Aunt Ludie and Prince

I was reading the news on the Web and I ran across a story about a married couple who had been married for 61 years, and they died 12 hours apart. It reminded me of a married couple in my family. They lived on a farm in rural Sussex County, Virginia.

I was a kid when I knew them, and to me they looked old as grit. I remember them being really nice, cheerful people. The man was called Prince. I figured Prince was a nickname but never knew for sure. The woman was called Aunt Ludie. At least, that’s how it sounded to me. Maybe people were saying “Lutie.” I researched my family tree and didn’t find either name, but I found a Luana, and that might be her. They both looked a hundred years old, but part of that was due to many years of hard work under the summer sun. Their house lacked indoor plumbing. Yes, they had an outhouse. They also had a well. In the kitchen, instead of a sink and faucets there was a countertop with a cast-iron hand pump and a large bowl into which water was pumped for washing.

When we visited, my dad always took his .22 rifle and we would shoot cans and such off a fence post. Prince would join us but he just watched. Meanwhile, Aunt Ludie would prepare dinner on a wood-burning cook stove in her kitchen. Cast iron wood-burning cook stoves were not too unusual for farmhouses at that time. Until I was 6 years old I lived with my grandparents in the city, and my grandmother also cooked on a wood-burning stove. This was before air conditioning was common, and firing up a wood stove in your kitchen on a hot August day was quite an experience. It makes me wonder how people had been cooking food up to that point, if an ugly black iron stove that you had to build a fire in was considered a must-have high tech appliance. I hear one of those old-timers now: “Yeppers, I’m savin’ my money to buy one o’ them new-fangled wood-burnin’ stoves for my wife to cook on. She’ll be happier than a pig in mud!”

One weekend day, Prince drove into town on some errand. A man in the family – a son or nephew – was at the farm but he was working in one of the fields. He looked up and saw fire in the house. Aunt Ludie had been cooking and the stove had somehow ignited her dress. By the time the man reached her, she was badly burned. She died soon after.

Meanwhile in the nearby town, Prince suffered a massive heart attack and died. They both died the same weekend, maybe the same day. Neither knew the other was dying. Was it only coincidence? Was it something more? I don’t know. One thing I feel sure about is that neither of them would have known how to keep living without the other.