My aunt . . .
Well, let's go back a bit. I always knew Elizabeth Reed (1909-1967) as my aunt, my mother's sister. However, my mother was an intra-family adoption. So the parents she grew up with were, genealogically speaking, her uncle and aunt, and Elizabeth Reed was actually my first cousin once removed.
I have, however, always remembered her as my aunt, as that is the function she fulfilled, and fulfilled well and truly, for me.
She was the Director of Health Information for the state of Florida from the late 1940s to the middle of the 1960s. As she worked in such an important position, she had only Saturdays to get all her errands done. She would often invite me to tag along. I think part of it was to give my mom a break from corralling me from some mischief or other, and part to keep me in line. But my aunt "Sissy" and I also had big fun on those Saturdays, which became known as "Do Day."
We would tell jokes, sing songs, and just generally be silly. She taught me a song from her younger days as a nurse, working with midwives in rural areas of the Florida Panhandle. We recited poetry. And we talked.
Usually, first on the Saturday stops for errands was the American National Bank, in the San Marco shopping center on the south side of Jacksonville, located where the western terminus of Atlantic Boulevard merges into San Marco Boulevard. Crossing from one side of the shopping area to the other could be an interesting activity. In the bank, one of the employees, a black woman everyone knew as "Cee," would tend a cart with a supply of cold lemonade and small cups. She would dole out lemonade to the customers, and it was most welcome during Florida's hot summer.
Next on the list might be The Silk Shop, a fabric store run by the family of an elementary-school classmate of mine. When you walked into the shop, you were hit right in the face by the smell of the sizing in the fabrics. It could also sting your eyes a bit. It took a few minutes to get to the point where you could breathe and open your eyes. "Sissy" would buy fabric and patterns for dresses and other garments that she would have made by her dressmaker. From time to time, she also bought fabric for items to be made for me. I sometimes got to pick out the patterns.
Another "Do Day" stop might be the Southside Branch Library, part of the Jacksonville Public Library System that I would later end up working for. "Sissy" had seen to it that I had a library card, and I would check out books.
For back-to-school clothing for me, around the end of August or the beginning of September, we'd go downtown to Cohen Brothers or Furchgott's, Sears or J.C. Penney. Or in November, we might visit one of those stores if I had grown into a need for a new winter coat. And we might grab lunch at Morrison's Cafeteria, a Jacksonville institution for decades.
Things are different now, and we do a lot -- probably the majority -- of our shopping online. It's convenient, it's efficient, it saves gasoline. But it deprives us of the feeling of community as we used to shop at venues owned by people we knew. It deprives us of the human interaction that we all need. Sure, online shopping has its uses, but we might all benefit from getting out into the world on our own "Do Day."
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