Azuba Elizabeth Walker

(as told by Elizabeth Perkins Buchheit)

I lived with my great-grandmother on my mother’s side, Azuba Elizabeth Walker, all my life as a kid ‘cause she lived with my mom and dad. I called her “Grandma” but she was my great-grandmother because her daughter Maggie Perkins, my true grandmother, died before she did. Elizabeth Walker weighed about 85 pounds and was really feisty. Nobody told her what to do at all but she told them. She was born in 1844 and she died in 1944 so she lived to be 100 years old. I’ve got one of those genes if it hasn’t been dissolved someplace along the line.

Elizabeth Walker was born in Rushville, New York, near Lake Canandaigua. She was the oldest of three girls. She always said that she was the only boy her father had. When she was 12, her family left New York because the soil was too rocky. They hopped in a covered wagon and resettled in Illinois where the soil was so good.

Her father James Daniel Walker died quite early at the age of 47. Her mother Eunice Moon lived to be about 96. My great-grandmother’s maiden name was Walker and she married George Francis Perkins so her name was Elizabeth Walker Perkins.

My great-grandmother told us so many things about life and what she knew and the life that her family lived and how they farmed and what they did for fun. Everybody learned how to dance ‘cause you would go on Saturday nights to the schoolhouse and the village band, Uncle Jimmy Rodgers, would play the fiddle and he would mark on the floor where you were to stand. The dances were pretty fancy in those days. They had pretty good times, you know. People were just the same.

Among other things, my great-grandmother and her family would be called upon to go to the neighbors’ who lived probably 10 miles away to help them shuck corn when the corn would come due. They would go in a horse and buggy and sing songs. The neighbors knew they were coming and so when they arrived, they had a very good lunch or dinner. They’d gone so far and there’d probably be others who came too so they’d all spend the night. I don’t know whether they slept in the wagon or in the buggy or on the ground. But they slept there. And they danced most of the night. They danced and they drank apple cider or hard cider, Jersey Lightning.

Great-grandma hated to be asked how old she was. If she was down on her knees spading in the garden, men would walk by on their way to the train station and say, “And how old are we today?” Great-grandma would reply, “That’s none of your d— business.” She used some of the saltiest language in our house. I never heard my father curse like that.

There was a man in our town named Milton Meyers who was a captain in the Northern Army during the Civil War. He was a very nice gentleman who lived to be about 103. During parades, our town used to set Milton and my great-grandmother on a platform and then march to the cemetery.

Great-grandma said, “I’m not going to sit next to him anymore.”

And I said, “Grandma, you’ve got to sit with this guy.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not? “

“He doesn’t seem very well. He’s memorized the entire bible. All he does is quote the bible when I’m sitting up next to him and I don’t want to hear it anymore!”

She was something else.

In those days, communities wouldn’t have a preacher until they could pay an itinerant minister. People would to go to religious revivals that would last for hours. If they fell asleep during the services, the ushers would hit ‘em on the head with a ball on the end of a stick. Ours was held together with a leather thong which was wound around the ball. And the ball was as hard as a brick. Great-grandma became the original atheist.

Easter was the only time that Great-grandma went to church. Every year, she made me a cute little outfit with a hat and a dress, the whole bit. My dad would take a picture of us.

Great-grandma always wore an 1840s outfit and she made all of her own clothes. She made underpants that looked like something out of Sense and Sensibility. They were long and they went out to bellbottoms and they have ribbons or something on the bottom. Then she made a white skirt that was about knee length and that was called an underskirt. On top of that she wore a petticoat and then a regular skirt. And if you could walk around with all of that, you were lucky. I think all of these things today like high heels are ways of keeping women in line. They can’t run or escape, you see, with all these shenanigans on.

VERNON WORK MYERS: I remember when I was 10 or 11 I finally started wearing long pants. I said, “I don’t want to look like George Washington!”