How I Remember It
Buffalo, New York, 1960
I was barely thirteen years old when crazy Aunt Beaners, in her usual tizzy, announced that we had to pack up immediately and move to Utah because the Ouija board had revealed that another h*******t was about to happen. It was 1960, and we were fair-haired, middle-class Protestants with sky-color eyes living in peaceful Buffalo, New York, where the worst threat was frostbite. I looked at my aunt in wonder because this seemed excessive, even for her.
“We practically live in Canada, Beaners—and nothing bad ever happens in Canada.” (I spoke with exaggerated calm, as though reasoning with a blind, knife-wielding butcher.)
I was accustomed to impulsive decisions and baffling observations from Aunt Bea, whom we had long ago dubbed “Beaners” because D
