After writing yesterday about visiting my Aunt Liney's house, I began to reminisce about her. I thought of all the weird things she said and did.

A kinder, more free-hearted person could not be found than our Aunt Liney. She would give you the last bite of food she had if she thought you were hungry. She would welcome people into her house anytime you showed up at her front door. BUT, she had a few very strange quirks that made one wonder about her.

Netta Emaline "Liney" was born December 16, 1905, the second child of George Hicks, a coal miner born in Mississippi and Bettie Mathis Hicks from Walker County Alabama. She grew up here in Walker County and on June 14, 1925, she married William Benton Franklin. To that union was born five children.

Liney was eccentric to say the least. She was a pessimist and always thought something bad was going to happen. I don't know when she first started to act that way, I just know that she was that way as far back as I can remember. She would not leave her house to go anywhere at all. She made her children sit in the house most of the time. They were not sent to school on a regular basis and if they were she made them hold hands with one another as they walked to school so they wouldn't fall and hurt themselves. (I know! That doesn't make a bit of sense. If you were Aunt Liney, you didn't have to make sense.)

I remember the year I was in third grade, she brought my cousin, George, and enrolled him in school. It was already into about the second month of school. George was about five years older than me but they placed him in my third grade class. That lasted less than a week and she began to keep him at home, not allowing him to attend school any longer. Truant officers did not enforce school attendance back then or they would have gotten her for sure.

Another thing weird about Aunt Liney. She would not go to a doctor. She was terrified of doctors. When one of her children got sick she would grease their chests with Vicks Salve and according to her they were cured. She greased them with that salve when they had a tummy ache, a headache, a big toe ache or anything else that ached. Luckily they were never seriously ill while they were growing up. The poor things could not hide from you if they had wanted to because you could always smell that salve a mile away.

I remember one time when Elsie Mae had come to spend a week with Momma when Momma and Daddy were living in Birmingham. Liney fell on the back porch of her home and hurt her wrist. One of the boys called Elsie Mae and told her to come as quickly as she could, "that their mother had fallen and hurt her arm bad and it just might be broken." They said they were taking her to the emergency room at People's Hospital in Jasper and to just meet them there.

Momma and Elsie Mae jumped in the car and drove the thirty something miles to the hospital. Upon entering the emergency room they saw Liney sitting on a gurney out in the hallway. She was yelling and screaming for Peanut and George to take her home. Medical personnel had managed to persuade her to let them x-ray her arm. They found her wrist to be broken in three places but she absolutely refused to see a doctor or let them put her arm in a cast. She screamed so until they released her and let her go home. She wrapped her arm back up in a makeshift sling and endured the pain without taking any kind of pain medication. Her wrist grew back crooked and one could see the foolishness of her decision of not letting them put her arm in a cast for the rest of her life.

I loved to eat at her house because they had a wooden bench that ran along the wall where the children sat during meals while the adults sat at either end and on the other side of the table in chairs. She would always let me sit with her boys on that bench. I loved doing that!! Why, we didn't have a bench at our house.

One summer droves of blackbirds flew into our area. They would fly together and when they would land in a field the ground would suddenly turn black. These birds were a nuisance all summer long. We were visiting her one day and Daddy made a comment about how many blackbirds were in our community. Liney said, "Oh, Earl, them ole Russians have sent them over here to make us sick." She was as serious as she could be. This was during the time Krushchev was in power and she thought it was germ warfare. (Bless her heart!)

I know just talking about the way Liney was makes her seem like a total crackpot. She did have a lot of problems mentally, but she was, also, a warm and loving individual that loved her family with her whole heart. She shared anything she had with her family and neighbors. The only thing, you had to go to her house to get it. She wasn't about to bring it to you.

All my life, family members have told me I looked just like Aunt Liney. I did not appreciate those comments at the time because I thought they were making fun of me because of Liney's peculiarities. I no longer feel that way. I realize Liney had a problem and needed help and no one understood how to help her. I, now, think I do look a lot like her and I don't resent it at all.

Aunt Liney was weird, but I loved her.