She was my great aunt. She was married to Bill Hinton who owned a trucking business and who apparently made quite a lot of money because they had a huge house slightly outside of York, PA with a huge basement, a chord organ in the living room, a pottery studio, and most importantly, the pool!
Aunt Catherine had a couple of interesting phrases. One came up when she talked about the tomato plant parts that grow out from the elbow of a branch. She called them “suckers,” way before Trump called anybody suckers or losers.
They also had quite an extensive aquarium set up, but if a fish began getting sickly, she would take it out of the tank and drop it into the swimming pool to let it “crap out.” (I’m sure any aquarium fish, fresh or salt water, would “crap out” quickly when plunged into chlorinated water…)
The thing I remember about her the most, however, was her response to my aunt Victoria, who would do that rapid clucking noise with her tongue when she would disapprove os something. When she began clucking, Aunt Catherine would respond by pushing up her glasses, then adjusting her top, both of these several times, and saying, “Hell’s bells, Vic, you sound like you’re nervous!” Just as nervous as it seemed she was by the repeated pushing up of glasses and top.
MUSOFYR 