My mother's sister-in-law had 5 children, Bert, Edna, Gordon, Florence and Erma. They lived in Marne, Michigan.The community was originally named Berlin because of the many German settlers. Due to anti-German sentiments during World War I, the name was changed in 1919 to Marne, to honor those soldiers who fought in the Battle of the Marne. Marne was about ten or twelve miles from Grand Rapids.

They had a big old kitchen with a huge wood-burning range and a huge kitchen table.

We would drive out on a Sunday to visit them and there would be ten or twelve at the dinner table. Gordon would say, "Pass the grease, please." How she cooked for such a large mob I will never know.

Flo and I were very close, though she was four years younger than I. Sometimes. I would stay over and Flo and I would giggle all night and listen through the stove-pipe to what our elders were talking about downstairs.

There were chamber pots under the bed and one time Flo got up in the night and pulled out what she thought was the chamber pot but it was her slipper and she peed in it.

Bert married Alice, a scatter-brained blonde whom the family didn't like very much. He opened a garage in Grand Rapids with Bill Marema.

Gordon married a lovely girl, Lorraine, and had a big success in the roofing business.

Erma died when she was a young woman.

Florence married Benni - a chap who picked her up one time when she was hitch-hiking to Grand Rapids. Flo and Bennie lived at the old farm with Aunt Jessie, after Harry died. The rest of the family had flown the coop.