half of a melon in his hand, and in the cavity where the seeds had been was a big scoop of ice cream. He said, "Here, have a taste." Well, I tasted, and it was undoubtedly the best tasting concoction I’d ever eaten. I do believe the melons were ready. Could have fooled me.

Dad could dance. He could tap dance like a professional. When he and Mom were young, they went dancing quite often. Back then every little town had a dance hall, usually on the second floor of some old building. When I was about three I learned to tap dance, thanks to Dad. They would take Pat and me to the dances with them. There were always a lot of kids there. We would have as much fun as the grownups did. Dad would take us out on the dance floor. He would pick one of us up and waltz us around the floor just like the big folks. When the fast music played, he put me down, and we’d tap dance. I remember one night the band was playing just for us, and we were tapping, and all at once coins began to land on the floor all around us. Pennies and nickels and dimes. That was the end of my dancing that night. All I wanted to do was pick up the money. That dance hall was on the ground floor, and it had a small grocery store in front. The owner’s son picked me up and took me into the store. He deposited me at the candy counter, and I spent the money. Those days were over when WW2 started. Everyone was too busy working for the war effort to go dancing. In his later years, if he heard some music that had a good beat, he’s just start tap dancing. Kitchen, dining room, front porch. Didn’t matter where, if he took a notion he’d do it. He never did forget how. I can’t say that for myself. Just before he retired, I was at their house visiting, and it was time for him to go to work. He worked midnight and left home at 10:20 PM sharp. I was getting ready to leave also, and we were standing in the kitchen. The radio was on, and all of a sudden he started dancing with his big old work shoes on. Mom and I just stood and watched. When he was done he laughed and said, "Not too bad for an old geezer, huh?" Then out the door he went.

Their house was close to a railroad track. Years ago, in the summer, hobos would travel around the country via the tracks. Every now and then one would stop and ask for a bite to eat or maybe just a cup of coffee or a glass of water. Dad would always ask them if they were willing to work for a meal. Sometimes they would keep on going down the track, but most of the time the guy would say yes. Dad would come in the house and tell Mom to fix this man a meal and to call them when it was ready. He would put the guy to work doing something, and if he was a good worker and did what he was asked to do, he was given a meal. When Dad was done with him, he’s bring him in the house, make him wash up and then set him at their table, and Mom would serve him a meal fit for a king. They were always grateful. Dad wasn’t beyond sending the guy off with a couple of bucks just in case he got a little hungry before he found the next meal.

In Dad’s later years he suffered terribly with arthritis. He had the painful type, and the medicine the doctors gave him did nothing for the pain, but did eat his stomach away. He wasted away to almost nothing, and death to him was a blessing. We all missed him terribly. There was just no one ever like our Dad. Mom’s grief for him never lessened, and she just gave up living. He was her life, and when he was gone she wanted to be gone too. She lived 7 years after he was gone, and then she too met her maker. Death is a sad ending to every story, but they had a good life together. They had each other and us kids, and that’s all they ever wanted or ever needed.

AUSTIN BURDETT

By: Dorothy Burdett Fuerst

Austin was born June 19, 1905. Austin was William and Nellie’s first boy. They had two girls, Viola and Alta, then two boys, Austin and Gerald.

William owned an automobile repair shop with his twin brother, Simon. When Austin was still just a child, William had Austin run errands for him. If Austin took too long or made a mistake, his father beat him. One day William had a customer who wanted to wait while William fixed his car. William told Austin to go to the store and get a part he needed. Since Austin was just a child, the store keeper waited on all the grown-ups and left Austin standing there, even though Austin was there first. When Austin got back to the automobile repair shop, William was so mad that it took him so long that he beat him with insulated wires. Nellie was so mad when she saw all those welts on Austin that she told his father, "Don’t you ever beat that child again!" She often sent Austin to stay with her brother, John Bryant, to get him away from his father. Austin’s Uncle John had a farm and taught Austin lots of things about farming in Ohio. Austin grew up to be a hard working boy as he liked farming.

When Austin was 18 years old, he came to Florida from Ohio to help his father with his roofing jobs, as during the 1926 to 1930 years, were the boom days and William had more work than he could handle. Austin, his brother, Gerald, and brother-in law, Charlie, all worked for William Burdett, Austin and Gerald’s father. Austin bought a Hudson automobile and had a girl.

When the stock market collapsed, Austin went back to Ohio. He married a girl who soon died of appendicitis, which was common those days. Some called it locked bowels, as they thought the intestinal track got a loop in it. His wife was so fussy about the house she didn’t even want Austin to put his feet on the foot stool.

Later, in 1933, Austin married a girl called Tiny. Tiny didn’t care if he put his feet on the wall as long as he was happy. They had two girls, Barbara and Patty. Austin wanted a boy so bad that when Barbara married, they adopted a boy.

