Archives for April 5, 2012

          “I suppose you all’d like to know how your daddy and I took up with each other?” Jo asked Teddy and me one evening at the dinner table.  My dad was working late at the auto agency, and Jo was having her after-dinner cigarette and whiskey.

          We sat there, not particularly caring if she told us this story or not.  I would like to have said, “Who cares.”  However, flicking the ashes off her cigarette, and draining the last of her glass, she began:

          “Twelve years before I got here to Pittsville, I grew up in a little country section of Georgia.  Wouldn’t you know–during muh senior year of high school, the most mahvelous thing happened to me.  I was voted “Miss Georgia Peach of the Month.”  They presented me with a sparkly tiara, two tickets to our local cinema, four jars of peach jam, and a voucher for a bushel basket full of fresh peaches when pickin’ season began!  What’dya think of that?”

           “Hmmmm,” we both mumbled.

          “Now, when ah graduated, my aunt Polly– ah called her ‘aunt Polly’, but her real name was ‘Pollyanna’, invited me to come to Pittsville for a two week visit.  My auntie was real sophisticated.  She clerked in the handkerchief aisle at Pitts Department store.  Well, one day, she took me to lunch in the Tea Room at Pitts.  Oh, my, the specialty of the day was a big scoop of chicken salad, a ring of pineapple with cottage cheese and a sticky bun.  All for a dollar!  And you shoulda seen the waitresses.  All dressed in stiff gray uniforms with starched white aprons, frilly caps all bobby-pinned to the tops of their heads, and the ugliest sensible white shoes.  Mebbe I’ll take the both of you there some day.”

          “Sunshine and me have been there before,” Teddy bragged.

          Hardly stopping to take a breath, Jo continued.  “My ‘ol home town, Porter, Georgia didn’t have a department store, and let me tell you, I wandered about all wide-eyed at the wondrous sights:  rack upon rack of fancy ladies clothing, an entire shoe department with displays of the latest in foot fashion, and my God—you wouldn’t believe the underwear section. Mannequins wearin’ brassieres in all sorts of colors, and panties almost too shocking to behold; sorry, Teddy if I’m embarrassing you, but it’s the damned truth!”

          “Teddy and I have been to Pitts a few times,” I stated.

          This fell on deaf ears, for she proceded to rattle on.  “There was an elevator leadin’ to the lower level where the Men’s Clothing Department was found, a mezzanine where chocolates, sodas and the Tea Room were located.  On the second floor there were all kinds of electrical appliances and kitchen gadgets. The third floor had children’s clothing, the fourth floor was loaded with furniture, and they even had a piano department.  You could buy a piano, or even just a sheet of music which a lady would play for you on one of the Baldwins.”

         ” Yeah, we’ve heard the music,” we both said in unison. 

          Lighting another cigarette, and barely hesitating, she went on with her story of how she loved the elevator operators’ stunning uniforms of soft green gabardine with brass buttons parading down the front, and red epaulets on the shoulders, with the ‘captain’ of the elevators distinguished by epaulets of gleaming gold.  “Now get this–in addition, the operators wore immaculate white gloves, and a fresh boutonniere was pinned to their lapels.  And every Monday before the store opened, they were given a manicure and a wave at no cost, plus a five percent discount on any one item purchased from the Ladies Fashion Salon–once a month.” 

          After this long-winded speech, I looked over and noticed that her cigarette had burned so close to her fingers, I was deciding if I should run and get the first-aid kit just in case, but darn it, she noticed, and stubbed it out just in time.

          “Those operators would sit inside their cages on three-legged stools just waitin’ for the passengers to file in.  When the time was right, the captain would saunter by, and if the elevator was full, she’d snap the little yellow clicker in between her fingers.  Then that there operator would close the doors, pull the lever, and announce to all her passengers as they went up, what merchandise was on each floor. ”

          Jo went on and on.  I looked over, and Teddy’s head was propped up by his fist, and his eyes were closed.  I wasn’t so lucky.

          “Those ladies had their noses up so high in the air, there was frostbite on ’em,” Jo commented.  “Why it’s a true bonus if they as much as smile or even speak to you.  I must confess, that’s part of the reason ah loved it so.  I wanted to be jes like them.  I wanted to feel like ‘somebody””!

          Jo continued in rapturous tones about the haughty elegance of those women, how she aspired to be one, and how, after her two-week visit had ended, she traveled back to her little town in Georgia just long enough to bid her parents ‘goodbye’.

