"How did you meet Aunt Rosie?"

Uncle Eddie, Aunt Rosie,
 me & the purse, spring 1956

I had an unexpected day off yesterday, so of course I went to Little Falls ☺.  My triple mission: to check something at MCHS, to find John P Sand's grave in Calvary Cemetery there, and mostly to visit Uncle Eddie.
 He wasn't sure who I was at first, but once he put his hearing aids in and we got talking, it was fine.
He and Aunt Rosie were my sponsors, so they were stuck coming to my first communion, etc.  I told him about the blue purse they gave me and how proud of it I was at 7 years old.  He laughed and said he had nothing to do with the gift.
He has Alzheimers/dementia, but that only means that long-ago memories are easiest to recall.

We talked about stuff like how his family had to move their still three times during prohibition, and that his brother made beer, too in those days.  I asked about something I'd heard from Uncle Tony--about how he and his two sisters found Heschs to marry.
Evidently, when Uncle Matt and Aunt Eileen bought the little store/gas station in North Prairie, Minnesota as newly-weds, Matt's sister Rosie would help out there sometimes.  That's when she met good looking Eddie Janish.  Pretty soon, they married and moved to the cities.
 
That worked so well, Matts brother Tony came to help, too, and that's how he met pretty Irene Janish.  She stopped at the store to put up a poster about her Duck Shoot (?? It was the early 40s and she raised ducks. It involved shooting at a target with a .22--whoever came closest to the bullseye got a live duck).  Uncle Eddie remembered those damn ducks ☺.

He couldn't remember how Henry Hesch met his sister Idella, but he figured it was a similar situation.  Uncle Henry and Aunt Idella married in 1950.  I think they ran out of eligible sibs after that.