Later, Nellie, Austin’s mother bought a sixty acre farm in Darby, twelve miles east of Dade City, Florida. She wanted Austin to come to Florida to farm it. The house on that 60 acres was an old unpainted farm house that had no running water. The water had to be pulled up with a bucket from the well. One needed to cook on an old wood stove that was also used to heat the house, along with a fireplace. Now Austin had two teenage girls who would have to walk two miles to the road to catch a school bus. When Austin and his family saw that house, there wasn’t any way they were going to live there. Austin’s mother was lonesome and needed children near and didn’t think how inconvenient it would be for young teenagers. Nellie, Austin’s mother, had the desire to relive her childhood and home is the reason she bought (well, traded some lots in Tampa for that farm.)

Austin and his family stayed with his sister, Reatha, while he built a house near her. Barbara, his eldest daughter was told she could cross a field as a short-cut to school. "I’m not going to buck that snow all winter!" she exclaimed. Ha! There’s no snow in Florida, but Barbara didn’t know that.

Austin and his family didn’t like Florida, so went back to Ohio to live. Austin was like his father as far as being a perfectionist was concerned. He had a wonderful garden. He took his delicious cantaloupes into town in an old Model T Ford. In 1934 he was real proud of that Ford. He had a wood shop where he tinkered around making tables, etc. for his home.

I don’t believe Austin ever came to Florida again, but his girls did. His wife Tiny died in 1972.

NOTE: Uncle Austin and Aunt Tiny will never know the gift they gave to my family by refusing to live on the farm in Darby. In the late 1940's we went to live on Grandma’s farm in Darby. It was a wonderful place for kids and some of my best childhood memories are from that time and place. Reatha Albury

Aunt Tiny

BY CECELIA GREENE WOFFORD "CORKY"

I remember going to Aunt Tiny’s and Uncle Austin’s house when they lived just west of Aunt Reatha’s. Aunt Tiny had made a cake using guinea eggs. It didn’t turn out very well, and she threw it out. She said it didn’t rise and was kind of rubbery. She got some bantam eggs from Aunt Reatha and made another cake. That one was delicious with a delicate texture. Aunt Tiny was an excellent cook.

When Earl and I moved to Temple Terrace in February, 1948, Earl planted a garden. Three months later on a Sunday, Mom and Dad came over and helped us pick peas. Earl and I took the peas to the farmers’ market to sell, but we only got $1 a hamper for them. I was wondering what to do with all of the vegetables. Aunt Tiny came over and stayed for a couple of days. She brought her canning equipment and showed me how to can tomatoes and black-eyed peas. She left her steam canning oven, some #2 metal tins she had left over, a book that told you how to prepare food and how long to process it, and a tool that sealed the lids on metal cans for me to use. Earl and I had bought a couple of cases of canning tins. Several people benefitted from her generosity. They would come over to our house and pick the vegetables, and I would show then how to can them. Later that year when jobs got scarce we were all glad we had those cans of vegetables.

What I enjoyed the most about Aunt Tiny was her easy going nature. Nothing ruffled her feathers. I really hated to see her go home.

UNCLE AUS

I am so thankful for Barb and Pat writing about their dad, Austin Robert
Burdett. As a little girl I was around Aunt Tiny the most and have wonderful
memories of my visits with her. My memories of Uncle Aus were as Barb stated it "He was the world's best cusser." So I found it delightful to read some of the good things Uncle Aus did. I also remember when visiting in their home, I could hear the train coming
and I loved running to the kitchen window to watch the train go by. I must
have been around three to five years old because I was shorter than the
counter top. The train would rumble and shake the house, and the window would
rattle. I thought it was wonderful! (My guess, their house was about twenty-four feet away from the railroad track.)
...Linda Radcliff

AUSTIN BURDETT

Our Dad was one of twelve children, nine of these were sisters. When he married he produced two daughters, my sister Barb, and I. When we married he gained two sons-in-law. Finally! Guys to take fishing. Of course, his two daughters were taught to fish from early childhood, and learned to love Lake Erie.

When he became a grandfather to four little girls, he was thrilled and loved them dearly. And probably thought he would never get a grandson. But no, there were four more grandchildren to come, all boys. Boys to take fishing, boys to help mow the lawn, pick the beans, dig potatoes, and take fishing.

In the early days of grandparenting, he built a playpen. Later, in their yard appeared a shiny new swing set, a roof over the patio and an eight foot picnic table and a croquet set for Sunday picnics and a game.

He talked baseball with them but could not understand why they rooted for the Detroit Tigers when they lived in Ohio, while he was a dyed in the wool Cleveland Indians fan.

He was a serious gardener and kept both our families in fresh produce while we helped Mom can for the winter. He made a pet of a duck then had to give it away because he couldn't butcher it. We had to pick beans around a rabbits' nest so they weren't disturbed. Then he cursed the rabbits when they grew up and ate his vegetables.

He left to Barb and me the love and respect of Lake Erie and the love and enjoyment of nature and gardening.

He lived to see the two oldest grandchildren graduate from high school and was proud of them, as he would have been of the other six.

