NEIGHBORS, PART II. THE GLASSES

Neighbors,  Part II. THE GLASSES

According to Miss Bobbie, one of the two little boys next door had been born “afflicted,”  Southern then-vernacular for any problem acquired or developed surrounding a child’s birth, and it could also apply to having any lasting condition resulting from any of the usual childhood diseases.   Little Bobby was just “a bit slow in his ways,” as she told his story, and had very poor eyesight, requiring stronger and stronger glasses as he grew older.   He didn’t do well in his first couple of years of school, but did learn to read just enough to get by. He didn’t attend much past third grade, when his grasp of arithmetic and geography had been the cause of “failing him” twice, so that he was head-taller than his classmates.  And so he stayed at home. 

  In Miss Bobbie’s  words, “He made a BIG man.”  On up into his thirties, he’d walk all over town with his Mama while she sold her Avon, and he’d sit on your steps or in your porch swing if you didn’t have screen.   You could track what time Miss Emma would be at your house by looking across and seeing what house where Bobby was sitting, looking at the birds.

He’d sit in the sun or shade of the porch, slowly moving the glider with gentle movements, and holding her furled “parasol,” which was a big black umbrella that she took from his hand and snapped open each time she came out the customer’s door, bearing it aloft to ward off the sun until she reached the next stop---a geometric little sidewalk journey like stitching one of those squared-off Greek-key patterns onto a dresser scarf---to the next house, just forty steps away.

He, in exchange for the parasol, would accept her little Avon suitcase of wares, dwarfed to child size by his enormous soft hands, and he’d carry it meekly down sidewalk after sidewalk, handing it back in the wordless parasol-snap moment of exchange at the steps.  When School was “out,” or in the later afternoons, he usually had an entourage of two or three of the little neighbor kids.

 Children loved him, that simple shining soul, so soft spoken and shy.  They’d show him things, things from their grimy pockets, or bird nests or a mended pocket-knife, and he’d give them solemn consideration through the ever-thickening lenses, murmuring little comments and answers in that eternal language of small boys and their treasures. 

I can still hear Miss Bobbie’s Alabama voice right now, “ . . .and they’d show him therr pocket-bobs, and he’d look ‘em over. . .”     The kids eagerly followed him from front porch to side-steps to an old glider with an awning, as his Mama made her way around the block with him moving gently in her wake.  Bobby was always given first choice of seating wherever they alit, easing his way onto the steps or into the swing with a soft sigh as he sat, and they all jostled a bit to capture the best spot for his attention.  And no matter whose porch or yard they were all occupying, they were as accepted as the breeze, because Bobby was there, and nobody ever acted up when he was so unheedingly in charge.

And so I’ve had this small pair of oh-so-thick glasses for almost thirty years, laid onto the top shelf with all the old cameras and spy-glasses and belt buckles and old black-and-white family pictures with names on the back lest we forget.   The case is unconscionably dusty, as is everything on that last-to-be tended shelf, with the passing seasons of months and years.   They lie in that napped blue velvet, just as his little-boy hands snapped shut the small hard clamshell for that last time when the next, stronger pair was required. 

These are a lasting treasure to me, as would be a Grandfather’s watch or a Great Aunt’s lavalier, though I never knew the owner save through the stories and the forever place that sweet, never-met young man occupies in my heart. 

SO MANY BLESSINGS

So many Blessings, so much Gratitude.   Thank you all.

HOME AGAIN

Central Park Bears

We’re HOME, We’re Home!!  Our trip to New York was all that I’d ever dreamt and the great and powerful THEN SOME which wouldn’t cover the half of it. 

Such sweet chillun to see and hug and talk with, such a beautiful, happy baby GIRL to meet and snuggle and sing to, and such a parade of wonderfuls---unexpected wonderfuls, which I’d never thought to do or see, and so much good talk and travel and dining and just being together---it will take ten posts to tell it.

And so, two buses, two trains, (the last one four hours late arriving, occasioning our wild, wind-whipping ride in a three-car luggage-cart, careening around corners with nail-biting leans over the precipice toward the tracks, as our lost Andretti Brother took us on an uncontrolled Indiana Jones mine-cart tour of the underground of Union Station), nine Ubers, five subways, forty-leben escalators, a skyscraper worth of stairs, hundreds of blocks walked, and one taxi home, here we are---a lifetime dream fulfilled and a camera full of photos.  

And of those, moiré non---it feels like Monday to us, and that makes just a two day week.   Hope you’ve all been well and warm and happy!!




Dylan's Candy Bar 9'  Chocolate Bunny

NEIGHBORS

All pictures from the Internet

Years ago when Chris and I were first married, we moved way over into Alabama to be nearer his teen-and-pre-teen children.   The little house we lived in was in a “mill town,” one of many which dotted the quiet shady streets; the older lady who had lived there all her married life had gone into a nursing home and left the house in the hands of a nice lady realtor, who showed us around and directed us toward churches and stores and the library.   It seemed as if the occupants had stepped out for a moment, leaving all their worldlies just as they’d like to find them when they arrived home.  

We slept in their beds, with their linens freshly-dried on the line right out the back door.  We used their dishes, their appliances, their roomy old claw-tub and their floppy wooden five-times-covered ironing board, clattering it out of the special narrow slot in the kitchen wall and shaking the unwieldy legs straight---I loved that clumsy old thing, and when we left, I asked to buy three things, and the realtor lady pressed all of them upon me, just for my asking.   We lived there for almost two years, attending the welcoming little church right down the block, and having a wonderful time amongst all the long-time residents of the neighborhood.   My next-door-neighbor, Miss Bobbie, told me many, many tales of the town’s history as we’d sit on her porch or mine, shelling peas from the tee-ninecy garden plot out back or just enjoying the afternoon at that lovely time of day when it’s too late to begin any real chores, and too early to start cooking supper.

