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Aunt Bunt was one of the sweetest most loving people I've ever known. I didn't meet her until late in her life. I originally went to talk to her about my dad Roy, he was an alcoholic and I was trying to understand him. She told me some about his early life, and about his mother Pauline who died suddenly at age 36, she was Aunt Bunt's oldest sister. Bunt helped me to understand that daddy had an addiction that he couldn't control, & that it would likely kill him, which it did. She helped...
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Aunt Bunt was one of the sweetest most loving people I've ever known. I didn't meet her until late in her life. I originally went to talk to her about my dad Roy, he was an alcoholic and I was trying to understand him. She told me some about his early life, and about his mother Pauline who died suddenly at age 36, she was Aunt Bunt's oldest sister. Bunt helped me to understand that daddy had an addiction that he couldn't control, & that it would likely kill him, which it did. She helped me to understand I couldn't save him.
Aunt Bunt said her nickname Bunt came from her only brother HD, who died very young, probably from meningitis, he couldn't pronounce her name Rebecca, so he said something that sounded like "Bunt", and everybody started calling her that.
I've never met a kinder or gentler person than aunt Bunt. She was soft-spoken, I never heard her raise her voice. I never heard her say an unkind thing about anybody, though she was direct & honest about people; she had a practical understanding of human nature, she didn't have many illusions about people. Religion was another matter, she was a literalist about the Bible, a religious fundamentalist, though not a militant or pushy fundamentalist. (She also had some paperback book that had some quack theory about a hole in Antarctica under the ice & a civilization living down there. After I told her I didn't believe in such things, she never mentioned it to me again.) She was not pushy, she was the opposite of pushy, Bunt was respectful of other people, she seemed to understand people on a deeper level. She was sympathetic to people's problems, she didn't condemn people for not being perfect, but she was fascinated by their imperfections. Forgiveness was a big deal with aunt Bunt, she said she always tried to be a good Christian & forgive people who'd done her wrong.
I talked with her for hours. She told me her father had had increasing dementia for years before he died, and she expected she would too since she had outlived all her siblings. She said wonderingly that she'd never expected to be the last Barnett girl, she had always been the sickly child, the one who had asthma attacks & allergies & had to stay home from school. She had an allergy test as an adult, she said all the test spots became inflamed, her doctor was so excited he called in all the other medical personnel in the building to take a look. She said her body wasn't strong, she'd had trouble birthing all her children & had almost died with the last one, and she had to have a hysterectomy in her 30's. Bunt said she knew that if she got dementia like her father, she wouldn't know it, so she'd told her daughter Marlene that when the time came when she couldn't take care of herself any more, she would trust Marlene to do what was right for her. And I learned what she'd meant, one day I went to visit & Bunt was just gone. The neighbor said Marlene had come up from Charleston, packed her things up & taken her back to Charleston with her. I never saw her again. I later talked to her son Cleon's son here & he said they were as surprised as I was to learn she was gone. I felt like I'd lost a piece of myself.
Bunt was born in the country near Motlow Creek, which is a few miles south of the NC border near Gowansville, SC. Her father Henry was a carpenter, he moved where the work was. Bunt said he built a hotel in Asheville one year, another year he was working on a hotel in Spartanburg. Bunt was the 6th of 8 children of her father, all were girls except H.D. HD didn't live but a year or so. I asked her once what the initials HD stood for, she said no one ever said. I said the initials had to stand for something, but she said no, that people in that area often named their children with initials that never stood for anything. On his death cert he's listed as Earle HD Barnett, which surprised her, she'd never heard him called anything but HD. Her father Henry was devastated by his only son's death, he had been so happy to finally have a son after six girls.
