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.
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