She was a lovely older woman who had moved there as a young wife in the Forties, and had loved her neighbor very much---they were almost sisters, she said, as they’d both moved into those little houses when their husbands had “got on at the Mill,” right after they got back from WWII.  They’d seen each other through some tough times and helped each other with raising their  children, as well as all the assorted happy and sad of daily life in a small town.   And then each clung to the other in her widowhood, not too many years apart.

I was mesmerized by all the simple happenings she related, and grew to know the former residents of our little home as if they’d been family and we’d inherited the place from a familiar Aunt and Uncle.    

One weekend when the children were all with us, the boys were outside, up trees with the neighbor kids while Chris chatted with the neighbors. Only Karrie and I were at home, and since on another visit,  we’d said we’d wait till a quiet moment to have a peek into an immense old black trunk beside the bed in the spare room, we decided that NOW was the time.   We spread a fresh-dried sheet over the beautiful Chenille counterpane, and gently laid item after item, doily and dresser set and calendar, every pen set and brooch and immense stack of ironed hankies, all the keepsakes and souvenirs and bronzed baby-shoes and diaries and khaki-crumbled report cards, out onto the bed.   

I don’t know how to express the sunlight and the shine of that small moment, handling the precious things of a family’s past---we two shared such gentle regard for each item, as we took it from its place, admired or read or smiled, and laid it down softly in that room where it belonged.  We were like those white-gloved archivists and curators of precious things for those few hours, I think, giving each piece a moment of quiet respect, and then laying them all safely away in their resting place once again.

And one small leathery case--out of ALL, there was one small object which captured my heart so that I had no words.   I was so struck by a pang of dolor and love and wishing it had been different, that I was all teary over the discovery, and in a moment, so was she. 

   And Moire non in Chapter II. 

I GOTCHA COVERED!

Now that the weather is cooling a bit, with sunny skies beaming down onto the leafpiles (ours still merely an unaccustomed-for-this-time-in-October BROWN, like all the Autumns of my life, until we moved here twenty-seven years ago), we’re enjoying putting out a cozy thing or two---a soft throw across a chair back, the “cold-weather pillows” in burgundy and deep greens, with needlepointed teacups and other things comfy and warm.

And, with the ushering in of the cooler season, I’m remembering the HOT days of my Southern past, as well---especially those gosh-awful clear shrouds of heavy plastic made-to-fit for the “good” furniture in living room and den.  Remember those unspeakably uncomfortable, complain-when-you-moved, stick-to-your-bare-legs monstrosities which were the pride of every household with a “living room suit”?   Those lovingly-guarded, hard-won sets with the immaculate gold upholstery were more tenaciously defended with their prophylactical plastic than any furniture in history---even that in the never-used, daylight-forbidden parlors of Victorian households.   At least there, the distance between bee-hind and brocade was mere clothing, but that PLASTIC---oh, my.   What conniving, evil minds thought up THAT stuff? 

Some of it was a little bit subdued---a translucent softer kind of plastic instead of that noisy stuff that gave the couch the gleam of a well-loved Camaro, but STILL.

I can remember sliding off Aunt Lo’s clear-covered sofa (and glad to be free of it) after I’d wiggled and crinkled and made all sorts of effort to keep my velvet Christmas dress demurely down, and my abrupt descent beneath the coffee-table in a flurry of red petticoats was a story repeated every year by and to all the older generation.   And even when I was grown up and attending a shower or tea party, or even a morning “Coke party” with dainty tunafish sandwiches cut with Karla Kay’s Mama’s bridge-set cutters, and frilly crocheted panties on the icy Coke bottles---still we fidgeted in the Summer stillness and tried to keep decorum as we struggled to stay in one spot.



Miss Joan Crawford, 1973.  Look at the shine on that chair and sofa, and imagine how many famous bottoms struggled to keep their balance, whilst balancing cocktail, conversation and cigarette.

The next one could be any one of my three Memphis Aunts, this anonymous woman of the Internet, sitting with one steadying foot on the floor in her pretty pink boucle, and making all sorts of creaks and crackles as she leans toward the ashtray.  I try to think back to who DIDN’T have these---we didn’t, but then there was that pesky brown naugahyde, which is a whole nother story.  And there we also those who, after putting a “slipcover” on the precious upholstery, would THEN cover the whole thing with Dupont’s finest, shielding the $3.95 rayon with the $14.95 plastic, and totally hiding the expensive brocade.  And By Golly Gosh---are those drapes and sheers covered in their own shower-curtain-liners as well?

And this one---this is a doozy---where in the Blue Heck did they GET that thing, perfectly fitted and tailored, and are there immaculate little holes in just the right spots for those little spindles?   Didn’t you always wonder who they were saving them FOR?  

Wish Y’all could come sit a  while on MY sofa so we could have a good long chat---some kinda contretemps betwixt Google and Blogger lets me sign IN enough to post a blog post, and recognizes me when I write a comment on YOUR blogs, but the words then just disappear when I hit POST and never show up.   I’m sorry to be incommunicado, but I’m still reading, still enjoying, though I can’t get through to say Hello.