The Untold Story of Sweet Auntie Julie

Sweet Auntie Julie and Great-Grandma Mary O'Brien circa 1912, Detroit

What we know for sure about this mysterious ancestor is that she was much esteemed for her extreme, unflagging sweetness, her cooking prowess, her love of walking, her gentle grace, and paradoxically, her ability to break 90 decibels with her bodacious, deep-chested belches.  These brilliant eructations were the envy of all the coarse men about her, and there were many.  For Sweet Auntie Julie, a lifelong spinster, ran a boardinghouse for itinerant tinkers, organ grinders, and homeless morticians in Detroit, south of Michigan Avenue, in Corktown (now Mexicantown).  Curiously, she was known to have announced unprovoked from her crib at the age of 17-months, "I'll NEVER marry, EVER!"  These were her first words.

Why this somewhat distant cousin was called Sweet Auntie Julie is unknown, as her name was actually Honora Green Brown according to the 1880 Census for Houghton County Michigan, where she was born in 1879.  She was somehow related to our Great-Grandmother Mary Green O'Brien (see photo above), but exactly how has yet to be ascertained, possibly as a step-second-cousin, once removed.  Note:  If true, this means that to our generation, she is a step-fourth-cousin, twice removed; to that of our children, a step-fifth cousin, four times removed but then once-returned, making her thrice-removed.  Stay tuned...Linda's on the case!)

In truth, she didn't have to run a boardinghouse...she wanted to, for them, the sad, repellent men and shells of men who had nowhere to go but out into the bleak streets and alleyways and other, much cheaper, much more poorly-run tenement dwellings of the city where rats and lice and roaches ruled the roost. Other than the men themselves, you’d find no vermin at Sweet Auntie Julie's boardinghouse -- you'd be hard-pressed, in fact, to spot a dust mite, much less a stray hair.  She insisted upon starched linens, silver service for coffee (whose beans she ground fresh each time by hand) and real sugar -- none of those little packets of Sweet 'N Low, which had yet to be invented, thank God.  Then there were the finger bowls for rinsing one’s cigar- and cigarette-stained digits between courses, something she required.  Indeed, everything in that establishment was a cut above; a higher rung on the ladder; bigger, better, finer.

Granted, she did charge her men – double, even triple, what they would have paid elsewhere (and in fact, she became quite well off as a result, they say).  But then again, where else would these pathetic, lost souls ever in their lives get Filete de boeuf sauce bearnaise for dinner one night, followed by Tournedos de saumon aux lentilles vertes du Puy the next?  And the night after that? Weinerschnitzel with spaetzle! Ja!  And on and on, always something new and exotic.  Always made with the most extreme care and the freshest ingredients purchased herself at Eastern Market, to which distant place Sweet Auntie Julie would walk, each and every morning, setting out at 4:45 promptly.  She was always walking, walking, walking – even when she was standing – eschewing the horse carts and trolleys of the day (and later the Tin Lizzys and Packards) for the healthful benefits of a daily constitutional.  No wonder her weight never varied an ounce for the duration of her adult life!

But it didn't stop with the cuisine (never “grub” or “vittles” or “eats” or “chow” as the uncouth crowd she fed knew in short order never to refer to her creations in her presence – or risk a brisk cuff on the noggin and the admonishment, "Hell's Bells, man, you'll not be spewing vulgarities under my roof!  I hear that again, and you'll be dining on the back porch with the empty milk bottles and yesterday's Detroit Times!"). There were also the wines!  No rotgut for these vagrants. Instead, a wonderful Burgundy, Chateau de Bligney, with the red meat (but of course).  And a perfectly-chilled (47.5223 degrees Fahrenheit) bottle of Domaine Laroche Chablis with the fish. And to accompany the schnitzel?  A full-bodied Reisling Hans Schaffer, imported from Alsace, naturally. Or a nice Wiessbier directly from Stammhaus Zum Augustiner, Munich, Germany.  A treat…every night a treat.  Can you say creme brulee a la cassonade?  How about Black Forest Chocolate Cake?  Or Bananas Foster made with real bananas imported from the Caribbean?  Typical desserts!

In any case, Sweet Auntie Julie and her boardinghouse became legendary within the itinerant tinker-organ grinder-homeless-mortician community, and she remained in business throughout WWI, the Depression, and WWII, even as her clientele dwindled away like so many truffle samples in a candy store.  She finally shuttered the place when the last itinerant tinker in the city passed away peacefully in his sleep in late 1952, having been preceded in death by the last organ grinder in 1948.  The last homeless mortician left the premises of his own accord in 1930 (due to a sudden increase in suicides in the wake of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, business picked up dramatically at funeral homes all over the city, and there have been no homeless morticians in the area since). 

The boardinghouse building itself was demolished when, by right of eminent domain, the state constructed I-75 through her old neighborhood.  As for Sweet Auntie Julie, she retired upon the passing of her final tenant and took a long-awaited, much-anticipated holiday back to the turf of her parents, Ireland. Tragically, she disappeared on a side trip to the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway, circa 1954, on one of her epic walks along a cliff’s edge in a powerful storm that suddenly kicked up, as is wont to happen in those parts.  No trace of her was ever found, and no one knows what became of her money, which had been withdrawn in its entirety prior to her journey.  (Some said she may have been carrying it on her person – she was eccentric like that – stuffed into her bustle, but as no trace of the unfortunate woman was ever found, we’ll never know.)

The sad story of her dismal demise being duly stated, she did leave behind a legacy of first-class charity work for the now-largely-forgotten itinerant tinker-organ grinder-homeless mortician set that once roamed Detroit and environs, and for that, all of us can be rightly proud – particularly our very own Julie – Sweet Auntie Julie’s namesake – herself very much a Sweet Auntie Julie, as we all know….WOM 5/4/07

Partying hardy of a Sunday afternoon, 1928:  (from left front) Sweet Auntie Julie, Mamie O’Brien; (rear) Lyle and Michael O’Brien