Aunt Bunny’s Postcards

On By ptero9In Ancestors

My great, great Aunt Bunny remains a lifelong source of inspiration for me. She was my father’s, mother’s, father’s, sister. Born in 1875 1877, two years after Carl Gustav Jung, she died in 1965, when I was only 7. She lived in an old house on Maple Avenue in Patchogue, Long Island NY, a couple of miles away from where I lived until my move west in 1991.

Anna Rebecca SmithI clearly remember visiting her somewhat exotic house as a young child. I knew she liked me, and for a young child that is so important to know, especially from an adult that is not your parent.

Aunt Bunny’s house was very old and she had a lot of stuff, everywhere. She would let me go through the bottom drawer of a dresser of some sort that she had in her living room. She collected many things, but was not a pack rat.

Aunt Bunny never married, had a live-in female companion (ooh!), was very opinionated, played pipe organ in the Methodist church, taught piano to local children, including my grandmother on my mother’s side. Yes, she was, next to my grandfather on my father’s side, my favorite relative outside of my immediate family.

I loved visiting her and being in her house. She collected exotic stuff, much of which was from her travels around the country and the world. Happily, my dad recently passed along some of the things that he kept that she had collected – including postcards, cigarette cards, letters, stamps, and currency from around the world.

Although never having met her, my husband shares my love of Aunt Bunny’s collections and is currently scanning her postcard collection. He wants to start a blog and share these wonderful glimpses into another time with you. I told him to go for it and have offered to help him set up his blog. So, if any of you have tips on picture-friendly templates, let me know. It might be awhile before his blog is ready to go live, but I am very excited about it and hope it is ready to share sometime this month.

I will have more stories of Aunt Bunny and her amazing life, which continues to inspire me even though she has been dead for so many years.

Strong words from another strong woman, Thanks Joni:

You’ve got to shake your fists at lightning now
You’ve got to roar like forest fire
You’ve got to spread your light like blazes
All across the sky
They’re going to aim the hoses on you
Show em you won’t expire
Not till you burn up every passion
Not even when you die

13 thoughts on “Aunt Bunny’s Postcards”

  1. Oh, I’m a huge fan of vintage postcards! Every time I go to the antique stores (to browse, not to buy, usually), I’m always digging through postcards and reading them. I spent about 30 minutes one time digging through a whole basket and wondering about the people who wrote.

    And you sound like me. I used to go through my grandmothers jewelry boxes – looking at her costume jewelry of all kinds – her perfume bottles and trinkets on the dresser in her bedroom, and through her button collection. I used to love going through my mother’s old antique sewing machine drawers – because they had all sorts of lovely junque in it.

    When my grandmother was dying, I would frequently spend time with her and I would pull out her photo albums and scrapbooks and we’d sit on the couch together and go over them together. She’d tell me all about the things she used to do. It was such a great time for us. I miss being able to do that.

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    1. Oh yes! I love my family for the stories that have been passed on and the stuff. I am not as fond of new stuff as I am of things that have been passed down from my family.
      My sister and niece were here visiting back in September and we took the postcard collection out and read them. It was such an incredible thing to share, because my great, great aunt has long been dead, and my sister and I were quite young when she died, and my niece, who is now 25, had no idea who this woman was.
      These family connections are so important and have helped me have a better sense of where I come from. My aunt Bunny was a very independent, fiesty, smart woman and will always inspire me to be the same 🙂
      The blog has been sorely neglected, but maybe this winter, with more time to spend indoors, I’ll post more of her postcards.
      Thanks so much for leaving a note here about your grandma.

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  3. Erik Andrulis

    Ah, Patchogue…great memories of LI.

    I can feel the salacious intrigue in this: (ooh!)

    Good luck with your Bunny project. Hop hop!

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    1. Hey thanks for the note. Yes, it is! Sometimes I forget how much Aunt Bunny remains in the background of my life and how blessed I am to have had such a powerful figure in my life as a child.
      Debra

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