         ” My mama  said, “Sugah, I wish you’d a change your mind, but if you’ve got a hankerin’ to see the world, I guess there’s no way we’re gonna stop you.  Just remember what I been preachin’ to you since you was a young’un–you got to hang on to that virginity of yours ’til your weddin’ day.  No man wants to find out on his weddin’ night that he’s latched onta sum’un else’s used goods.  I shouldn’t a told you that part, Sunshine, but it looks like Teddy’s fallen asleep.”

          “Anyways, my daddy looked heavenward and sang out “Amen”!  The very next day, I gathered up muh baby doll shoes, some pretty clothes, muh high school diploma, and the jeweled tiara; packed ’em all into a little ‘ol cardboard suitcase, walked the ten blocks to the train station and purchased a one-way ticket to Pittsville.  That’s when I took up livin’ at the YWCA.”

          My daddy loved to tell Teddy and me of his friendship with our ‘Uncle Tap’.  Theodore Alan Pitts, of the founding Pitts family was known to all as ‘Tap’, and my dad, Patrick Alvin Tucker was nicknamed ‘Pat’ — not only because it was his first name shortened, but, like uncle Tap, they were his initials.

          They had been best friends since their earliest memories when they attended grade school together.  Both were outstanding athletes and leaders among their friends.  Over the years they shared their love of sports, their homework assignments, and their girlfriends.  One, in particular, ( and my father didn’t divulge this until after our mother’s death,)  Annie Noreen Donahue, was liked by both.

          In the summertime, Tap and Pat hired themselves out for the usual summer jobs–washing cars, mowing lawns, life-guarding at Tarpin Lake. Tap could have relied on his family’s wealth to pad his wallet, but he insisted on earning his own spending money.  In my dad’s case, the meager amount he was able to acquire during the summer was meant to last him for the entire year.

          Annie’s family had known my daddy’s family all of their adult lives, for they had moved  to our street within six months of each other.  Her parents had produced five sons, and Annie was their only daughter.  She was the youngest of the brood.  Her mother had died during Annie’s birth, and consequently, by the time she was ten, Annie became the ‘mother’ to her older brothers who adored her.  When she was in high school, her brothers had married and moved away.

          Annie was known to be the area’s most responsible baby-sitter.  She never left her charges unattended, and was painstakingly patient in teaching each and every child in her care the appreciation of nature and art.  From the time she was very young, she never had any aspirations beyond being married to a good man and raising a healthy and happy family.

          In their free time, the three would ride their bicycles to the lake with Annie bringing along her sketch pad, and a picnic basket with their lunch.  While the boys tossed the football around, wrestled, or swam, she would sit on the blanket and sketch.  Annie was in love with both of them, I found out much later.  Although Annie thought she was just a ‘pal’ to the two of them, this was not so either.  I found that out later as well.

          Annie and my dad would sometimes meet up with Tap, who lived in a better section of town at Pitts Movie Theatre on Saturday afternoons.   The three would sit in the back row watching the serial westerns and cartoons, sharing one bag of popcorn, and occasionally tossing some of it at unsuspecting patrons in the dark.  One afternoon, they were caught and asked to leave until they could conduct themselves in an adult manner.  Later that same night, they sneaked back to the theater where they pasted popcorn over the entire window of the box office.  This was a story that even as adults, they would double over in laughter each time they told and retold the tale. Teddy and I heard it more than once.

          By the time they entered high school, they were still enjoying each other’s company.  Annie graduated, received a part-time scholarship to a near-by university where she majored in art, and later graduated with honors.  Within six months of coming back home, her father died suddenly, and her generous brothers insisted that she continue to live in her father’s small house.    Tap attemded an Ivy League school in the East, and majored in business.  My dad received a four-year scholarship to a small college in Iowa.  During his sophomore year, he met a sweet girl, fell in love with her and after a ‘whirlwind romance’, married her–my mother, Sally Tyndale.  Neither finished college and the two of them came back to Pittsville where they took up residence on the street where my dad had grown up.

          Teddy and I had been students of Annie Donahue at Pitts Grade School.  She taught there since her college graduation, although I heard that she had skipped a year of teaching, but that was before I was even born.  She was beloved by all the students; however outside the school’s premises she was unusually aloof.  In particular, to me.  This always made me feel sad, and I could never explain it away, except for the fact that although only a first grader, even ‘stick-figures’ were beyond my artistic grasp, and my paint smock always had more dribbles on it than anyone else’s.

          After mother’s murder, Annie was the first person to offer my father her condolences.  To my brother and me, she gave a hastily painted, but beautiful portrait she had painted of our mother, and much to my surprise, she embraced me with such tenderness, that I thought perhaps I had only imagined her reticence toward me. 

          As I sit here writing about my past, and trying to tie all of this together, it is significant to note how generous Annie’s gesture truly was.