I asked Bunt to give me all the names & dates of all the family, and she did. I was researching the family genealogy, and she told me everything I asked her about. She had a pretty good memory. Then she took me up into the Dark Corner of NE Greenville County & showed me the little Bird Mountain her grandfather Luther Barnett used to own half of, and his house where her father had been born, they lived in the flat land at the bottom of Hogback Mtn. The Barnett's were a big farming family with a dozen children, but not prosperous, she said she thought it was because her grandfather Luther did not supervise his children well. At this time, many families looked on children as free child labor, the more children you had, the more farm workers you had. She said Luther would put his children to work in the fields but then he'd leave them there alone, and children have to be supervised or being children they stop working & play. Bunt was very good with children, that was her special talent.
Bunt showed me where her mother's father Willie Brannon had lived near New Cut Rd, the house he had built was still there along with an outhouse in the back yard that was still in use. She told me how his first wife her mother's mother had been taken to Bull Street in Columbia, the Insane Asylum, she said her parents talked about her sometimes in hushed tones & Bunt wondered if she had had a nervous breakdown from living out in the country on a farm with no adults to talk to all day, no one to help her with the children. She gave me her photo but couldn't remember her name, just that it was either Mary or Rebecca because she had been named after both her grandmothers, neither of which she met. Bunt said her father's family had disapproved of her father marrying Sarah Brannon, probably because of the stigma of being related to an insane person, and the Barnett's had not had much contact with her father after the marriage. Bunt didn't know how long her Brannon grandmother had lived in the asylum, or what exactly was wrong with her, or when or where she'd died, but with her usual sensitivity she said it was a really lonely life for a farmer's wife back then, and some women just couldn't stand the loneliness. (I later learned from the hospital records that her grandmother likely had schizophrenia, and she was admitted to the hospital twice. The first time they released her after half a year with an admonishment that if she did the same as before she would be back. She was at home long enough to have another child, a son. A different neighbor reported her as being a danger to herself and her children the 2nd time and after two different doctors examined her, they certified her sick enough to have her committed again. This time she was there for eleven years and died of TB in 1901, the same year her oldest daughter Sarah gave birth to Rebecca's first grandchild, my grandmother.)
While I was with Bunt on one of our auto trips to the "Dark Corner" where her father's family was from, Bunt told me a cautionary story about her sister Agnes's boyfriend who was a city boy from Greenville. He had been scared by a bunch of moonshiners he happened upon the Sunday her father Henry took him hunting on the mountain & they got separated; they almost killed him cause they thought he was a revenuer. They knew he wasn't from around there & he was a city boy from the way he was dressed. They challenged him to prove he knew the Barnett's, they told him to recite the names of all the Barnett girls because everybody knew Henry Barnett only had girls, but he couldn't, he hadn't known the family long enough yet. Henry came up to them about that time & saved him, and the boy went back to Greenville & never returned to the country again, though he did marry Agnes and he became a Greenville policeman. Bunt told me the story to warn me, she said never to walk down unknown paths in the woods in the upper part of Spartanburg & Greenville counties cause there was so much moonshining going on in those parts that it wasn't safe for an outsider, every path led somewhere and it was often to a working still. This was in the 1970's and that area was still known for illicit liquor production. (None of Bunt's family were ever involved in illicit liquor production as far as I know, nor did they drink alcohol.).
Bunt worked for Kiddie Wonderland Nursery on Boiling Springs Rd when I met her, she was living alone in one of their houses & working full-time in the kindergarten. Her husband Frank had died several years earlier, I never knew him. Bunt was really great with kids, she was so soft-spoken & gentle, and she'd get down on the floor crosslegged with them & sit & talk to them while they played, she met them on their level and gently guided them. Bunt was thoughtful and wise, she cared about people very much. I wish I'd had her around me when I was growing up, I would've been a better person for it.
Aunt Bunt had five children, only two survived childhood & they were not born healthy, they both had to have operations soon after birth to survive. They were all born premature, the oldest at eight months, the youngest five. She spoke of them with such love. Each one was special to her. The three who died in childhood are buried at Fairview Baptist Church north of Spartanburg where the Wright family are buried. The Wright's came from North Carolina, she said the family told her that Frank's grandfather had once owned a whole mountain in NC, he died after a man attacked him in an argument & kicked him in the balls & he never recovered. His wife remarried but her new husband was not a good man, he drank & gambled & lost the Wright family inheritance.