Written by Pat Kimmet --- Daughter of Austin Burdett

DAD

BY BARBARA BURDETT SLAUGHTERBECK

He left home at the age of 10 and went to live and work for Uncle John Bryant. William Archibald was meaner then cat manure to him, so he left home. He worked for Uncle John and also for Uncle Ed Bryant on their farms. I think he kind of went back and forth between them, depending on what needed to be done. Dad was a very hard worker and very particular about what he did. I don't know for sure when he left Uncle John’s, but he ended up in Marion, Ohio, working at the Steamshovel. He and a friend of his poured iron. He met and married a girl named Pauline Bloom. They lived in Marion. She was 20, and Dad was 21. She got sick, and Dad took her to the hospital. They discovered she had a ruptured gall bladder, and she died on the operating table. They had been married just a year.

His friend’s name at the Steamshovel was Bill Ingram. He was married to my Mom’s sister. My Mom would go to Marion quite frequently to help Cora out with her kids. One weekend Uncle Bill talked Dad into coming to their house for a Beer, Poker, and Chili party. That's where he met Mom. The rest is history. He was dating Mom when Grandpa Burdett fell off the roof of the Clearwater Beach hotel and broke his back. Grandma Nellie asked Dad to come down and take over the roofing crew so the job would get done. He did that, and when it was done he came back up here and married Mom.

Dad was a very good father, a very hard worker and also very talented. He had a wood shop and made a lot of things. He made some beautiful tables and corner cupboards for Mom’s salt and pepper collection. Pat and I split up the tables when Mom died. He built a big cabin cruiser and took out fishing parties on the weekends on Lake Erie. Made a bunch of bucks doing that too. The Navy Department commissioned him a Captain during the 2nd world war. He didn't have to serve because he was just over the age limit, but they could call on him and his boat to patrol Lake Erie if they needed him to. In case a German sub got into the lake system.

Dad loved to dance, and when Pat and I were little they would go to dances and take us along. He and I cut quite a rug out on the dance floor when I was 2, 3, and 4 years old. He built us a new house in 1944 and 45 and then sold it to Uncle Bud when Grandma and Aunt Dorothy talked him into going to Florida because of his arthritis. The only thing he didn't do on that house all by himself was the plastering. He had the pros come in and do that. The rest he did alone.

We always had a garden. He just loved to grow things. I guess that's where Pat and I get that gene. He always had the best garden around, and when we moved to the country he grew stuff, especially sweet corn, and sold it to the grocery stores. He always grew more than they needed, and Mom canned everything he didn't sell. He had a big old up-ground cellar, and it was always full of food.

We had an old cistern just in front of the cellar, and he started to fill it in when we moved there. He threw all kinds of stuff in there to fill it in. Junk, rocks, old cement blocks, stones, tin cans and anything else he could find. He finally got it full. Then he covered it with about a foot or so of dirt and planted grass. The next summer he was in the cellar, and I was standing on the porch, He came out, walked across that grass and sunk in the ground clear up to his waste. All I could do was laugh and laugh and laugh. I never saw anything so funny in my life. He had the most dumb-founded look on his face. He finally managed to crawl up out of it and was soaking wet and all rust colored. He forgot that tin cans disintegrate. He was so taken aback by the incident, that he forgot to cuss. He was the world’s best cusser. Just ask anyone and they will tell you. lol lol.

He had a big garden, and he put up a fence between it and the road which naturally grew up in tall weeds. He went out there one day and cut down all the weeds and brush, piled it on a big pile and then threw a coffee can full of gas on it. By the time he got the match out and lit it, gas fumes were all over the area. It went up with such a terrific bang that it picked him up, and he landed on his butt about ten foot away from the pile. Again'............all I could do was laugh. Mom sent me out to see if he was hurt. He wasn't, but he didn't have any eyebrows. He was still on the ground when I got there, he looked up at me and said very meekly, "I forgot about the fumes". That pile burnt all day.

He went fishing one day all by himself. He pulled his little boat up to the lake with the pick-up truck. He didn't have anyone to help him, and he backed the trailer in too far, and the boat started to float off the trailer. He got excited and tried to pull forward real quick and got the truck in reverse and dunked the boat, the trailer and the truck. He couldn't get it out so he set the brakes, got out of the truck, waded to the top of the ramp and called for help. My husband and I got the SOS call from Mom and went up and rescued him and his boat. He never wanted to talk about that incident. lol

MY "MEAN DAD"

I was about 4 years old and wanted to be outside all the time. Mom let me go but wouldn't let me cross the street. Well there was a little boy across the street. Mom had called me in and said to stay in the yard because supper was about ready. I went back out and had very good intentions, but the boy across the street was just more temptation than I could bear, so............across I went. When supper was on the table, I was gone. She sent Dad after me. He came across the street, took me by the hand and led me home. Around the house to the back door, which was strange. We got just out of sight of the neighbors when he wheeled me around, stuck my head between his legs, ( I came about to his knees at that age) up went my dress and down went my panties and he gave me a sharp smack on the bare butt. Of course, I screamed bloody murder but to no avail. No one came to my rescue. He turned me loose and I ran in the house. Mom had no sympathy either. From then on for a long time, I told everyone I met that "my dad's tough". When they'd ask what made me think so, I would tell them the story, right down to the last detail. I couldn't figure out for a long time, why everyone laughed when I told the story. That was about the extent of my Dads meanness.

_Barbara Burdett Slaughterbeck