We Finally Found Aunt Gladys

I would like to say at the beginning that Aunt Gladys was never really lost, we just didn't know exactly where she was. And I would like to say that it was only after a long and arduous search that we finally found her. The first part of that would be true. The second part is nonsense.

Aunt Gladys lived in her Victorian style house on College Hill for decades, just her and her endless supply of small irritating dogs, the last one an intolerable mutt named Trudy, until she finally was moved to a "foster home" to keep her from accidentally burning down her Victorian style house on the hill. Trudy thankfully passed on shortly before that. Aunt Gladys had no relatives left other than my sister and I, so it fell upon us to have her looked after by a woman who seemed very trustworthy. Of course you've probably already sensed where I'm going with this.

Nancy and I rented out her house, and its adjoining apartment, and used that money to pay Aunt Gladys' bills and for upkeep on the place. A year or two passed and we were suddenly notified that not only had Aunt Gladys died, she had also unceremoniously been buried. Somewhere. We tracked down Aunt Gladys' belongings, locked in a storage unit on the west side of town. We rented a truck, broke into the storage unit, and made off with the "loot" under the full blazing sunlight of day. Two things were missing, however. Aunt Gladys' caregiver, and Aunt Gladys. It was 1989. It was an interesting summer. It would be 21 years before we found her. Aunt Gladys, that is. We never did find the caregiver.

Oh, to be honest, we didn't spend too much time searching cemeteries. None at all, actually. She was gone, after all, and we did have her "heirlooms," and the old Victorian style house on College Hill. We just went on with our lives, you know how we do, and never gave it much thought. Well, I thought about it once in a while. It was a nagging thing with me. I don't like the idea of misplacing things, like dead relatives, and letting it go. One day last week there was an article in the paper about how someone had put together a database of everyone buried in the Eugene Pioneer Cemetery. It needed to be done, there are grave sites from the 1800's, missing headstones, you know. On a lark, I typed in Aunt Gladys' name and lo and behold there she was! Born May 12, 1900, died May 5, 1989. I looked for her burial plot on the cemetery map and there it was, located right across the street from McArthur Court.

McArthur Court is the local basketball arena, lovingly called Mac Court, or "The Pit." By the way, it's not named after that stodgy old fart Douglas McArthur as you might think, it's named after Pat McArthur, the University of Oregon's first student body president. We Eugeneans don't name things after war heroes and such. There's a tunnel in San Francisco named after Douglas McArthur, and every time Uncle Bob and I would drive through it, Uncle Bob would mutter "That son of a bitch." But that's another story.

In Eugene we have Ken Kesey Square, the DeFazio Bike Bridge, and the new basketball arena being built with a LOT of help from Nike's Phil Knight is named after Phil's late son, Matthew Knight. They'd like us to call it "Matt Court," but some of us wags who were fans of the TV series like "Knight Court." And that's another thing about Eugeneans. We don't like other people trying to name our stuff. Our governor decreed the other day that he was changing the name of our beloved Beltline Road to "Randy Pape' Expressway," or some such nonsense. Randy Pape' is the late area business man who's family has dominated the road building business in this part of Oregon, and who contributed heavily to Governor K's campaign funds. Eugeneans were OUTRAGED! True Eugeneans had their own pet names for Beltline Road (also referred to as "The Most Dangerous Stretch of Highway Since Asphalt Was Invented") and while most of them had the word "Death" in them, none of them referred to Randy Pape'.

The argument and bickering goes on and on to this day. The gov has offered to compromise with "Pape'-Beltline," then with just changing the signs at both ends of the highway and none in the middle, but true Eugeneans will have NONE of it! Even though the robotic legislature has voted all the later changes in, I bet it's not over yet. We Oregonians have the Initiative Petition and we're not afraid to use it! I'll keep you posted. Or maybe I won't.

At any rate, we found Aunt Gladys. This afternoon I'm going over and putting a flower on her grave. I figure it's the least I can do.