Bunt told me of her pregnancy with her son Joel, she was seven months pregnant and she told her doctor that something didn't feel right, she said her doctor knew she had health problems, he had advised her not to have any more children, so he put her in the hospital. I asked her why she risked her life having more children, she was quiet a minute, then she said that at that time a "good" woman didn't use birth control or even talk about it, and she said it wasn't up to her, it was for her husband to decide. She went into labor while she was in the hospital, she called the nurse & told her. The nurse was an arrogant woman who told her that it was too soon for her to be in labor, she refused to call the doctor back in. Bunt said she tried to get her to call him again, the nurse refused twice more and told her to stop bothering her and even moved the call button out of her reach. Bunt knew her child was ready to be born, but they didn't have telephones in patient rooms then, so she told her father Henry, who was with her, to go down to the corner drugstore & call her husband and tell him to come. Henry had dementia, she couldn't get him to understand anything more complicated. Henry did go to the drugstore & called her husband, and when Frank came he called the doctor. By then aunt Bunt had been in labor for a long time, her water had not broken but the baby's head was pressed hard against her pelvic bones and when the doctor came in, he immediately broke her amniotic sac and the baby was born, but he was born with cerebral palsy because of the arrogant nurse who refused to believe her or help her. Bunt quietly said that it took everything she had to forgive that nurse, it took her a long time. Joel never walked or talked, but she said he was so happy a baby, he never cried or fussed. She took him to many doctors, they all said the same thing, that he was suffering from some kind of damage at birth. He died at about a year old from an abdominal obstruction of the same kind that eventually killed his brother Cleon at age 35, adhesions.
Bunt almost died with her last child William, she said when she was five months pregnant she didn't feel good, the doctor put her in the hospital & stayed in the room with her. She said she felt something & thought her water had broken & she told him, he told the nurse to go look, but the nurse raised the covers & exclaimed, "It's blood." She was hemorrhaging. They rushed her to surgery, took the baby, but she & the baby had lost too much blood, he died and she was so weak she couldn't move. She said they couldn't find a vein to give her a transfusion, her veins had collapsed from lack of blood. Her blood type was AB-, the rarest type. After a long time of trying, the doctor had given up & had laid his head on her bed with his head in his arms when a young nursing student came in to take a sample of blood for testing. The other nurse started to stop her, but the doctor just wearily said "Let her alone." The student nurse put in the needle, and it struck the vein on the first try. The doctor jumped up so fast the student nurse dropped the syringe when he yelled "Don't take that out!" They used that needle to install an IV. Bunt said she was so weak she couldn't move any part of her body, even her eyelids, but her brain was wide awake the whole time, she could hear & feel everything that was happening in the room.
Bunt had a lot of physical problems all her life, she told me she had a hysterectomy after William and when they looked inside her they found three kidneys. She was so prone to asthma that they didn't want to use general anesthesia, so she gave them permission to use localized anesthetics for the beginning of the surgery and she said she was awake for about half an hour, she could feel everything, every cut. She finally told them she couldn't take the pain anymore and they put her under for the rest of the operation. I asked her if they removed the third kidney, she said it was malfunctioning and not working properly but they were afraid to keep her under any longer than they had to so they left it. After the hysterectomy and the recovery, she said she was feeling so much better that it surprised her, she hadn't realized how badly her sexual organs were malfunctioning and ruining her health. She later had to have her gall bladder removed, she said she had a gall stone as big as a baseball, she kept it and put it in a jar on the mantle. By the time she showed it to me, it had shrunk to about the size of a golf ball.
Bunt had a burst bile duct while I knew her, she said she started feeling bad at work and had to come home, she was so sick she didn't remember driving home. Her neighbor said she saw her come in looking really bad and followed her into the apartment after she asked her what was wrong and she didn't answer, Bunt threw up green bile in the bathroom so she called the paramedics. Bunt was in ICU for two weeks on the verge of death, she said her doctor told her most people whose bile duct bursts like that don't survive. Later she was having trouble remembering things, the doctor told her it was a result of the bile coursing thru all her body and harming her brain.
Bunt had very severe chronic asthma attacks all her life, she said that when she was a child & there was no medicine for it, it kept her awake many nights because the attacks were more severe in the early evening, many a night her mother Sarah would sit up late rocking her after midnight. It interfered with her schooling, she'd be so tired the next day, and she'd cough & hack in school very loudly; the teacher finally told her mother she was interrupting the class & had to stay home. But Bunt loved learning, after her husband died she went back to night school & got her GED, she was so proud of that. She was also very proud of the fact that she had learned to drive a car after her husband died; I asked her why she didn't learn before, she said her husband was very insecure & she let him drive her. She was very proud of the fact that she was able to live alone & support herself after he died. I think Bunt was one of those women who had to pamper her husband to keep his self-esteem up, but she didn't mind, she loved him. But she was quite capable of taking care of herself. She was a practical woman, sensible about money, sensible about people. She was sentimental to a fault, but she understood people extremely well. And everything she did and said, she did with love.
Bunt met Frank Wright at church, she said she saw him go up to the altar to pray during a revival meeting & she fell in love with him at that moment, he bared his soul & she felt she understood him. (Aunt Bunt was very devout, she attended church every week at Evangel Cathedral when I knew her, a big Pentecostal type church on the interstate.) Frank had worked in the mills when he was young, later he got a job with Duke Power & retired from there with a pension. They lived in Beaumont Mills and on or near Boundary Drive most of their married life. Bunt's last home in Spartanburg was near Boundary Drive on Spruce St, a new apt complex where she was so thrilled to have cable TV for the 1st time. She used to turn on the Weather Channel, which had a blue screen with the words scrolling down & soft music playing in the background, and she'd leave it on during the day, she said she liked the instrumental music.
Bunt loved music, when I mentioned playing the piano, she said she had always loved music but never learned how to play anything. She also loved to sing, but she was not able to carry a tune. That didn't stop her, she said when she was young she would sit on the porch swing & sing away at the top of her voice, it just made her feel good. My father also loved music but also said he could not carry a tune, so did my sister, so I guess it runs in his family. I've read that music & math ability go hand in hand, but both Bunt & my father were good at math and not very good at music, they could both get the rhythm & the words right, but not the notes.
Bunt always liked to learn more about religion so I asked Bunt once if she was interested in seeing a Bible from the Catholic church that a friend had given me, she wasn't eager to convert but she was eager to compare it with her own version and understand the differences. I gave it to her to read and never got it back. I also gave her a red wooden Christmas sleigh that she was so happy to get, she put it on top of her TV in the living room.
She had a beautiful heavy black iron and glass dining room table that she said was too expensive for her to buy but it was so beautiful she wanted it in her home. She didn't entertain or have a family anymore but she just wanted the beauty of it in front of her, it made her happy to see and touch it. I noticed her new apartment had a metal hanging light over the table with holes around the bottom but nothing in them, I gave her some hanging crystals, she was so pleased; I didn't have quite enough to finish the job but I told her where I'd bought them and she went and bought the last pack and finished it. Beauty pleased her, and children. She had a painting on the wall of two small children dangerously making their way together across a perilous decaying rope bridge over a chasm with an angel hovering over them, she said it represented how God always watches over all of us, especially the innocent little children. I think she firmly believed there was always someone up there somewhere watching over her. Aunt Bunt is one of the few people I've ever met who personify to me the unlimited love of Christ for all people. She felt loved and she radiated love to others, just like Christ.
---Jennie Rhinehart 12/28/2019 |
